Technology development and how it changes the ways we record

With the advancement of technology, the use of paper cards to record wildlife is gradually becoming a relic of the past (at least for me). This is good because I used to spend a considerable amount of time digitising records after a productive day in the field. There is a variety of recording apps available, with iRecord being excellent for submitting individual records from any species group. In contrast, the BSBI app serves as a fantastic tool for botanical survey records, which automatically saves the grid references for each species. Both apps allow the uploading of photos and additional information, such as stage (e.g. flowering) and abundance, and have plenty of online documentation explaining how to use them. In some cases, however, I prefer to have a predefined species list ("a card"),especially when using quadrats or surveying units in the same area. This helps me to see which species from the list I missed. After experimenting with a few options, I have settled on using Google Sheets on my Android phone. In this note, I share my experience with Google Sheets and a few other useful apps.