Frank,
I use BirdInfo for my world birds listing (contact Simon Bennet at
although in the last update he only updated the
Australian bird list and not the international ones. You can now edit and
add birds to the data base yourself. I suspect that the work load required
to keep the world bird lists updated has become excessive.
The taxonomy used in BirdInfo is choice between Clements and Sibley & Monroe
and one can select which species to split and lump. You can also easily
switch between taxonomy and see the effect on the bird lists.
You can make lists of birds seen and wanted for different areas, states,
countries etc. You can also record birds seen, heard, trapped, found dead
and then sort your records accordingly, i.e. you can do a listing of birds
seen only, or birds seen and heard etc. When making entries into the data
base, you can input the site data such as the GPS coordinates, elevation,
length of survey, when the survey commenced and ended, area of survey,
number of observers, weather conditions, water levels, type of habitat,
comments on the site etc. You can also input the number of birds seen and
make individual notes against bird species when entering them into the data
base.
If you have a number of surveys for the same site, then you can analyse the
data to produce a month by month analysis which has the number of birds
seen, plus the frequency of the bird sightings. There are a lot more
options available such as an analysis of birds seen in a particular state or
country based on habitat.
You can make up an official list for a country, island, province or state if
this does not yet exist in the data base. You can also remove birds from the
official lists for countries and states, if for example you wanted to remove
the introduced species.
You can record each state and territory for Australia and then also produce
a listing for the entire country.
BirdInfo also has listings of the mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish and
butterflies of Australia in the data base.
I also use Eremaea Birds website to keep my world listings of ~2,000 birds.
Eremaea uses Clements and there is always a discrepancy between my Eremaea
bird listing and the BirdInfo listing. However I often reconcile the two
lists country by country which is useful to pick up any entry errors. I also
use the IOC listing to cross-check the species Latin names and recent
splits. However the Latin names differ from country to country and from
field guide to field guide, not to mention the confusion surrounding the
common names.
Personally I would prefer it if the IOC world listing was adopted as the
official listing for Australia and elsewhere.
In summary BirdInfo is a powerful database which allows you to easily record
a lot of information on your bird sightings and then analyse it as you see
fit. Eremaea Birds is also a great resource and very useful in preparing
lists of birds seen plus frequency of sightings for birding sites around the
world. As more lists are added to Eremaea, the more useful this data base
becomes.
Hope this is of some use.
Regards,
Bruce Wedderburn
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of Frank O'Connor
Sent: Monday, 13 July 2009 4:04 AM
To:
Subject: World Bird Sightings Software
I have reached the point where I want to collate my world list. I am
looking for the best software to use to do this.
I thought that this was covered fairly well a while ago on birding-aus, but
I can't find the postings through Google or the archives. There is mention
of World Bird Plus and Birdinfo. I have Googled these but not found a lot
of information other than where to purchase them.
I have the following requirements :
1. To keep my world bird (and hopefully mammal) records. Also if possible
my Australian reptile, frog and butterfly records.
2. Taxonomy. I currently lean towards using the IOC (International
Ornithological Congress) checklist as published in Birds of The World
Recommended English Names by Frank Gill and Minturn Wright in 2006. The
book includes a CD with an Excel spreadsheet. They have a web site which
has the updates. I also have Clements 6th edition, but this taxonomy varies
more from the Australian list.
3. I would like to record each state and territory for Australia. Elsewhere
in the world it would not be important to sub divide countries.
4. I would need to record sightings of Introduced species, as I would count
them on my country or state list, but not my world list. I understand that
some software caters for this.
5. I understand that some software can print bird lists for an area before
you visit, making it much easier to determine what species would be new and
which I would have seen before. However, most trips that I go on have bird
lists for each day, or I can get a list from various web sites such as
Avibase, Surfbirds, etc. But I would need to go through and mark what I
have seen previously.
So I would be grateful if the birding-aus community could recommend the best
solution.
1. What programs are out there?
2. What taxonomies can be used by each of them?
3. How are taxonomic updates handled?
4. Do they handle mammals, etc?
5. Do they flag Introduced species?
6. Do they allow State & Territory lists which would be combined into a
country list?
Any other factors that are important.
Thanks in advance
_________________________________________________________________
Frank O'Connor Birding WA http://birdingwa.iinet.net.au
Phone : (08) 9386 5694 Email :
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