surely a mistake?

I never doubted it. No harm done but it was probably wise to set the record straight before one of the myriad of trolls jumped in!!

Getting back to the discussion , Such as smooth snake sightings on Cambridgeshire footpaths etc haha, its unlikely that a herpetologist was the one to see it,Now if it was me or one of us who saw it ,and also some photographic proof,it might lead to a creditable sighting .But theres some people about who would illegally purloin a smooth snake and set up a scam for getting themselves famous for 15 minutes in the media! keith

Quite agree with you Gemma.
I would say that for 9 out of 10 reports of great crested newts in ponds I get I can usually verify that they are actually smooth newts. Managed to confirm GCN at one unlikely site this week when I was sent photos they had taken on a mobile phone.
Many people can't tell the difference between a toad and a frog. I had to explain it to an engineer and a contractor dealing with a ground collapse at a country park this week. They found about 25 animals sheltering in the gap under some old concrete and called them all frogs - they were 2 frogs and 23 toads.
Most people only seem to have heard of adders so get loads of them reported everywhere. I've got to inform someone later on tonight  that the squashed snake on the road in Chesterfield is a grass snake not an adder like he thinks. Its only a few hundred metres away from a previous correspondent this year who has been avoiding a muck heap in her horse field for 3 years! She and her mother saw a snake on it 3 years ago and the RSPCA told them it was an adder. I sent them a photo of a grass snake and she confirmed that was what she saw originally and in subsequent years, so now she's not afraid any more. The police are another great one for telling people that a grass snake is an adder, I have had several of those reports in previous years.

I do most of the work to update GCN records in Derbyshire so we do get them on a GIS layer that will flag them up if consultants apply to the Wildlife Trust or consult the county ecologist or the Peak Park ecologist. Similarly we have got the reptile records on a GIS layer now, though virtually all of them are the result of chasing up casual sighting reports and even when consultants do reptile surveys they usually don't find them. Says all you need to know about most consultancies - they advertise reptile surveys but have no-one with any experience of reptiles to do them.

From RAUK reports (using the report form), together with some of the ARC sources such as Sliding Scales and Add an Adder I can confirm that, where we can verify (or not!):-

A high percentage of "unknown" are red frogs and toads and a small but significant percentage are hawk moth caterpillars.

Many "Smooth Snakes" are Slowworms and many "Adders" are Grass Snakes or Slowworms.

At least 30% of "lizards" are (not necessarily) terrestrial newts

Around 50% of "Sand Lizards" are Viviparous Lizards.

Most "Bullfrogs" and "Green Frog complex" sightings are Common Frogs

And that's just the more common variations. It seems the majority of the general public have no idea about animals which to us are so distinct that it is difficult to understand why they don't know the difference.

So far as getting records recorded appropriately this is an ongoing battle. Organisations such as ARC do so, but occasionally can't keep up with the volume. They are, however, trying to develop better co-ordination and relations with County Recorders and the like. In the meantime, County Recorders themselves are often working on a total voluntary basis and just can't keep up and, of course, in some cases are completely absent or if present appear to do nothing!

Chris

Hi Gemma

Interestingly, Steve and I had been talking about a "key-based" identification system and I see that Steve has gone ahead and developed one - and a pretty good job too (although I bet plenty will still get it wrong!!).

I do have plans to improve our ID pages, they have been static for while as you know. Additionally, I now have the reporting pages on www.herpetofauna.org.uk and was planning to move the ID pages there. The rationale is twofold - firstly, I have unlimited capacity on that (Linux) server and can create a fair bit of space on the expensive and limited capacity Windows server by moving this, and secondly, as you also know, I'm far, far better at PHP/MySQL than I am at .ASP etc.

I think your idea is extremely sound, and certainly something I can easily develop in PHP. It hardly seems fair after giving you the well deserved break from RAUK that you should have to develop something for it   . Apart from this, the new reporting form is PHP based so, unless you have widened your skill set (which wouldn't surprise me at all mind you) it's down to me anyway!!

All the best

Chris