BIRDING SOFTWARE DEMONSTRATION

Using BirdBase to get the life list count
Using BirdArea to produce a regional species list
Using BirdBase to enter the sightings of a trip
Using BirdBase to display sightings
Using EditData to examine the range data
Using BirdBase to change its species list

USING BIRDBASE TO GET THE LIFE LIST COUNT

You can see from the number of sightings and life list count, shown below on the BirdBase Main menu, that Tom is a very serious birder as he has an Inclusive Life List (i.e., world  life list) of over three thousand species. What you cannot see is that, when the program runs, pointing at a button for a second or two displays a box attached to the button containing a brief explanation of what the button does.

  BirdBase Main menu

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USING BIRDAREA TO PRODUCE A REGIONAL SPECIES LIST

Although Tom has already been to the Galapagos several times, pretend that he is contemplating another trip there. To help decide if he really wants to go he starts the BirdArea program, whose Main menu follows.

  BirdArea Main menu

Note that one of its options is to display or print the How do I...? window, which has detailed instructions for carrying out every BirdArea procedure. BirdBase and EditData have How do I...? windows too. It should also be said that all the programs allow dates to be in a month-day-year format, which Tom uses, or in a day-month-year format. And the year can be anywhere in the range 1900 to 2100.

BirdArea will determine what birds Tom might expect to see in the Galapagos, and which of them he has already seen there, or elsewhere. Clicking the List button on its Main menu produces the window shown next.

  BirdArea List menu options

Remembering that the code for the Galapagos is GS, he types GS and the program verifies he got it right by echoing Galapagos.

• If he did not remember the code, Tom could expose a list of codes by clicking the little triangle on the right of the Territory Code line. You will see examples of a code list later.

After he makes the other choices shown and then clicks OK, BirdArea reads its data for the ranges of nearly 10000 species, plus Tom's data of nearly 30000 BirdBase sightings, almost instantaneously.

The first page of Tom's Galapagos check list displayed by BirdArea is shown next.

  First page of Tom's BirdArea check list for Galapagos

This is what the letters beginning certain lines mean:

o   means he has already seen the species outside the Galapagos
w   means he has already seen the species within the Galapagos
b   means he has already seen the species both outside and within the Galapagos
W   means he has already seen the species within the Galapagos and the species is endemic to the Galapagos
E  (found on subsequent pages of the check list) means the species is endemic to the Galapagos

Tom displays the subsequent pages by clicking Next, and at the last page returns to the Main menu by clicking Quit.

Concluding that there are still a number of interesting birds he has not yet seen, e.g. Mottled Petrel, Pterodroma inexpectata, Tom has BirdArea produce a printout similar to the above except that for each species it has spaces for multiple check marks and for field notes. He uses the printout on a fictitious trip to the Galapagos to record his sightings.

When he returns, before starting BirdBase to enter his sightings he again starts BirdArea and makes it specify a "short list" of species for BirdBase containing just the species of the Galapagos. This is done in several seconds by using the Specify short list option on the BirdArea Main menu shown above.

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USING BIRDBASE TO ENTER THE SIGHTINGS OF A TRIP

Then he starts BirdBase, clicks Enter on its Main menu, and sees the window below in which he begins entry of the sightings of his first day in the Galapagos.

   Starting to enter Tom's Galapagos trip in BirdBase 

The Description line is used to record a general description of the trip, including sites visited and the purpose of the trip.

• If a word or phrase typed in the Description line will be used frequently it can be stored in a drop-down list. That list can then be used to put a stored word or phrase in other Description lines to avoid retyping it.
• If additional Description lines are needed they can by typed at the beginning of the note for the trip's first sighting, then easily copied into the note for each of its subsequent sightings by using the Copy and Paste functions of the Editing tools that are in the sighting note window shown below.

The Location Code line is used to select the nation or place in which the trip took place, i.e. Galapagos. Observe the code drop-down list which, this time, he uses to enter the Galapagos code.

The Date line is used to record the date of the trip. The Date drop-down list always holds today's date, plus the date last entered, and so speeds entry of dates.

After closing the code list and clicking OK, the first of a number of pages listing all the world's bird species and families appears. Tom then clicks the Exchange button so that the list is exchanged for the short list containing only the species and families of the Galapagos, as seen next.

   The first of the Galapagos species/families pages

The letter I preceding a species on these pages means it is on Tom's inclusive life list. The symbol > before Sooty Shearwater means the species has already been entered for this day's trip; note at the top that nine species have already been entered.

The tenth species of the day is the Audubon's Shearwater, in the hilighted line.

