Key to Symbols and Abbreviations in Checklists

Dates

The date of a record generally consists of a year followed by a letter.

=	Year is exact. If no symbol appears after the year, this also means that the year is exact.
~	Year is approximate. For example, a record in the original as "in the 1920s" will be entered as "1925~". The uncertainty is usually less than ±10 years.
-	Record is before or in this year. This symbol is used particularly when records have been taken from a previous checklist in which they are undated, and then gives the date of the checklist. The record is usually within 10 years before the given year.
+	Record is after this year. The record is usually within 10 years after the given year.
nd	No date is known. This has been avoided wherever possible.
dub.	We consider the record dubious for some reason. The editors' decision is final but should not be interpreted as reflecting adversely on the recorder.

Other date formats which may be found are:

YYYY-MM-DD	E.g. 2012-04-13, meaning 13 Apr 2012
YYYY-MM	E.g. 2012-04, meaning Apr 2012
YYYY-YYYY	E.g. 1986-1988, meaning all years in this range
YYYY/YYYY	E.g. 1986/1988, meaning at least one year in this range

Status

Some checklists have a 'status' column, consisting of either just a code or a code plus the date of the last record. The codes are:

P	Believed to be Present
M	May be present, status unclear
L	Believed to be Lost, i.e. no longer occurring in the Park
D	Record considered Doubtful (may not be listed online)
I	Name Invalid (generally not listed online)

Recorder Abbreviations

Many of the recorder abbreviations are expanded in the recorder column in the webpages, but may appear in comments or notes.

B	Bagnall's 1876 Flora of Sutton Park
Bioblitz	Collected at an annual Bioblitz in the Park, sometimes by schoolchildren or in the case of invertebrates in overnight traps.
BMS	See WFS.
BNHSM	Birmingham Natural History Society Minutes: records extracted by L.J. Evans from the Society's old minutes, which used to record every meeting.
BSP (after "S. Bodnar")	As listed in A Natural History of Sutton Park, Part 3: Birds, Stefan Y.T. Bodnar, 1995
C	Clark's 1980 Fungus Flora of Warwickshire
CDNHSS	Coventry and District Natural History and Scientific Society
CES	Coventry Entomological Survey: A.E. Wright, R.J. Barnett, S.A. Lane, D. Warren, et al. – staff of Herbert Art Gallery & Museum
E	'Early' records, i.e. pre-1900, but not Bagnall
ESSP	2018-19 Entomological Survey of Sutton Park, Birmingham, S. Falk & C. Kirby-Lambert, 2020
F	J.H. Field's records, up to 1990
FBBC	Recording for the Flora of Birmingham & the Black Country
GHLPS	Sutton Park NNR Green Hairstreak Landscape Project Survey, Warwickshire Butterfly Conservation, 2009
ISR	The now defunct Invertebrate Site Register
L	T. Laflin in Readett's 1971 Flora of Sutton Park
LJER	Leslie J. Evan's personal records and collection
R	Readett's 1971 Flora of Sutton Park
SCNHS	Records of outings of the Sutton Coldfield Natural History Society
SISP	A Survey of the Insects of Sutton Park, S. Falk & S. Lane, Falk Entomology, June 1999.
SISPR	Records listed in SISP (see above) as "teste [John] Robbins"
SPHG	J.C.W. Field & P.W. James (eds.), Sutton Park, A History and Guide, Friends of the Park Association/Sutton Coldfield News, 1965.
VSP (after "S. Bodnar")	Indicates a statement of a record in S. Bodnar's unpublished account of the vertebrates of Sutton Park, mostly written around 1995, rather than a specific record by him.
VCH	Victoria County History of Warwickshire, Vol. 1, 1904
WBRC	Warwickshire Biological Records Centre, Warwickshire Museum, Warwick
WFS	Warwickshire Fungus Survey records, including their lists of supplementary records. May also be called the Birmingham Natural History Society Mycological Section in some sources.

Names and Synonyms

Scientific names given in parentheses are not necessarily synonyms in the sense of the nomenclature codes; they may include incorrect names or misidentifications used in earlier versions of the lists.

Symbols after a synonym (such as * or ^) should be ignored. (They are cross-references within the original database.)