Six and a half Years Later...

A month ago yesterday, I stumbled across a smart tachinid fly which I assumed was going to be Dexiosoma caninum. It later keyed-out to the far scarcer Dexia vacua, a rarely found beast once thought to be extinct in western Europe. I popped a few pics on the UK Diptera FB Group where it was confirmed by tachinid expert Chris Raper. Chris then advised me that he'd prefer the record to be submitted via iRecord rather than by any other means. Hmmm...iRecord y'say?

Admission time. So I've had an unfathomable mistrust of iRecord (and of the people that sing its praises) for some time now. I really can't recall what it was that started it all, presumably someone mentioned something that put me off using it. But if that is the case, and I can't think what else it could be, I'm afraid I've completely forgotten what that 'something' was. The mistrust, however, has remained. 

Anyway, in spite of this I decided to bite the bullet and sign up to iRecord, mostly so that Chris Raper could receive the Dexia record in his preferred format. One record couldn't hurt and it was quite an important one too. So it quite took me by surprise when I attempted to sign up to iRecord and was notified that I already had an account. Oh? Obviously I couldn't remember my password, but pretty soon I was logged in to my account and was doubly surprised to discover that I'd been a member for six and a half years!! 

And so, after a mere 2400 days, I entered my very first iRecord submission

After I'd submitted the above record, I remembered that I had a reasonable pic of Dexiosoma caninum taken a couple of days after the Dexia record. I dug the image off the camera card, cropped it just enough to enable an identification to be made and, all of seven minutes later, submitted that too. Ooh, this was starting to be fun! 

The astute amongst the four of you will notice that the status for these records is "awaiting review". That's fine, I suspect that somewhere over 95% of all iRecord verifiers are busy people who fit 'verification time' around their paid work as and when they can grab a spare hour or so, probably on a purely voluntary basis and thus without receiving any kind of extra financial reward. It must be an absolute labour of love, fair play to them all. 

Despite this, I repeatedly refreshed my iRecord page throughout the evening just to see whether the flies had be verified. Nada. Oh well, Chris is probably busy doing other stuff, still early days yet. 

Suddenly I had the bit between my teeth, two records submitted and there was no stopping me now! Next up came a couple of agromyzid fly mines, a Phyllonorycter leucographella mine and a mirid bug that I knew was new for me. I also submitted a caddisfly as a "likely" and wondered quite how far I'd get with that in the absence of a specimen. 

The next morning my fly mines had been confirmed by Barry Warrington and that afternoon the mirid was confirmed by Maria Justamond. Shortly after that the caddis came back confirmed too (whoop whoop!) I then completely blew the caddis record by trying to edit the caption, which somehow pinged it back into the system as an entirely 'new' record. I added an apology to the verifier for potentially wasting his time verifying the same record twice, but it still hasn't been re-verified as of tonight. I fear I may have blacklisted myself in the world of caddis. 

Over the course of the following few days, I submitted several more batches of records and eagerly watched 'my' page for signs of further verification. Happily, every new verification was verified as correct, with each of them receiving two green ticks as proof. By now I was feeling pretty smug with myself and I even caught myself trying to evangelise iRecord to a couple of die-hard "it's HBRG or the highway" chaps here on Skye. There really is nothing worse than a recent convert....

I ought to mention right now that I've only been submitting records for species where I'm totally confident of their identity or, less often, where I have a relatively high level of confidence that I've got it right. What I am not doing is submitting records where I don't really know what the species is and just hoping an expert will ID it for me. I believe that's a really crappy thing to do - and I hope I still feel the same way in the future too! What I am doing is using iRecord as a back up system, to ensure I'm identifying the species correctly in the first instance. If I'm really and honestly wavering between one or t'other species and just can't decide, I'll submit it as 'likely' under the name of the species I believe it to be. If ever there's one thing that drives me nuts, it's scrolling through a FB Group and finding a post captioned "ID please, thank you" (though usually lacking the thank you part). Piss off and at least have a try yourself first, lazy feckers! This really gets my goat, and I refuse to be one of those people.