• The Sequence Number for Audubon's Shearwater, shown near the top of the window, indicates that it is the 69th species of the 2nd family (Procellariidae) of the 9th order (Procellariiformes) of the taxonomical sequence of all the world's birds.

Tom finds this species by inspection, clicks the line it is on, then clicks Use (alternatively, he could just double-click the line) to start entering a sighting note for Audubon's Shearwater.

• He could also employ the Com.Find (common name find) or Sci.Find (scientific name find) button to hilight the line almost instantaneously by searching for its common or scientific name when the species isn't very easy to find by inspection. Later you will see one of these buttons used.
• If an incorrect sighting has been entered he can remove it or correct it at any time with the Modify button then continue entering the sightings of the trip.

Tom next sees a window in which he types the following note about the sighting.

   The Audubon's Shearwater sighting note in BirdBase

There are several features of the sighting note window that need explanation.

• Observe at the bottom that Tom has defined the sighting marker S1 to mark a sighting as one in which the bird was photographed. The S1 which appears at the start of the sighting note shows that on this occasion the Audubon's Shearwater was photographed. The S1 thru S4 markers can be defined in any way a user wishes.
• Because Tom has the All Subspecies Add-On, when he clicked the little triangle to the left of the Store button a list of subspecies was exposed that shows in alphabetical sequence the subspecies of the Audubon's Shearwater. The subspecies of the list are in groups, with one for each species that has subspecies. There are many thousands of groups in the list, but it has automatically scrolled to the Audubon's Shearwater group. This can be seen by the code  puf lhe, an abbreviation of the bird's scientific name Puffinus lherminieri, that begins each line of the group. The 012 in the first line is the number of the page in the latest edition of  The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World where information can be found about its subspecies. Tom has clicked the hilighted line containing the name of the subspecies that he saw. When he clicks the Insert button that subspecies name, but not the abbreviation (or the page number if he chose the first subspecies), will be copied to the beginning of the sighting note. Later you will see evidence that this happens. Of course specifying the subspecies in a sighting note is optional.
• The Uncertain button would allow Tom to record in BirdBase the sighting of a bird whose species is questionable, without the sighting affecting his Inclusive or other life lists and without giving it the special status of a First sighting if it is the one with the earliest date for the species. If he subsequently is able to resolve the question it is easy for him to then remove the uncertain status of the sighting, or change the species seen, or completely remove the sighting.

After finishing the note, Tom clicks OK and then is back at the Galapagos species/families pages where he enters the next species of the day. 

• If Tom saw a species out of its normal range this will be quite apparent since the species will not be found on the Galapagos short list shown in these pages. If so, he clicks the Exchange button to switch from the short list of Galapagos species back to the full world list. He can then enter the sighting -- with a note describing it in detail because it is a very important one -- then click Exchange once more before entering the remaining sightings.

When finished he clicks Quit and returns to the BirdBase Main menu to enter his Galapagos sightings for another day. And he continues doing so until all the sightings are entered.

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USING BIRDBASE TO DISPLAY SIGHTINGS

Now comes the real fun -- displaying sightings! Tom clicks Display from the BirdBase Main menu to produce the Display menu seen in the next window.

   BirdBase Display menu

In the Display menu, Tom has made various choices which are designed to display a life list for whatever part of the world is specified by the Geographic limitation he imposes in the window that will be shown next. This is because he has also chosen a One per species limitation so that BirdBase will display only the sighting with the earliest date of each species in that part of the world, from before he started collecting sightings (which is 1-1-50 the earliest day of the default date range) until now (which was 7-1-04 when he displayed his sightings) then go on to the next species. Note these features:

• There are a large number of choices to make on this menu. Since many of these each lead to a large number of other choices, a very large number of different lists can be produced by the program.
• Output can be to Screen, or Paper, or two different types of Disk files.
• Sightings of uncertain status can be either included in or excluded from any BirdBase sightings display. This is also true of BirdArea check list displays, as can be seen in the BirdArea List menu options above.

When he clicks OK Tom sees the following window.

   Setting a geographic limitation in the BirdBase

He enters the code GS and BirdBase echos Galapagos.

• He could also have tightened the geographic limitation by typing in the Word/Phrase Required line the name of a particular island in the Galapagos group, or getting it from the line's drop-down list if the name had been stored there, but he chose not to do so.

After he clicks OK the program rapidly displays his Galapagos life list, whose first page is shown below.

