Improvements to Percevia Bird Search Engine (1 Viewer)

[mitch166@comcas]

This list has been very supportive of the Percevia Field Guide to Bird's of North America search engine. I wanted to point out some new developments in this non profit venture.

Developments:

o Entire interface has been revamped to allow viewing on 800 x 600 displays. http://www.percevia.com

o Now 755 birds of North America in the database.
http://tinyurl.com/5sbm7

o NEW Wizard identification method asks simple questions to help you ID:
http://www.percevia.com/wizards/StateColorSize/wizard.aspx

o Graphic elements have been reduced to allow faster download on dialup accounts.

o NEW Species Account Pages. Allen's Hummingbird Example: http://tinyurl.com/4zgj3

o NEW Head Pattern field mark.
http://tinyurl.com/77com

o Any species account page can be printed and put in a binder.

o Side by side Comparison Grid: Example of four birds: http://tinyurl.com/8nkky

o Online tutorial/help: http://www.percevia.com/Help_Web_Client/Help_Web_Client.htm

o Percevia to be used in the Wild Bird Feeding Institute's (http://www.wbfi.org) "Project Wildbird" Research Study of back yard feeding habits starting this year. Details: http://www.wildbirdcenter.com/content/study/

o Blog:
http://percevia.blogspot.com

o QuickSearch Toolbar can be added to your website. Type in a bird's name, autocomplete menu finds all birds close to the name, click on it, see the species account.
http://www.percevia.com

o 75,000 visitors in April.


Thanks to everyone for the continuing support.

Mitchell Waite
Sausalito, California

 

[crispycreme]

The new compare feature is very nice. I can see myself printing out all sorts of cheat sheets with it. I've been following the evolution of the database for a while now (ever since you mentioned the concept at Bird Forum a while back), and I'm very impressed with the result!

(If and when we stumble across discrepancies, e.g. the wing shape for the Flammulated Owl, shown here*, shall we contact you directly or do you have a specific email address we should use?)

Keep up the outstanding work!


*The wings are longer than other otus owls, but to categorize them as "pointed" seems in error.

 

[mitch166@comcas]

Dear Crispy: Thank you for the kind words, its gratifying to say the least to get personal feedback. Your absolutely correct that the pointed wings on the Flammulated Owl are wrong. The way you present it in the Compare grid is very helpful. The best way to let me know of errors like this would actually be here on this thread as it makes others aware of the mistake. However if you prefer you can use the email form at the web site: http://www.percevia.com/Contactus/Contact Form.aspx

This goes right to me. Also you can leave comments at the blog: http://percevia.blogspot.com/

We are about to start our European database, which should be of great interest to this list.

We did not optimize the Compare feature for printing, let me know how it goes. I didnt think that anyone would want to print all that information out, but I guess I'm wrong. Do you want to take that information into the field with you. Would a more compacts print out be useful?

 

[crispycreme]

I love taking notes and cheat sheets with me on long birding trips. It's what I read and study while back at the lodge or campsite (Heck I bring my entire collection of field guides with me too when out for extended birding trips - it's just my thing). Side by side comparisons seem quite beneficial (if you're looking for a particular tough-to-ID bird) to pore over right before heading out, or even to shove into your pocket to hopefully compare against the actual bird.


I printed out the sample page I linked to, and it seems to work just fine, and I can see the main differences between the three species quite well in contrast to each other - i.e. all black eye on Flammulated, dark beak and fine cross-stitch marks on Western, and light beak and coarse cross-stitch marks on Whiskered. The only thing is that it stretches it out over three pages, but longwise not widthwise. In other words, the three birds still all correctly print on the same page right next to each other. If you get a hankering, you might wish to fiddle with it so it can print on fewer pages (perhaps making the descriptions in smaller fonts or removing some of the drop-down button graphics to save space). Other than that though, it's pretty slick!

 

[mitch166@comcas]

We are working right now on making the improvments you suggest. As long as the number of birds being compared is less than 3 or 4 we can probably remove the graphics and lower the font style with a print.css style sheet. I'll let you know when its working. Eventually we want to generate the page as a PDF that is well formatted for folding and putting in a pocket as you so rightly suggest. Thanks!