Link between iNaturalist and iRecord

General
1

Hi, I am looking for advise on the frequency of updating from iNaturalist to iRecord and the criteria?

I am new to recording and joined iNaturalist in early July 2026 and really like the interface and the helpfulness of the people responding to my posts. As a result most of my updates are now rated ‘research grade’ but, as of today, none have yet appeared in iRecord.

Is this a timing issue or could there be another reason?

I am UK based and have used the same username and email address in both.

Guidance will be appreciated.

many thanks

Mark

2

iRecord takes records from us, but I’m not sure what their process is, and we’re not really part of it. I recommend reaching out to them directly.

3

Mark, you may wish to read the following:

  1. Best Practice for Using iNaturalist in the UK: · iNaturalist

  2. Info For Records You Want Passing To iRecord To Be Used In The UK · iNaturalist

3, iRecord and iNaturalistUK | iRecord iNaturalistUK and its place in biological recording data flow - National Biodiversity Network

  1. iRecord and iNaturalistUK | iRecord

As to the frequency at which iRecord pulls down data from iNat I’m afraid I have no idea and you would have to approach the NBN Team.

4

Maybe @josscarr knows…?
I feel someone mentioned at some point at least - perhaps in his talk :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QfjH-_e8hw

5

Great find!
Minute 6:00
https://biologicalrecording.co.uk/2025/09/16/inaturalist-invertebrates/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CjWjprMYHAUkSsxgv9h1bu4UHXsAULJa/view

6

Your records are present:

For example, your Aeshna mixta is here https://irecord.org.uk/record-details?occurrence_id=56339915

type droit12 into the recorder box here https://irecord.org.uk/all-records and you should see them all.

In my experience, transfer to iRecord upon being made RG is almost instantaneous

Perhaps you are expecting them to turn up under ‘My Records’ when you log in, but this will not happen, because the bridge does not know to link your iNat observations to your existing iRecord account.

7

That is worrying. There ought to be a few weeks for other opinions to be aired. If the iNaturalist version subsequently changes to not RG, does this get transmitted to iRecord? I suppose there is another layer of checking in iRecord so that should clean the records up, but iRecord doesn’t have verifiers for everything.

8

I agree. I would like there to be a delay, even if it just exported once at the end of each day.

Changes made on iNat are transferred to iRecord until the observation has been verified in iRecord. Then the observation is locked. If the observation is made non-RG before being verified on iRecord, it disappears entirely from iRecord.

9

This seems to have changed over the years. Originally, I think the records were imported via GBIF on an irregular basis, so the delay could be weeks or months. But sometime after the UK network affiliation was created, the import process became more direct, and (at least to begin with) the records were updated daily. More recently, though, the updates have become much more frequent. I just had a look at the indexing timestamps in iRecord for the most recent iNaturalist imports, and there’s only 5-15 minutes between each batch.

The iNaturalistUK pages on the NBN site now includes a real-time feed which certainly hasn’t always been there (according to the Wayback Machine, it seems to have appeared in mid-2022). I’m curious to know exactly what powers this tool and/or the current import process. Are they just polling the public iNaturalist API every few minutes, or is there some other mechanism available only to network affiliates?

Indeed. It’s unclear what the benefits are of updating so frequently.

10

Matthew, many thanks. I need to improve my searching capability on record :-)

I will be back with my laptop in a couple of days and will try again.

many thanks for the helpful response.