A new website?

Gemma,

 

IÆve used the ID section of this website and think itÆs good. I am an interested amateur and find the info given helpful and sufficient. The labels on the photos drawing attention to distinctive features in identification I think are useful. The section ôWhat else could it be?ö is also a good idea and I wonder if, like in some bird ID books, it might be even more helpful to place side by side the pictures of creatures that might be confusable and again label the differences. I am thinking of adder and grass snake!

 

A lot of us are lazy at times with websites and it must be obvious to you from the queries you receive that many folk just never bother to read the text. I think probably pictures with labels and minimum text is possibly best if you want to keep it simple and attention grabbing.

 

IÆm sure weÆve all heard some amusing tales of misidentification. A slow worm wriggling through some grass was pointed out to me by a neighbour as a grass snake. Logical really as it was in grass! Another person told me she had lots of smooth snakes in her compost heap û again slow worms! We all were beginners once so we all made mistakes even if we were just kids.

 

How much emphasis you put on the possible danger from adders is perhaps another consideration. Whilst being aware that there is the potential of being bitten and minimizing that risk this needs to be balanced against what hopefully most of us would want and that is for people to enjoy seeing an adder and want to know more about it.

I get quite a few emails from people who looked over my site and aren't 100% sure of identifications too. Usually because the animal they've found is a different colour to the ones in my pictures, or is at a different life stage. There is a possibility, too, that people (like Caleb mentions) find someones escaped pet. I'm now in the process of providing an upload area so that people can submit pictures of the animals they see, this will hopefully provide a larger cross section of photos for people to reference from.

Last summer, a friend (an ecologist at that) found a snake they couldn't identify on the road a couple of miles from me. I went and found it to be a Bairds ratsnake. He'd have struggled like hell to I.D. that one online without asking somebody, so a page of commonly seen exotics is also on the cards too.

As always Gemma, if there is anything that would be of use to you on my site feel free to help yourself.

Regards, Lee.

Caleb I think you have the answer with the random pictures. I find it is often interpretation of wording that throws people with the ID pages. If, as an example, you describe a grassies neck markings as a 'collar' it throws people who saw the markings as 'triangles' etc. We all know grassies are green or olive brown, but I suspect many of us have also seen the black streaks in undegrowth that jizz tells us was actually a grassie in a hurry under certain lighting conditions. And lots of images is the only way to cover colour variation in adders, I've seen yellow males with green zigzags, none of those in the books!

I can see it might be useful to have some interactive pages, where people choose the most like picture then perhaps tick some boxes to see if the ID is likely to be correct. This would be good for the recording form also, I'm already thinking of ways to highlight to users smooth snakes, natterjacks and sandies from unlikely locations before they submit records. The good thing is there are now enough records submitted to pick out the most common ID problems.

Lee, Would it be possible for RAUK to link to your page of commonly seen exotics? I've toyed with this one but feel it is a little beyond the scope of RAUK as it was designed to cover natives, naturalised and potentially harmful exotic species. It might be good to have the link at the end of the interactive pages if peeps cannot find anything that fits?

Suzi, me thinks green vivi lizards only exist to confuse people 

Edited by GemmaJF

-LAF wrote: No worries Gemma, I'm going on the scrounge for pics now and should have that section ready soon (site is in dire need of an overhall). Oh, and for the for the oft' cited but never pictured green viv.lizs... check this lil' baby out: GREEN VIV LIZ

Sometimes, being colour blind can be a real advantage for herp ID...   

Cheers,

Wolfgang

I think what I'll try to do is create different levels of info for different users. 

I'm keen to put together some interactive pages that will guide peeps through identification. i.e. they start with four basic pictures, slow-worm, adder, smoothie, grass snake on clicking the link they are taken to a page where they answer some basic questions regarding location, habitat, micro habitat, behaviour - if none of it fits their choice they will be kicked back with that choice missing to try again. Perhaps then I'll get less records of smoothies swimming across lakes in Suffolk?

It's amazing that four species can cause so much confusion.. still then again I'm just getting my teeth into identifying darter dragonflies, I'm sure they are obvious to an odonatologist but they all kinda look the same to me