Birding software and managing checklists

[Brent Stephenson]

Hi all,
Prompted by Szimi's post about the IOC bird list I thought I'd start a thread on Birding Software. Thanks Szimi for bringing the IOC list to our attention and making it available to us. I am also a lister who prefers to have my lists in an application on my computer, rather than online. For this I use 'Birder's Diary' (started off life as Thayer software)which is available here - http://www.birdersdiary.com/.

When I made the leap to this software I did a lot of research and found this to really be the best on the market for what I wanted. They use Clement's taxonomies which are now updated regularly by Cornell, and you can completely customise the way bird names appear, split and lump, create your own taxonomies, and all manner of customisable features. You don't just have to use it for birds either - you can create checklists for anything - mammals, butterflies, dragonflies, plants, etc. Trip reports, location reports etc are all easily produced. Plus Jeff Jones who runs it has created a forum and lots of useful online info and responds very quickly to issues/queries. You can even try a 30-day free trial.

Just recently available is a tool to upload lists to Cornell's eBird database, I'm not quite sure about working with NZ's eBird, but will have to take a look - any one out there know?

Cheers,

[SzimiStyle]

Good topic. I love the idea to bring users' opinion together. I am not a big fan of any of the available birding softwares as I found most of them very limited (ok, I did not try all!!). The best solution would be to mix all of the available softwares into an ultimate application which is running on any platform. I am freezing by the idea of installing any Windows based software on my Mac NO WAY!!! Online solutions like Birds & Birdwatching application on Facebook could be nice but developers don't react to any of the requests and don't even reply to mails. Many species is missing however platform is nice to use as it requires simple ticking a checkbox. Mapping records is a lovely feature but the taxonomic list is simply not a taxonomic list. Splits and lumps are not followed and it is a whole mess.

After failed to get the solution I need I started to list my lifers as simple as possible. Spreadsheets proved to be the best solution so far. As soon as developers will think about Mac users I will try that for sure

Szimi

[az kiwi]

Consider Avisys. (http://www.avisys.net/)

Unlike many applications, it is purpose written as birding software and not a recompiled generic database program. This makes it exceptionally fast and the interface intuitive.

I've been using it for years and if I ever have an issue, response from Jerry Blinn (the creator) is prompt and personal. There is no Mac version however, so you'd have to run an emulator.

Avisys uses Clements, and supports eBird. It has lots of whizzo features, like national checklists, various census and reporting tools,a nd a flexible system for dealing with splits and lumps. If you use band codes (as I do) it really speeds up data entry, and you can share, import, export lists with other users and databases.

[Shane McPherson]

Thanks Brent

I have had the birders'diary webpage as a constant reminder, but havnt got around to the trial yet.

Currently giving eBird Express a run for its money, and finding the excel templates easy to use. I guess with all system we have to adjust our listing to account for the peculiarities of the program. Although I would no doubt enjoy a more global and taxinomically diverse package like birdersdiary, what are your thoughts on public availability of individual data and its utility to monitor relative abundance and distribution... This is why I view eBird as being a constructive way to record data, well as least locally.

[Brent Stephenson]

Give the Trial version a go... It's a great piece of software with so many features and great ability to customise things. Having the ability to enter sightings as checklists, single records, or even by voice makes it very versatile and data entry fast. It also has checklists for most countries to limit the checklist entry to just those species recorded there...and the lists are pretty accurate! Last years tripping around the place certainly tested that - even had checklists for Seychelles, Madagascar, Svalbard (Spitsbergen), French Polynesia, etc so pretty good.

I think eBird will be an extremely useful resource for measuring and investigating bird distribution, but wonder if it might not be as accurate for abundance. I for one don't usually put count info into lists on Birders Diary (as a general rule), and I wonder how many people do on eBird. If I transferred all my lists over (which I will at some stage when I work it all out) this info wouldn't be present.

I'm not up to speed on the various capabilities of eBird, sounds like you have been giving it a good going over. The more people use it, then obviously the more robust the data/outputs contained within it becomes.

Cheers,

[iain johnson]

I'm currently using http://www.bubo.org/listing which is an online listing tool. I have found it to be a great tool for keeping numerous lists, e.g. world an year as well as coutry specifi etc, but limited in that you can't update your lists until you are back at a pc. However, they are aiming to provide all official lists throughout the world, so there will be complete coverage in the near future. They also incorporate all recent changes, e.g. for the clements changes earlier this year, they sent an email around to all users explaining which species where affected and how, i.e. spilt or lumped. Once you have created a list, you can also downlaod it as an excel spreadsheet and when entering species, you can enter into multiple lists, e.g. world list, NZ life list and NZ year list.

The guys have always responded to my queries and requests promptly as well.