UK Beginner - Need help excel maybe! (1 Viewer)

[Camperdown9]

Hi

Last week a friend came to stay, on her phone she has an app called "Merlin Bird ID". She set it to record the birds that it heard in our garden. Well of course this was interesting to me so I downloaded it and have been using it to identify what's visiting my garden and also what's in the local woodland.

My question is the app gives me the type of bird, the date, time and location of what it identifies. I would like to try and put this on a spreadsheet. So I can tell what is spotted most frequently, and at what time of day and in various locations.

Does anyone know of a excel spreadsheet template that I could use?

Thanks

Alex

 

[Mike Crawley]

Just write your own ?
Species names down the left hand side and day of the month across the top (never more than 31 cells wide).
Insert the bird names as the occur.
Put a 1 in the date cell.
At the end of the date row add Total, and sum up the total number of days that month you have heard the individual species.

There’s probably a more straightforward way and no doubt it will come to you as your observations increase

e.g. date
Species 1 2 3 4 ….. Total
Blackbird 1 1 1 etc 29
Chaffinch 0 1 0 1

 

[wheatearlp]

Or use 'x' instead of '1' and use the COUNTIF function to total the x's in each column or row.

 

[Mike Crawley]

Or use 'x' instead of '1' and use the COUNTIF function to total the x's in each column or row.

absolutely, I’m sure the OP will welcome anything that allows the spreadsheet to “add up”

 

[Nohatch]

Hi

Last week a friend came to stay, on her phone she has an app called "Merlin Bird ID". She set it to record the birds that it heard in our garden. Well of course this was interesting to me so I downloaded it and have been using it to identify what's visiting my garden and also what's in the local woodland.

My question is the app gives me the type of bird, the date, time and location of what it identifies. I would like to try and put this on a spreadsheet. So I can tell what is spotted most frequently, and at what time of day and in various locations.

Does anyone know of a excel spreadsheet template that I could use?

Thanks

Alex

Hi Alex, welcome to a wonderful new hobby 😊
A spreadsheet is a great way to keep track of things, but I highly recommend downloading an app like eBird instead. It's very easy to use and does all the adding up, summaries etc. for you.

Two small notes of caution: the Merlin app can be a bit iffy, especially for bird sounds. I see countless posts about it ID'ing common garden birds as something wildly exotic. Never trust it blindly is all I'm saying. And that brings me to the second point: use the app and recordings to train your own hearing and ID skills - rather than relying on the app to do it all for you. Soon you'll recognise all the usual calls and songs in your neighbourhood, and there is a real joy in the process and achievement. Have fun!

 

[Mark Lew1s]

100% agree with the above

 

[THE_FERN]

If you're already using Merlin, why don't you use the ebird app to record the sightings? You'll find it quicker and less error prone than entering into an XL. You can then see and search through things on the ebird website.

Later, if you're keen and/or want to do something ebird doesn't have, you can download a(n XL) table of the sightings you've uploaded

 

[Camperdown9]

Thank you all for your replies. I am experimenting with eBird. I am not totally sure I know how it works but I'm giving it a go.
(Sorry if you find this response a total waste of your reading time)