The science
Counts scientists
can trust.
A count only helps wildlife if it can stand beside every count before it. This is the method behind every Creature Counts project — what observers do, what is written down, and how the record stays honest for decades.
The method
One slow sweep, from a fixed point
Every observation is a timed scan count: the observer stands at a marker post, sweeps the visible water once, slowly, and counts every animal in view right now — not everything seen over a visit. An animal that dives and resurfaces is counted once, not twice. That is why the sweep, rather than a running tally, is the established survey technique for animals that come and go from view.
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01
Where you stand
Counts happen only from marked stations. Scanning the post's code opens the count for that exact spot — the location is part of the measurement, never a guess — so counts are comparable across people, seasons and years.
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02
How long you look
The count times itself, quietly, from first tap to finished. Effort matters: five animals seen in thirty seconds and five seen in five minutes are different findings, and the record keeps them different.
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03
What you write down
Only what you can see now, tapped by category — basking or in the water, whatever the project defines. Plus the sky, in one tap, because sunshine changes behaviour.
What every count records
A count is more than a number
Alongside every total, the record quietly keeps the context an analyst needs to compare it fairly with every other count.
| Recorded | How | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| The counts, by category | The observer's taps | The measurement itself |
| The station | The code that was scanned | Fixes the exact vantage point |
| Date and time | Automatic | Daily and seasonal patterns |
| Duration | Automatic, first tap to finished | How hard someone looked — effort |
| Sky condition | One tap, four choices | Sunshine changes behaviour; analysts correct for it |
| First visit or returning | Automatic, anonymous | Experience affects what people spot |
| Method and instructions version | Automatic | So the method can improve without muddling old and new counts |
| A note | Optional, in the observer's words | Anything unusual, kept with the count |
None of it identifies the counter — see what we store, in plain English.
Absence
Zero is a number
If people only report what they see, the record only ever says yes. A pond where nobody could find a terrapin all June is a finding — and without it, a population quietly declining looks exactly like a population nobody happened to count. Records built from sightings alone flatter the animals and hide the trend, which is often the very thing a project exists to watch for.
So "I can't see any" is one tap, never buried, and a zero is welcomed exactly like a fifty. In a healthy record, a good share of the counts are zeros — and the thank-you screen says so, because the person who swept the water and found nothing has done the science a favour.
Data quality
Flagged, never discarded
Public counts are sometimes odd — a phone's clock is wrong, a count arrives twice, a total looks too high. The record never quietly rejects a plausible count. It attaches a flag and lets an expert decide, in the open — the same principle the world's largest citizen-science schemes use to review their sightings.
Counted again quickly
Two counts from one device within minutes are both kept, both flagged. Two friends may share a phone — or conditions may truly have changed.
A clock adrift
If a phone's clock disagrees with ours by more than a few minutes, the count is flagged so time-of-day analysis can treat it with care.
Sent later
A count made in a signal dead spot waits safely on the phone and is sent when it can be — flagged, so analysts know arrival time isn't counting time.
Unusually high
A total far beyond what the site usually holds is flagged for an expert eye. Sometimes it's a slip; sometimes it's the most interesting count of the year.
When an expert does set a count aside, it is excluded with a written reason — the original is never edited and never deleted. Judgement is added on top, in the open.
Comparability
A count made today must stand beside one made in ten years
The instructions are versioned
Every count remembers which version of the instructions its observer saw, and which version of the method they followed. If the method is ever refined, old and new counts are never silently mixed — an analyst always knows exactly what "a count" meant on the day it was made.
Anonymous, but consistent
Counters have no accounts and give no names. Each phone keeps a random identifier so analysts can tell that a series of counts came from the same device — repeat counts from familiar eyes are the most valuable in the record — without ever knowing whose eyes they are.
Honest limits
What a count is — and isn't
A scan count is an index, not a census. Animals hide, dive and doze out of sight; sunshine brings them out and wind sends them under. No single count says how many animals live in a pond, and no honest method claims otherwise.
What hundreds of counts can say — made the same way, from the same places, in all conditions — is whether a population is rising, steady or slipping. Because the conditions and the effort are written down beside every count, the circumstances can be separated from the trend. That is why many small counts, kept honestly, beat an occasional perfect survey: the noise averages out, and the trend remains.
The record
Gathered to be used
Project stewards can export everything, exactly as collected, as plain files that open anywhere. If you're a researcher, a student or a council ecologist who could put the record to work, we'd like to hear from you.