Greater Manchester Wildlife

The more interesting the recording areas are then the greater the chance of more people participating. I am often terrible in raising the enthusiasm to record my sightings onto paper and - I am sad to admit - to even this web site. However, I really want to do better in the future and, perhaps with an increasing group interest in Davids idea, and being given a large and interesting area (covering as much as 4 sq km ) I would finally get more involved? 4 sq km is an excellent size for a recording area or a local patch not too small and not too big. However, to help things gather even more momentum, and perhaps also for other potential participants, I have a suggestion to make. The original meaning of tetrad is a group of four ----- why not go for any group of four km squares (so long as they are truly a group ie each square is touching one of the other squares side to side or corner to corner). More fun and makes for more interesting tetrads to visit?  Also each participant could have two such tetrads Home and Away  --- (the Home tetrad would have to include the participants house and the Away tetrad anywhere further afield ---both of course within the web site recording area). My tetrads could be referred to as BW Home and BW Away. The technical name for a tetrad would simply be the four sq km grid references, xxyy-xxyy-xxyy-xxyy (prefixed by either SD or SJ). Km grid squares are more easily seen on OS maps (can also view sections online) /A to Z plans etc and most participants have copies for the Manchester area.

Brian.

( PS. Although its mainly for fun, on a more serious note each individual record would be defined against its respective OS km square. This would enable any official recording organisations to more easily consume some of the details into their systems).

Great stuff Steve,

Watergrove has histroically turned up a lot of interesting plants (some planted but no well established) so finding some rare plants would be a real possibility.

No probs with coming helping to I.D fungi, I am sure I will be asking Henry to come and I.D some plants on my patch etc

Cheers

Dave

It would also be great to make as many records as possible collected from this challenge contribute towards official county records and conservation purposes. If we can place as many of our sightings as possible for the tetrads on this forum or the birding forum respectively during the year that will be very useful.
Thanks.
Henry.

Thanks for clarifying that Dave.

The choice is based purely on practicality. SJ89A is the tetrad that I live in and since I have very little time to actively go out scouting for wildlife, I will mainly rely on sightings as I am out and about going about my usual business (mainly at break neck speed).
The tetrad does have the wooded bit of Wythenshaw park and I have seen lots of Great Spotted Woodpeckers in there and some nice fungi too (and of course there's always my weird and wonderfull garden fungi collection). In the summer, I often commute back from work along the Mersey and Chorlton Water Park is often part of my route to and from my mother's. I can put the moth trap out in my garden so I think that tetrad should work out ok.
Anyway I like your idea Dave and I would like to join in too even if I can't go out and survey on a very regular basis.

When do we start? Now or 1st January?

Thanks Dave and Ian,

Confused?..........................Yes, but not by your instructions.

I can cope with that just fine but what I found out after plotting the tetrad in our Tracklogs software and printing out my own map and then using that, together with an A - Z map to print myself a tetrad map with road names on and then felt quite content with my maps BUT THEN I looked at the colured square tetrad maps on Manchester Birding as per your original suggestion and found that on those tetrad squares Chorlton Water Park is not in the same place as mine.

The SJ82 line is in a different place on the Manchester Birding site map to the OS map software and the A - Z (the OS and A - Z match up with each other).

So according to my maps the square SJ89A has a bit (but not all) of Chorlton Water Park in it but according to the coloured square map it does not.

I am going to try to attach two word files to this post. One with my OS map version and one with the A - Z version. for your words of wisdom.

p.s. Ian - if I could have counted the animals in pets corner at Heaton Park - does that mean I get to count my Guinea Pig, the Terrible Tortoise and the Wood Mouse who lives with us

-- Edited by Debs Wallace on Sunday 28th of November 2010 07:26:07 PM

It is a case of just cross referencing it with the Ordnance Survey (or even streetmap.co.uk) website.

Ok so lets Say SD80A - the way i would do it is look for the bottom left 1km square in that (which is made of 4 1km sqaures....2 x 2). SD80 as a 4-figure grid ref is SD8000 (you do the bottom figures which if you go from the bottom left corner down to the bottom take you to 80, then the from the same corner of the tetrad go to the left side and its coordinates 00, put them together for SD8000). I put that into Ordnance survey and it takes me to the bottom left corner of SD8000, if you zoom out you see the blue lines which are the 1km square boundaries (go too far out and there 10km). so i know that square, the one to the right, the on above that and the one above the original make up the tetrad.

Take another SJ89G - Bottom left corner of the tetrad....go to the bottom (one the same birding map) to find 82.....then same corner to to left side 92, so its SJ8292. Put that in Ordance survey and it takes you the bottom left corner of your tetrad. Zoom out a little and that square, the one to the right, above and above the original make up the tetrad.

Confused? (I would be) Alternatively just tell me which area you want and ill screen grab the area you want at the OS level

Dave



-- Edited by David Winnard on Saturday 27th of November 2010 10:57:59 PM