What is Garden BioBlitz?

It's a list of all the wildlife you can find in your garden over a 24hr period. You don't need any special skills, and you don't have to "blitz" for 24hrs, just go out at different times of the day, write down what you see, take lots of photos and upload your records. The Garden BioBlitz Team got everyone to BioBlitz their garden last summer and found a huge number of species across the country.

Who are the Garden BioBlitz team?

Garden BioBlitz is being run by a small group of passionate volunteers with experience in wildlife recording and you can meet the team here. Click here to visit the official Garden BioBlitz Website with even more information, blogs from last year’s Garden BioBlitzers and more places to get help with identifying species.

What equipment do I need?

You can BioBlitz your garden with nothing more than your eyes and a pencil and paper but there may be a few bits of kit that will help along the way. Check out the helpful hints and tips from the Garden BioBlitz team to see what you might want to invest in at the BioBlitz Shop.

Step 1: Discover and Record

• Choose 24hrs between Saturday 30th May to Sunday 31st May 2015.
  • During that time (you don't have to do the whole 24hrs!) record all the wild plants & animals you can find in your garden on the downloadable recording form (print some off & take them with you!).
  • When we say "wild" we mean anything that has arrived in your garden of its own accord (not planted or brought into the garden by you, your family or your predecessors).
•  
• Photos! photos! photos!
  • Take as many photographs of what you find as you can. Photos will be really useful when you come to identifying what you have found, and when you input your records. Photos can be uploaded to the iSpot webpage (see below) for identification.

Step 2: Identify

To record the species that you find you will need to be able to identify them. There are loads of useful books, charts and guides out there where you can look up species and if you can't identify something - don't worry! If you have a photograph there's help on hand!

Help with identifications

Need some help identifying a species? Ask the experts online!

 

This is where all those photos come in handy but remember - some species are very difficult to identify from photographs so make sure you get a few different angles to show all of the body parts and make your pictures as clear as possible!

 

Help can be accessed through twitter by tweeting your photo to us at @GardenBioblitz adding the hashtag #gbb15

 

Or, even better, you can add your photograph to iSpot where experts will look through and identify anything that they recognise. You'll need to login to add it - but it's really easy & well worth it!


 

Add the tag #gbb15 (please make sure you just add this tag and nothing else) into the "descriptive tags" box of your record, and then wait for an expert ID! By adding the #gbb15 tag you will also be able to keep track of all the records being added to iSpot by other Garden Bioblitzers around the country, by going to this link on iSpot.

 

Step 3: Submit your records

This is the most important step - sending your records in to the national database.

 

Register with CEDaR Online Recording and add what you have seen. If you already have an account then simply login and start adding your records to the Garden BioBlitz 2015 recording form.

It is really important to add a photograph of what you have seen (if you have one) as this will help the experts verify your records. You can also add notes to each record. This might be a note that it was identified on iSpot, or even that it was a mating pair, juvenile or nymph. All this information is really valuable.

 

We want to know what is living in your garden. Domestic gardens cover a vast area of the UK and the only way for scientists and conservationists to find out what is living there is through citizen science - that's you telling us!

 

Through CEDaR’s Garden BioBlitz online recording form, you can record the wildlife that you find and add it to the national biodiversity database - a huge store of biological information that helps landowners, researchers and local government to make decisions about conservation projects, land management and planning permission. Every record counts!

What happens to my records once I've submitted them?

Take a look at the map showing all the records that have been submitted in 2013: iRecord UK Map.

 

All your records will be stored securely at the Biological Records Centre (BRC) and made available to experts for verification. Verifiers from UK and Ireland will be on-hand to help.

 

Verified records will be made publicly available via the NBN Gateway in a dataset administered by the BRC and/or the relevant national recording scheme.

 

Your records will be added to a huge store of biological information that helps local records centres, conservation organisations, natural history societies, landowners, researchers and local government to make decisions about conservation projects, land management and planning permission. Every record really does count.

 

 

For further information on the Northern Ireland effort, please contact: cedar.records@nmni.com