World Bird Sightings and iPhone Software

[Frank O'Connor <>]

I purchased Wildlife Recorder from the UK. The normal version is fine if
all you want is to record your birds and mammals.  I bought the full
Professional version.  I am in the process of putting the Australian
reptiles, frogs and butterflies on. This involves sending Jack Levene the
Excel files to create the initial database and then inputting the
distribution list and notes, and alternate names.  Also a few things
like marking a species as introduced.

I am using the following references :

Wilson, Steve & Swan, Gerry (2010), A Complete Guide to Reptiles, 3rd
Edition, New Holland Publishers. (Plus adding some alternate names from
other sources).

Tyler, Michael & Knight, Frank (2009), Field Guide to the Frogs of
Australia, CSIRO Publishing (Plus alternate names from other
sources)

Orr, Albert & Kitching, Roger (2010), The Butterflies of Australia,
Allen & Unwin (Plus alternate names from other sources such as
Braby)

As for the birds and mammals, it does the job very well. Not all the
mammal sub species have been entered, so occasionally I have to enter
one.

For my overseas trips, it has species lists for every country plus for
many countries it has state / province lists (including Australia). You
can print this out before the trip so you can markup the trip list for
lifers.  I find that there are a few birds on each trip that haven't
been included, and I send Jack these additions.

I use the IOU list.  This is updated several times a year, as is the
software itself.  This is generally an easy process, although the
last IOU update made massive changes (in particular it dropped a lot of
sub species) which required me to work through about a 1000 changes
(maybe 200 different changes).  The IOU list was my preferred
taxonomy (but you can choose Clements or Howard & Moore).  The
IOU list is the closest to C&B2008, but there are quite a few
differences mainly to sequence but also names (e.g. it has Short-billed
Black-Cockatoo) and to species.  It is updated quite quickly so it
already has Swan River Honeyeater, Western Ground Parrot, etc.  It
has a few such as Western Fieldwren that are likely to get overruled and
get lumped again.

Entering the data is fairly easy, although for an overseas trip this
often takes 15 to 20 minutes.  At the end of the trip I get a full
list to check sub species and to audit against my trip list.  I
enter rough counts.  I also enter statuses such as "Seen by
others", "Glimpse", "Introduced",
"Breeding", etc.

It did take quite a while to enter all my historical data. In fact I
prioritised my overseas trips, as that was my highest priority. I still
have quite a few historical Australian trips to add, and my Australian
list is about 50 or so species short at the moment (and hence my life
list could be that far out, although many of the missing records are from
twitches of birds that I may have seen overseas).

The reporting is good, although it doesn't handle the statuses other than
"Heard" very well.  I can easily include or exclude
"Introduced" from my lists (I exclude from my World List and
include in my Country and State lists).

It does mean that I can now very easily report year lists which I have
never done before (excluding Introduced).

You can create locations within the existing locations, and nest these
fairly deep. e.g. Australia / Western Australia / South West / Perth /
Herdsman Lake.  You can input the coordinates for these locations,
but the format is very hard to remember.  You can then export the
data to online applications such as Ebird.  I haven't done
this.  To be honest, when I have been birding all day, I tend to
enter a list for the whole day at the level with encompasses everything,
rather than break it up into a list for each location for the day. 
So if I did print out a list of what I have seen at say Dryandra State
Forest, it would only report a fraction of what I have actually seen
there.

The program is stable, but there are things that could be done better.
Scrolling doesn't always work when you think it should.

There is a voice data entry option.  I haven't tried this, but it is
recommended by other users.

There is a mobile phone application for entering data, but again I
haven't looked into this.

The help from Jack Levene is usually very prompt and very useful,
although a few times it has been delayed and I have to chase it up. It
helps a lot to include Wildlife Recorder at the start of the subject
line, as his anti spam software can delete other email
sometimes.

I certainly recommend the product.

At 08:44 20/06/2011, Steve Potter wrote:
> Dear Frank et al..
>  
> After a tip off from Martin Cake re iPhone site recording software called
> 'My Bird Observations'
>
>  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-bird-observations/id368734113?mt=8
>  
> I have been perusing the archives again re World bird recording products
> and came across your excellent summary of such things in 2009.
>  
> Question to Frank: What did you end up going with and what is your
> assessment? Any Updates on this?
>  
> Question to List: Has anyone found any other products for world birding
> on the iPhone other than the above? Birdsite is great but only for a
> couple of countries as far as I can see.
>  
> Thanks
> Steve Potter

_________________________________________________________________
Frank O'Connor           Birding WA http://birdingwa.iinet.net.au
Phone : (08) 9386 5694              Email :

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