Checklist of Birds (1 Viewer)

[lmans66]

I am not an e-bird fan to record my observed birds (checklist) or Software to record either.....I prefer an analog approach where I use a birding checklist in paper format and have it split up amongst various regions in the USA. No room for narrative nor even year seen as I used to include those on an Excel document or when I did birding software.

But I got tired of the ABA in the states and all of their checklists for sale are (a) from years past such as 2017 or (b) include species that are either extinct or haven't been seen at all in 30 years or haven't been seen more than a couple of times within 30 years. To me, that is useless....... and it gets in the way as I scan my checklist of what realistically I have a chance of seeing.

So, I just made my own. I downloaded the ABA Checklist from their site as an Excel doc. Than I deleted all of the extinct birds, or 30 year luck of the draw if you see them birds, and now have a workable bird list which is more realistic. If I do run across one of those birds that sightings occur sometime in a 30 year time frame, I will just write it in.

How else does anyone else record their bird finds. ?

 

[Mysticete]

Currently I have a custom excel spreadsheet that I log all of my lifer into, which includes details on there classification (scientific name, order, family, subfamily), location where first scene, date, and a little grid where I can check them off for different regions I am interested in (Continent, ABA region, states I have lived in). I also have separate checklists for herps and mammals.

 

[lmans66]

This sounds like my original Excel but without hers and mammals. The issue I came up with was that I was seeing birds over the course of years and while I had the first spot observed, I was always having to figure out to add more information on subsequent spots or not. I decided to update some while other more commons ones; not. I included scientific name etc but found it to be not as useful. Just taking up space at the beginning and eventually I got rid of those columns.

I did include a narrative column as my last column. This was where I could enter any special memory etc of the observation. I liked that part.

As I said, I eventually did away with it in 2013, as I look back on my records. In a way, I was sad....more so for the special narrative column, as my analog. checklist hits about all other areas I need.

Thanks for sharing Mysticete...

 

[Mysticete]

This sounds like my original Excel but without hers and mammals. The issue I came up with was that I was seeing birds over the course of years and while I had the first spot observed, I was always having to figure out to add more information on subsequent spots or not. I decided to update some while other more commons ones; not. I included scientific name etc but found it to be not as useful. Just taking up space at the beginning and eventually I got rid of those columns.

I did include a narrative column as my last column. This was where I could enter any special memory etc of the observation. I liked that part.

As I said, I eventually did away with it in 2013, as I look back on my records. In a way, I was sad....more so for the special narrative column, as my analog. checklist hits about all other areas I need.

Thanks for sharing Mysticete...

I basically use ebird for my day to day birding. I just prefer to use excel to maintain the actual lifelist, especially since it gives me more flexibility to choose the taxonomy I want to follow or include additional details of taxonomy that aren't shown on ebird