world list apps (1 Viewer)

Tom, I suspect the answer is yes for most of these, and it certainly is for ebird. For each location you will be given a list of commonly seen species, that can be expanded to include rarities; if you have seen something truly exceptional at the location, then there is a search for that too. Ebird is meant for "trips", in other words for what you saw during one outing (or part of that outing) - there is a work-around for list building if you do not have that format for all your data.

Niels

Tom
eBird will create your life list for you as well as creating country, state and county lists...
BW Diary certainly has country lists and also allows you to create bespoke lists and should you come across a species not on the list you're currently using you can either merge with another list containing the species or (and this is much easier in practice) simply add the bird on the fly...

Scythebill allows data entry with an excellent search function, whereby you type parts of the birds name and it finds you matches. I think this is going to be faster than finding birds on a country list unless the lists you start from are already in taxonomic order.

Andrea

tomjenner said:

Do any of these sites give you a species list for each country so that you can tick off what you have seen nice and quickly (like ticking a box in an Excel spreadsheet), or do you have to go through a long process for each species you enter in each country?
I have never brought together all of my sightings to make a world list (probably between 2000 and 3000 species) and one of my concerns is that one day I will move country and lose my notebooks during shipping. During one foreign move I carried them all in my hand luggage, but there are far too many now and I want to get them in a more secure format before I move to China this summer.

Click to expand...

Hi Tom,

As Neil's mentioned, there is a workaround in eBird that will allow you to submit your initial life list for various locations simply and easily. Here is the link to the explanation: http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/973912-how-to-upload-your-life-list
You can also add more detailed information at a later time if you wish.

In addition to being free, EBird also has the advantage that the bird sighting data you enter is easily accessible to scientists and other birders. I would think your data would be especially valuable to others since you have resided in several little-birded areas. Moreover, unlike standalone programs, you do not have to mess with applying taxonomic updates, since eBird does all that for you. Finally, eBird has companion mobile apps, by birdlog, that cover the world, and allow you to submit checklists in the field even when you do not have wireless service.

kitefarrago said:

Scythebill allows data entry with an excellent search function, whereby you type parts of the birds name and it finds you matches. I think this is going to be faster than finding birds on a country list unless the lists you start from are already in taxonomic order.

Andrea

Click to expand...

The ebird online entry form is in taxonomic order.

There are some stand alone programs (in addition to birdlog) that allows for entry on a PC and easy export to ebird of finalized checklists.

Niels

Great information. Thanks

Tom

One more - a sample database template for Microsoft Access - follow the link in the signature of this message.
It can export observations to eBird, but I haven't verified this option from few years. But eBird format probably is the same.

njlarsen said:

The ebird online entry form is in taxonomic order.

Click to expand...

I'm aware of that. I was commenting on the idea of putting in several thousand sightings from notebooks - or at least that's the impression I got from Tom's description regarding what he is looking for.

If you are entering sightings from notebooks from multiple locations around the world then I assume your own records are not in taxonomic order, and I was thinking about how one could perform all that data entry in the least painful way. Most listing software will provide you with a list in taxonomic order, so how one might navigate such a list makes a big difference to the original data entry.

I should also stress that Scythebill does have signficant support for Ebird, making it easy to also submit one's sightings there (you only enter them once). I think of Scythebill as an excellent alternative for those who would prefer to maintain a copy of their own records, while also supporting Ebird with their observations.

Andrea

OK Andrea,
I misunderstood what you meant by "the list you start from".

For completeness, ebirds online entry form includes tick boxes for the following
*show rarities
*show subspecies
*group by most likely

*There is a point for "add species" (used for extreme rarities or subspecies not included in the filter)
*The listing can be changed to alphabetic
*A text box for "jump to species" works very well: for my own area I just entered "elae", the choice that became visible below was Caribbean Elaenia, hitting enter took me directly to the species. It is also possible to go across two words, "n ela" also brought up the same species

In conclusion, the entry form is almost as good as the one in my off-line database (which has a bit of a cumbersome export feature, and which I therefore will not say more about here).

Niels

I should have added: after submitting a list you get choices of submitting another list for 6 different combinations of same date, same location, same area, or different for one or more of them.

Niels

iraqbabbler said:

What are the differences between the "free" and the "premium" versions of Bird Journal ? besides the $49.99 per year !. For instance, the "World Wide" feature seems to be available only in the paid version, is that correct ?

Click to expand...

The free version lets you list birds for one country with the sync facility from your phone app to your desktop app but NONE of the other features are available on the free version. i have had Bird journal(v3) for a few years now and love it.

Jon

I've been trying e-bird, but with limited success. I started by making up a life list for Sudan, which was quite easy; I selected Khartoum (giving the Jan 1st 1900 date and hiding the list from view, as suggested) and most species appeared, and it was easy to add the few additional ones. However, I started trying to put in some data for Kenya, but quickly found that I couldn't select obvious locations, such as Lake Nakuru, or the Maasai Mara. I then tried to do a general one, by typing in the county, but the counties of Kenya are not recognised. I don't have GPS positions for all the sites I visited, so how do I go about putting in data for these locations?
I can see that e-bird will be a great way of adding my data for more obscure sites, such as my regular birding sites around Sudan where I have GPS coordinates, and these are probably the most useful ones I will be adding. However, it doesn't seem to be a very good way of keeping a life list, as, for example, it will never give me a complete list of Kenyan birds but only a list for one small region - and then it will only be if I can find a location it accepts. Putting in all my site records for every trip I've made in the last 40+ years is just not going to be realistic, so I will need some software that will let me put in my lists country by country. Any further suggestions on the best option for this?

