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Why Use Bird Listing Software?Programs to track bird sightings have evolved dramatically in recent years. Maybe you already use software to record your sightings. Maybe you've thought about it, but haven't made up your mind which product would best suit your needs. Or perhaps you have not thought about storing your regular bird sightings in a database. But you should.Reasons to record your bird sightings are many. Keeping track of the birds you see is a way to record your own personal life experiences. Seeing a life bird is more than just a tick on a checklist. It is your first-ever encounter with the species. It is your opportunity to enjoy the bird, its plumage, its behavior, and its habitat. Savor the moment. The same can be said for everyday sightings of birds. Record your experiences with bird listing software and treasure the memories for a lifetime. Additionally, could you substantiate the importance of your favorite local birding areas with data? With declining and/or changing habit, many bird populations are rapidly dwindling. Many of you, I'm sure, have witnessed some of your choice birding haunts undergoing swift urbanization. Some birds that used to be common in your area are no longer present. Some are in serious decline. But without hard data, our chances of saving habitat will be reduced dramatically. Of course, listing is fun, too! I keep area lists, country lists, state lists, county lists, site lists, and a yard list, by year, month, and day. I know birders who keep "special" lists, too, like a dead bird list, a road-kill list, birds photographed list, bird nest list, birds seen out of an office window, birds seen on a wire, birds seen in a single tree, birds heard while in bed (you know...the bedroom window is open in winter so you can add new birds to your list), birds heard/seen in movies or on TV, birds seen by bicycle, by car, by boat, etc. It's only limited by your imagination! With programs available today, you can record weather conditions, lighting, habitat, time, date, the bird's behavior, plumage, other birds it was with, other observers, etc. As you can see, an endless number of possibilities exist. How much or how little you record is completely up to you. The beauty of listing software is the ability to look at your data in multiple ways. Most birding software is already fully equipped with a number of predefined reports. More important is the ability to run ad hoc reports--reports where you specify what criteria you want to see and how you want to see it. Some programs do this differently than others. You will want to choose software that is both easy to use and offers a great amount of flexibility. Unfortunately, I personally do not own any one of these commercial products. I own Microsoft Office 97 and have used both the spreadsheet Excel and the database product, Access, to record my sightings for the past three years. In the early part of the decade, I used a simple program I wrote for Maryland birds only. Before that, I used checklists, notebook paper, or whatever was available. Embarrassingly, I was not as organized as I had imagined. Lists from those days are still in stacks of papers [somewhere] and some, sadly, are probably lost forever. I'm certain none of you face this dilemmaÖ Having birded for over 35 years, I am faced with a huge volume of data entry if I choose to start using one of the reviewed software packages. I have visited Asia, Central America, and Europe and have birded in all 50 U.S. states. In 1998 alone I traveled 130,000 miles in North America, birded in 30 states, and recorded over 700 species of birds. In 1999, I spent more time birding in my home state of Maryland. I birded in all 23 counties this year and have tallied nearly 3,000 sighting records in my own state (not counting a few side trips to Florida, Nebraska, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania). Your listing needs may be more or less than mine, however. As a computer programmer, I have always counted myself equal to the task of keeping my own records electronically. Years ago I told myself that I could simply write my own software and use my own product. I even made a couple crude attempts, but I never completed my projects to my liking. Time is an incredibly important commodity and I found myself birding instead of writing software. Years later, my record keeping improved and my desire for new ways to look at my own information increased as well. Not surprisingly, my simple database is no longer adequate. This became even more apparent as I was preparing these reviews. Even the least glamorous of these products could produce better information and reports than my home-grown lists. I am personally excited to see the progress of the products available on the market today. Birding will certainly find a stronger foothold in society as birders learn to keep better records. Maybe we can even save enough land so that future generation can have as much fun as we've had. And with these products, the task of recording bird sightings has never been easier.
Products in this ReviewFour software products are reviewed in detail. Coming Soon!
This CD is chock full of excellent photographs and bird sounds and has a facility for tracking bird sightings as well. Even with the photos and bird recordings, it is the least expensive of the products reviewed. I found the random bird photos and bird songs a real treat, too. There are many reports and the functionality for record keeping is adequate. Coverage is for North America only.