So far I've submitted one caddisfly and two agromyzid leaf mines as 'likely' and the remainder as 'certain'. And had nothing but double green ticks come back. 

But then, after everything was going so very well, disaster struck!

Arse....

Barry Warrington is an amazing scheme organiser. Without a shadow of a doubt, he's the most responsive and helpful scheme recorder that I've ever dealt with. On top of that, without fail he verifies my iRecord stuff either that same day or by the following morning at the latest. If trophies or medals were awarded to scheme recorders, he would have shelves full of them I'm certain (he's also not paying me to write this, I'm just telling it like it is). Check the above record, I entered it at 9:30pm and he checked it at 8:12 the following morning. Legend.

See what I mean, he even takes the time to explain why he has rejected the record. It's a pity he doesn't have an 'agg' for these two species, but it's his scheme and he wants 100% clean data rather than blurred edges. Who am I to disagree?

It does mean that I have a red cross against one of my records, which kind of sucks. And then tonight, I received a second metaphorical i-slap in the face

See that single green tick amongst the double green ticks? That equates to an "accepted as considered correct" verification. That's not massively satisfying, but then again I only submitted a single image which doesn't show all details, so it's my own fault really. Unless the verifier doesn't want to put their name next to a record which is later proven incorrect, coz they'd feel a right numpty then. I wondered if this ever happens, it's understandable after all. Nobody wants to publicly lose face in front of their peers. 

I've submitted a couple of spider records, of the kind of spider that nobody gets wrong. I checked the species page for that spider. Some images have yet to be verified, including my two, and that's fair enough. Others have a single green tick over perfectly clear images of a very readily identifiable spider. Not a single one has two green ticks...whaaaat??? That positively sucks! This means that the very best I can hope for is that my records for these particular spiders are "accepted as considered correct" as opposed to "accepted as correct". It's a fine line, but my hubristic ego sees the clear distinction and it wants those double green ticks against the record. If a record can't be 100% ascribed to a species, that's fine. But if verifiers themselves really are that unwilling to commit....

As of today, I am one whole month into iRecord. Plus those six and a half years... In that month I've submitted 74 records. Of these, some 42 have yet to be seen and are 'awaiting verification'. I've had one 'unable to verify' and one record 'considered as correct', the remaining 30 have been 'accepted as correct'. That equates to 43% of my records verified and 97% of those have been accepted as correct. I'd like to see the verification rate increase but, as mentioned earlier, the verifiers do a grand job as it is and it's plain wrong to expect more. Even though I do. 

I'm not really looking at numbers, but I think it would be quite easy for me to double my iRecord submission rates, at least whilst the inverts are still largely active (I'm not iRecording plants, they go straight to the BSBI Recorder, and birds to the Skye Bird Recorder). What I have very quickly realised is that iRecord slows me down an awful lot whilst I'm in the field. Now, when I see something that I recognise (say, the bluebottle Calliphora vomitoria), I need to take at least one picture that shows the features well enough for it to be recognised once submitted. Which probably means three or more good images. Not easy when it's a large fly buzzing around in a grubby glass tube (and I'm not about to take it home, kill it, pin it and photograph it at my leisure when it's a species I see on a near daily basis). Then I need to dig out my GPS and make a note of the species and location in my notebook. My GPS is a struggle to read unless I pull out my reading glasses, so of late I've been wandering around with them hanging from my clenched teeth (I refuse to add a lanyard, I'm still in my forties and not ready for that quite yet!) Only after clear images have been taken, co-ordinates accurately read and written down and glasses popped back between my teeth can I move along. Previously I'd make a note of the monad I was in, take a quick pic/scribble of interesting stuff in my notebook and move along. 

Flippin' iRecord (it's brilliant really), will I ever get my life back again? And if somebody could verify the Dexia that started it all in the first place...

Talking of Dexia (yep, this is especially for you Skev)