County Boundaries

Submitted by massivet on

The County delineation in iRecord does not correspond to the Ordinance Survey boundary. ie the Berkshire/North Wiltshire boundary at Hungerford

 

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Submitted by James Emerson on Sat, 18/07/2026 - 16:36

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Counties are administrative units, and therefore their boundaries sometimes get changed. As a result, lots of recording societies and schemes use a system called Watsonian Vice Counties. These are similar to current counties, but larger ones might be divided up and more recent birder changes will be different. You can find out more about them on the BSBI website here: https://bsbi.org/in-your-area/local-botany/vice-county Ordnance Survey maps will show the current county boundaries, hence the difference. In terms of adding records to iRecord it usually makes no difference as you find where you were on the map and the vice county is calculated from that. If you are in one of the border areas then it might mean that a different verifier checks the record to the one you are used to.