The Roost & Colony Count tool is open to anyone with a Hydroscape account. There is no PIN and no invite. Sign in with Google, or enter your email address and we send you a sign-in link. It takes a minute and you only do it once.
A cormorant sighting on the Biodiversity or Cormorant tool is a one-off observation, and you can file it anonymously if you want to. A roost or colony count is different. It can inform a licence decision, so it has to be traceable to the person who made it.
That is the only reason the account is there. It is not a competence test and it is not a judgement about who is allowed to count. If you can get to a roost at dusk and count birds, the tool is for you.
On the Cormorant Report page there is a Roost & Colony Count card, marked "Requires a Hydroscape account. Sign in to count a roost or colony." Tap it and the sign-in panel opens:
- Continue with Google signs you straight in.
- Or use email: type your address and tap Send Link, then open the link we email you on the same device. You come back to the form already signed in.
Once you are in, the form tells you whose name the count will be filed in. If you are already signed in to MyHydroscape, the card takes you straight through.
Roosts are rarely somewhere with good reception, so the tool does not depend on it. A count saves to your device the moment you submit it and syncs in the background once you have signal again.
If the app cannot tell whether you are signed in, it lets you count anyway and says so. The count is held on the device and filed once you are back online and signed in. You will not lose a count because the sign-in check could not run.
- Site type, an overnight roost or a colony. Tap the i on either one if you are not sure which you are looking at.
- Location, found by postcode search, with coordinates and a three word address recorded for you.
- Date and time of day.
- Total count. Leave it blank if you could not count them.
- Visibility, from good or clear through overcast and poor to dark.
- An evidence photograph, which is mandatory.
- Notes, for anything that affected the count.
The Protocol button in the header explains how to take a count consistently. Worth reading once before your first visit.
Counts feed into HydroLicence evidence packs and the regional cormorant dataset. Consistent long-term roost data is one of the strongest categories of evidence for an A06 application at catchment scale.