   Page one of Tom's Galapagos life list displayed in BirdBase

F means a sighting is his First sighting of the species anywhere. S1 marks a sighting as one in which the bird was photographed. It can be used to display only photographed species. Numbers like 06 01 017 are taxonomic sequence numbers. The subspecies name subalaris was inserted in the Audubon's Shearwater sighting note when Tom clicked the Insert button in the sighting note window shown above. It can be used to display only sightings of that subspecies.

He would use the Modify button to correct any errors discovered in the sightings while they are being displayed.

• With proper choices in the Display menu Tom could have made his Galapagos life list show only the first line of each sighting note, or show only the lines containing the common and scientific names, or just count the number of species on the list (such a count appears at the end of the list in any case). But he wanted to look at everything.
• If Tom decided to make a printout of this display, or to save it to a disk file, he could do so immediately by using the Reoutput button, eliminating the need to go back thru the Main menu and the Display menu and to make any additional choices required by the Display menu options that are chosen.

After he finishes inspecting the display, Tom clicks Quit, returns to the BirdBase Main menu, and then has BirdBase produce the compact display below of the species seen on a trip to Isla Santa Cruz when he was last in the Galapagos.

   Tom's Isla Santa Cruz trip report. The species are listed in the sequence in which they were seen.

After Tom finishes inspecting this display, he clicks Quit to again return to the BirdBase Main menu.

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USING EDITDATA TO EXAMINE THE RANGE DATA

Since the Audubon's Shearwater sighting note aroused his interest, Tom then starts the EditData program to inspect the range of the species. That program's Main menu looks much like the Main menu of BirdBase or BirdArea.

Clicking its Edit button produces a window that lists the world's bird species in much the same way as the BirdBase window lists the Galapagos species. He clicks Com.Find (common name find) on that window and the window below appears.


   EditData and BirdBase common name find window

Tom does not need to type Audubon's Shearwater. Instead he can type only a few appropriately chosen consecutive letters, ignoring apostrophes, spaces, and capitalization (as well as hyphens if they were present). If he did not use enough letters to make the find unique he would be shown all the names found and could choose the proper one.

• In a Sci.Find (scientific name find) he would need to type only the first syllable of the genus without capitalizing it, type a space, then type the first syllable of the species.
• The Com.Find and Sci.Find buttons work the same way in both EditData and BirdBase. Their unique properties are great time savers -- particularly if the name is difficult to spell.

When Tom clicks OK Audubon's Shearwater is immediately hilighted on the page containing that bird species, no matter where the page is in the species list. He clicks Use on that window and then sees the next window.

   Middle third of EditData's range display for Audubon's Shearwater

This shows the middle third of a panel which contains codes for the major world oceans, every nation in the world (with one for each major faunal zone of China, Indonesia, Mexico, and Russia), almost all islands or island groups that are important to birders, every Canadian province, and every U.S. state. The visible part of the panel shows that the Audubon's Shearwater has a very broad range. For example, it includes all the NEOTROPICAL FAUNAL ZONE except for Argentina (AR), Belize (BZ), Bolivia (BO), Brazil (BR), the Cayman Islands (KY), Chile (CL), the Falkland Islands (FK), French Guiana (GF), Paraguay (PY), Peru (PE), and Uruguay (UY). The other two-thirds of the panel give the remainder of the species' range.

The window can also be used by Tom to change the range of the species, if change is required. In addition, EditData allows Tom to change the nomenclature and taxonomy in the list of world bird species used by BirdArea.

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USING BIRDBASE TO CHANGE ITS SPECIES LIST

Facilities that let a user make any possible change in the BirdBase list of world species are built into that program, as is illustrated next.

   Changing the taxonomic position of a group of species in BirdBase

Here Tom is about to click the mouse to start the BirdBase Group move facility. A few more clicks is all it will take him to move every species in an entire genus, or family, or order to a new location in the taxonomic sequence (as well as the family name or names if he moves a family or an order).

• The reason why Tom might want to make such major changes in the taxonomical sequence are described in material titled Updating the species list.

Whenever Tom uses any of the BirdBase facilities to change the nomenclature or taxonomy in its list of world species the program then makes whatever changes are needed in the sightings already entered so that they will conform to the new species list. No action is required of Tom in making such changes except for a species split where the program displays the sightings of the split species and, for each, asks him which of the two species produced by the split should get the sighting.

If you found this demonstration interesting you should also view the LepiList demonstration even if you are not interested in butterflies. The reason is that the LepiList program is very similar to the BirdBase program, and that demonstration involves several features of these programs not gone into here. And there are features of the BirdBase program that may not be seen in this demonstration because they were added after the demonstration was produced. For a list of those added since 1-1-00 click the link BirdBase updates.

Click here for more information about BirdBase and BirdArea.

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