Throughout 2023 there has been a great level of recording activity across a wide range of various taxonomic groups. During July we passed a major annual milestone of 100,000th records being submitted through Ireland’s Citizen Science Portal.
The 100,000th record this year was of Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) or Aimiréal Dearg as Gaeilge and was from Portadown, Co. Armagh. The record for Red Admiral was submitted through Ireland’s Citizen Science Portal on the 13/07/2023 by Peadar Guy.
Here’s what Peadar said when he was told his record of a Red Admiral was the 100,000th submitted through Ireland’s Citizen Science Portal:
To be honest I was shocked, surprised and more than a little humbled to be the person lucky enough to have submitted the 100,000th record.
When I retired several years ago, I was determined not to find myself at a loose end. Since then, I’ve been doing voluntary work at a local wildlife reserve and taken a couple of photography courses. Working outdoors helped develop my photography and very soon I was taking pictures of plants, fungi, butterflies and more. This reawakened my interest in the natural world, an interest I’d always had but never really had the time to explore before.
For me, recording is an extension of what I see, what I photograph and what I ID. My recording activity follows the seasons and right now, as the autumn approaches, I’m veering towards recording fungi.
Recording has encouraged me to open my eyes to the natural world around ask questions like, what is that plant; why is it that colour and why does it prefer this location and not another? Finding answers to such questions is often challenging but very rewarding.
As the seasons turn, recording activity encourages me to revisit and revise what I learned in previous years and grow my knowledge of the natural world in all sorts of directions. As my learning curve continues, there is so much more for me to discover and record.
As for the Red Admiral butterfly I photographed on the 13th of July, well, I didn’t have to travel too far for that one. My back garden was the location and Buddliea, planted a few years ago to attract butterflies and other pollinators, was the host plant. Just by monitoring and recording in my back garden, I could tell that it was likely to be a great year for some of our butterflies such as: Red Admiral, Holly Blue and Large White. And so it has turned out up here in north Co. Armagh.
Surveys and Records Officer Oisín Duffy had this to say about the 100,000th record:
2023 is proving to be another great year for biological recording. Even though this has become an annual recording milestone, it’s worth pointing out the huge amount of effort, time and expertise that is given freely by our recording network. With records submitted across 5,000 different taxa, we are hugely appreciative of this deep level of knowledge being submitted through Ireland’s Citizen Science Portal. As always, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our citizen science recorder network for submitting their records this year.
Ireland’s Citizen Science Portal is available to be used by anyone; if you see a species of note and are sure of its identification, please submit the details to https://records.biodiversityireland.ie/ so that the observation can be added to our national biodiversity database. This will allow us to continue to build the knowledge base on what species we have in Ireland and help us to better understand how they are distributed.