BirdBase and BirdArea make a very powerful combination. BirdBase is the tracking software, while BirdArea offers range information for birds of the world. BirdBase has nine built-in life lists and offers the birder a wide array of data entry options including even latitude and longitude. Prepared reports are fast and informational, but not as pretty as the next two products. With BirdArea, it is possible to print a checklist of birds for any world territory that do not occur on the birder's life list.
AvisSys is a remarkably powerful and versatile listing program. The interface is easy to learn and use and navigation is the fastest of the products I used. With AviSys "Key Words" and "Attributes", it is possible to store an immense amount of information in an abbreviated fashion. These items are user-defined and can easily be retrieved in reports. Information such as date and place can be "fixed" for quick trip entries. Reports were very fast and the ability to generate good-looking checklists was a nice feature. A birder can either make lump or split changes in the software or wait for an update to appear on the AviSys web site. Printed documentation is excellent.
The interface for this product is the Cadillac
of bird listing software. It has a classy look and feel is complemented
with video tutorials; not a video tape, but online computer video. This
is also the most expensive of the products available. Included on the two
CDs is Dr. Charles Sibley's Birds of the World, a very valuable
resource all by itself. Additionally, the ability to mark a spot on a map
(using the U.S. mapping CD) for a bird sighting was a real surprise, too.
Hardware requirements for this product are also higher than any other product.
In fact, you will want a fast PC if you store lots of records (reports
can be sluggish). Online documentation is good. Changes in taxonomy can
be downloaded from their web site.
Test EnvironmentFor testing purposes, I sampled the products on two different PCs. For a low-end machine, I used a 100 MHz Pentium with 16 MB RAM and a 1.2 GB hard drive running Windows 95. The other test machine was a 300 MHz Pentium II with 64 MB RAM and a 6 GB hard drive running Windows 98. All four products were loaded before testing began. It should be noted that the low-end machine does not meet the hardware requirements of Birder's Diary. I was provided with a couple databases--one for BirdBase and one for AviSys. The data for AviSys also came with a backup file for Birder's Diary. I used the restore features for both AviSys and Birder's Diary to load data into the programs. Unfortunately, since the databases were different, not all the products could be benchmarked for report times (except for AviSys vs. Birder's Diary).Data ImportExcalibur 2000 and BirdBase do not allow data imports from external sources. In other words, if you've got your sighting data in a spreadsheet, a word processor, another database product, or even a simple text file, you'll have to manually re-enter your data into these programs.AviSys has a free conversion utility on the internet for users of BirdBase. I downloaded the program and was able to successfully convert a BirdBase database to AviSys with minimal difficulty. The instructions were excellent and the operation for a 30,000+ sighting database took about an afternoon of effort. It may take more or less time for you, depending on your data, of course. The Birder's Diary website states that conversion utilities are included free on the version 2.5 CD-ROM. These utilities will convert either BirdBase data or AviSys data into Birder's Diary format. Addtionally, a format is specified for text import as well. But I found the utilities difficult to find and not for the faint-of-heart to execute. I first tried the BirdBase to Birder's Diary conversion. After a painful wait of 3+ hours of importing, I got a data access error which I couldn't figure out. Since I'd already converted the BirdBase data to AviSys, I figured I'd try to convert that AviSys database to Birder's Diary. Again I waited 3 hours while watching pretty graphs showing progress. Again I got the same error. I contacted the Thayer support email address the day before Thanksgiving. As of the writing of these reviews (12/8/99), I have yet to hear from them. Admittedly, I did not try recontacting, so the email may have gotten lost somewhere along the way. Finally, I did not have the time to try the free-form import into Birder's Diary. |
Quick Comparison Table
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Greg Miller is a
self-employed software consultant.
He lives in Hollywood, Maryland when he is
not roaming North America in search of birds.
In 1998 he traveled 130,000 miles in North America,
birded in 30 states, and recorded over 700 species of birds.
Greg can be reached at hawk-owl@yahoo.com. |
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