Tom

Tom, regarding ebird:
did you try the "choose from map" to enter data from Kenya? I just entered Kenya as name in that box and it brought up the google map for Kenya, which showed plenty of different national parks including Masai Mara.

A second entry option is "select entire city, county, or state" where I selected the country of Kenya, entered nothing in county and hit continue: that brought up a pull down menu of the sections of Kenya currently in the system. If you feel this is not the best set of areas, I can pm you an email address to contact.

Regarding seeing your lists: hit "my ebird". The first page that comes up give me a couple of summary tables, on top one that gives me world total, total checklists, and ticks in ABA area, and below that an area that presents individual lists. There I can see the total number of species in each of the 20 countries I have entered data for (second tab for that part).

Niels

Thanks for the answers. I tried just using just 'Kenya' to put sightings into e-bird, but the state/region was a requirement and it would not let me proceed further. However, the few Kenya counties I entered were not recognised.
I have also tried the iGoTerra site (which gives a two month free trial of the expensive version). I only tried it with my Sudan list, and it was quite good except for the list being very incomplete. However, that is to be expected for a little known region and the e-bird one was not much better, constantly telling me that common birds were rarities requiring additional information.
My gut feeling is that I will probably go with iGoTerra for my life lists. However, I feel that it is also important that my sightings from individual visits end up on e-bird, especially those from less visited locations, such as in Sudan. With those I will add them by locality using the GPS positions or map.
It has been good to play around with the different options and all the comments here were a great help.

Tom

You might want to have a look at,Scythebill, Tom. The developer is very quick to respond to requests. You enter your own locations (takes a moment getting used to, but there is now a manual). It certainly already knows about Kenyan provinces, but you can refine to whichever level you want.

The data resides on your own machine (with whichever operating system you choose), and you can export from it into a format that EBird can swallow. The data is in a simple xml format (pretty much human readable) so you're not tying yourself into a reliance on some proprietary format.

I'm just a happy user. I've had contact with the developer over a couple of issues.

Andrea

Hi Tom,

Sorry for coming late into this thread, but I hope that I'll be able to clear up some of the questions surrounding eBird! As a brief introduction, I'm the eBird Project Assistant, and am happy to help anybody out with any questions or concerns involving any aspect of eBird.

When you entered your data for Sudan, you mentioned having species that came up as "notable" for the region – where you were asked for more details. The reason for this happening is to keep data quality as high as possible, with more info in this article: http://help.ebird.org/customer/port...ing-the-ebird-review-and-data-quality-process. You said some of the species were "flagged" that shouldn't be, and that is due to the low levels of involvement in Sudan – our current data quality filters there could use a little bit more refinement, but should soon be more accurate once more data are submitted from the region!

As others have said before (thanks Neils!), you can use the 1 Jan 1900 method to upload your life list, allowing you to get the numbers on eBird up to date. If you do have accurate date and location information, then it is always better to have those records in as opposed to the life list method, but either can work! For Kenya, you mention not being able to find certain regions, and I hope I can help with that. We have all 9 provinces in Kenya in eBird (Coast; Eastern; Central; Western; Nairobi; Nyanza; and North-Eastern), and you are also able to choose any of the 331 existing "hotspots" in Kenya, or plot your own location on a map. I'll send you a private message after this post as well to try to help with this more.

In addition to manually entering each checklist, you can also upload large spreadsheets of data into eBird. This allows you to upload hundreds or thousands of observations at once, which can save quite a bit of time! More information on importing data can be found here: http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/973915-uploading-data-to-ebird

I think that eBird could serve all of the purposes that you need, at no cost, while at the same time helping out science, conservation, and worldwide public birding knowledge. Many of the options suggested above have export functions to eBird, so even the final decision settles on something else, hopefully your data will still find their way into eBird!

Best,
Ian Davies
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/

Hi Ian
Thanks for the info. I am currently entering my life lists into IGoTerra, but once that is done I will start entering individual trips into e-bird. It will be a lengthy process, but hopefully some of it can be done in bulk. Much of my data for regularly visited sites is in Excel spreadsheets, mostly using ABA (for Central America) or ABC (for Africa) lists. Is there a way that these can be loaded up directly to e-bird? I will soon be moving to China, so the plan will be to put records directly onto e-bird from the start.
Regards

Tom

Tom,
not Ian, but his second link takes you to a lengthy help page that shows two different formats to use for bulk upload: eBird Checklist Format or eBird Record Format. It might be necessary to change the order of columns/rows in your spreadsheet to comply with one of these formats before you can use that type of upload. When I have gone that way, I have ended up saving the final version of the file into file format .cvs, I do not know if that is still necessary.

Niels

I've been using iNaturalist recently. It is an observation site/software for every species on Earth. You can keep a life list of everything, and make your own lists that automatically update (for instance if you wanted a list of just birds you had seen, or just protozoans if you are into that sort of thing).

I've been liking it so far. It seems similar to other similar places like iRecord and Project Noah but offers far more for the list minded and is simple to use. It is like eBird but everything else.

http://www.inaturalist.org/

tomjenner said:

Hi Ian
Thanks for the info. I am currently entering my life lists into IGoTerra, but once that is done I will start entering individual trips into e-bird. It will be a lengthy process, but hopefully some of it can be done in bulk. Much of my data for regularly visited sites is in Excel spreadsheets, mostly using ABA (for Central America) or ABC (for Africa) lists. Is there a way that these can be loaded up directly to e-bird? I will soon be moving to China, so the plan will be to put records directly onto e-bird from the start.
Regards

Tom

Click to expand...

There is definitely a way to upload spreadsheets! You can either see the above link in the previous post, or here it is again for your convenience: http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/973915-uploading-data-to-ebird. I'd be happy to help you formatting your data for upload as well if you wish – check your private messages!

Best,
Ian