Hi Steve,
Yes, quite a mouthful! I am struggling with two things, one is taxonomy the other is space. Ridgely & Greenfield (what we are going to carry) verses H&M (what I keep my world list in)...and these probably differ from the new Restall's (on order)...there needs to be some crosswalks, but which are most useful? Originally the idea was to put the birds in taxonomic order of H&M, but have plate numbers for R&G. We don't plan to travel out of Ecuador on our trip, so may not need to involve Restall except to update taxonomy. Does this make sense?
Space is also an issue, with nearly 1600 sp., spp, and morphs there needs to be a lot of condensing. The first print out took 36 pages in landscape formated letter size paper. Whew! Entire list will likely run about 40 pages even if half size, ie. single sheet folded in half, because each species takes two lines. Should be small enough to fit in the bird book, though if printed on write-in-the-rain paper, will be bulky. So far, range, abundance, distribution, elevation and plate numbers fit, much else makes each line too wide to fold in half.
I've been thinking about how we will be using this list and came up with two main uses and a question. The first use is to keep a record of where/when birds are sighted. This requires some blank columns and a little space for notations; three columns are devoted. The second is prior to traveling to an area, I want to be able to look and see what birds are common, uncommon, rare and occasional. Ideally, one ought to be able to see this at a glance then refer to the guidebook and tapes. This generated the question. I generally have little experience with bird cds, would it be useful to list the track number for each species along with plate numbers?
Thoughts? -K