My name is Charlie and I’m the Derbyshire Biological Records Centre Assistant. I started working with the Records Centre in summer 2021 on a traineeship alongside completing my master’s degree in Biological Recording and Ecological Surveying. I’m now part of a small but hard-working team that spends their time verifying, storing and providing data on Derbyshire’s wonderful wildlife, from across the whole county.
A ‘Local Environmental Records Centre’ (or LERC) exists for each county in the UK and is the central point for their wildlife and habitat records. Each one is run separately, and in Derbyshire we’re lucky to be part of the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust team, which means that we can help provide valuable data to all our officers, and record their sightings in return.
Like most LERCs, we’re also a member of ALERC (the Association of Local Environmental Records Centres) which is a great central resource and community, running conferences and forums which help us to stay on top of the ins-and-outs of wildlife recording. This is really important when you’re managing over 1 million wildlife records, and data management technology is constantly developing.
We receive, verify, collate and store many thousands of species records every year. These include the species that people see when out and about in Derbyshire, such as birds, badgers, hedgehogs, otters, flowers, mosses, lichens, fish, fungi, toads and reptiles, but they can also include signs of wildlife like nests, setts, tracks and even animal poop! We rely on wildlife-lovers around the county to send us their sightings, from Wildlife Trust members and volunteers to local recording groups and professional ecologists.
One of our favourite things about where we work is seeing seasonal changes through the records sent in to us. The summer sees an array of stunning orchids drop into our inbox, then the autumn brings a flurry of fungi photos. We even notice annual variations, such as the apparent proliferation of scarlet elf-cup fungi (Sarcoscypha austriaca) in February this year.
Scarlet elf-cup fungus at National Stone Centre (c) Charlie Fothergill
We’re able to help with verification too, as there are many extremely knowledgeable people who work and volunteer with the wildlife trust or alternatively we can get in touch with specialist organisations to help identify a species. This violet carpenter bee (Xylocopa violacea) was a really exciting and unusual sighting in one of our member’s gardens last summer that we contacted the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society (BWARS) to confirm.
Carpenter bee in Wirksworth (c) Sonja Bennett
Occasionally we have once-in-a-lifetime snaps sent to us as part of a submission, such as this grass snake (Natrix helvetica) attacking a common frog (Rana temporaria). Plus it was a bonus for us – two records in one! We were assured that the frog in this photo escaped.
Frog and grass snake in Carr Vale (c) Norman Jones
A great perk of the job is learning how to identify a large array of species. Did you know that there’s an insect known as the Batman hoverfly (Myathropa florea)? This is due to a distinctive marking on its thorax that looks a little bit like the Batman symbol.
Batman hoverfly at Cromford Canal (c) Chris Jackson
And finally, sometimes people tell us about wildlife that they’ve found in the most unlikely places, often nesting or hibernating. This little robin (Erithacus rubecula) thought that a cosy bicycle helmet would be the perfect nesting place this spring.
Robin nest in bike helmet at Clay Cross (c) Kerry Hampton
Once collated and filed, Derbyshire’s species records can be extracted based on a search for a species or area for a number of different purposes. Firstly, the information is used for conservation purposes within the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and beyond, such as local conservation groups and students. Secondly, the DBRC is a key resource for professional ecological consultants working on development projects throughout Derbyshire. And finally, the DWT has a small biodiversity planning team which rely on the Records Centre’s information and species maps to underpin their comments on Derbyshire’s Local Authority planning applications.
Remember, we can best protect Derbyshire’s wildlife when we know where it is! We would love to know what you have seen, whether it’s something that visits your back garden every day or an exciting rare find. Make sure that you include the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ in your submission to us. You can submit your own sightings to the Derbyshire Biological Records Centre through the sightings page or by emailing them to speciesrecords@derbyshirewt.co.uk.
