AVISYS 5.0 with BirdBase (1 Viewer)

I just got Avisys 5.0 with BirdBase add-on, a newly upgraded Bird Listing and Database for my spanking new Dell Dimension XPS. It features all Clements world birds and the BirdBase add-on generates tick lists for all countries and areas. I am putting in a few of my birds every evening, not that I have that much to enter LOL only 395 or so. But more than half of my birds are world birds so for me this (somewhat expensive at $159.00) world birding software package makes more sense than a North American-only package.

I am enjoying the features, which will really be useful once I get all my birds in. I am taking my time because of the cool Field Notes section where I can record specifics of each sighting. I have a great big pile of notebooks and field guides by the computer, just a trifle intimidating! Subspecies coverage is thorough and you are provided free updates of taxonomic changes from the software designers. I have entered all 3 subspecies of Yellow Warbler that I have seen, alas, they only count as one bird!(o)<

Has anybody else ever used Avisys 5.0 or earlier versions, and what kind of reports do you like best? I hope to get reports showing just my triple slam species, seen in Belize-Jamaica-US, such as Kentucky Warbler, Northern Parula, Ovenbird, Yellow Warbler, and so on.

Kim E. datnoyd

I've been using Avisys for about three years, since version 3.something. Now using 5.0. I like the program and use it a lot but mostly rely on the basic reports -- Checklist, Species Seen for local areas where I don't have a checklist , and Species Not Seen for trip planning purposes. I've created a few checklists for local areas from printed checklists. I can think of several improvements to the program that I would like to see -- for example, I wish you could run reports that list subspecies separately so you could more easily keep track of which you have seen -- but overall I think it's a pretty powerful program.

Keep in mind that the annual taxonomy update from Avisys is free, but the checklist updates -- both nation (from Santa Barbara Software) and US state/Canadian province (from Tony White) are not. If you update the taxonomy file without updating the range data, the two will get out of synch and your checklist reports might have some incorrect or missing birds due to splits and lumps. You can manually update the range data yourself but that would be a lot of work if you are interested in birding around the world. If you want up-to-date data and were willing to spend $159 for the program, you would probably find it worthwhile to spend about $35 a year for the range updates.

I'm not sure how to run your "triple slam" report, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. I imagine you would have to run a report with the place as Belize AND Jamaica AND US but I haven't played with Boolean operators so I don't know if that would work. Creating a Z-list consisting of the three countries would give you a list of species seen in any of the countires, i.e., Belize OR Jamaica OR US. Have fun.

Glen