I have noticed there are quite a few online birding sites that offer personal listing services. There are also quite a few software programs for birding. Does anybody have any experience using these and are they better than the old scribbler with the handwritten list?? Any recommendations?

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Osprey877
Canon Rebel XSI
70-300 IS USM

I've completely turned to on-line birding. I no longer write down my life list on paper. When I'm in the field I always have my notebook with me. I always write down where I am, what I see there that day, numbers of a species and breeding evidence. After the day is done I enter all on-line.

The site I use is ebird. I really like this site for two reasons:

1) It keeps track of your life list for you. It also keeps track of where you have been and what you have seen there. For example if you had someone ask you where is the best place to see a Sora, you can go to your list and search. It will show you everytime you've seen a Sora and where. You can also search the other way. You can see your complete bird lists or your bird lists for one particular location.

2) It's helps all kinds of avian research. The information that people enter all over Noth America is very useful. They use these entries to track species, abundance, breeding, migration....everything. So not only is it a great way to keep track of your life list and your outtings, but you are also providing important information on birds.

Just my two cents......

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Best in Birding!
Les Lee (West Van)

http://birdtrekkerbc.com/

Hi
I use Avisys soft ware. I find I can list a whole trip in a less than five minutes.
It can switch form a world bird list to North American list. It has It can keep track of trips, switch form common to Latin. You can find birds by place, species, date etc. It keeps track of your life list and much more. You should wonder through their web site.www.avisys.net. It now has a way to send your list to e bird.
I like it

Hi There,

Is ebird fairly easy to use? I'm also wondering if ebird keeps your data private? I don't mind them pooling the data and using it anonymously , but I wouldn't want people to be able to search for my name.

Does anyone know of any birding software that works on Mac's (yes I'm one of those people:)?

Thanks

Hello,

ebird is very easy to use. Once you've entered your first list, it's very simple. The great thing about ebird is that it is also free to use. All you have to do is create an account. The data you enter is private in the sense that other users cannot search your name or see your ebird lists. When you do enter what you've seen it does go to a data base, but all it indicates is what you have seen and where.

When you do sign up they do ask you to provide an email address. This is strictly for inquiries from ebird staff if you have seen something rare or out of their normal territory. They will send you an email asking you more about your observation. That is also private and on one else can see your email address.

I also suggest to people go to the website and have a look around before you sign up. You can play around with the site and see how it works before making a decision and again it costs you nothing.

http://ebird.org/content/ebird/

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Best in Birding!
Les Lee (West Van)

http://birdtrekkerbc.com/

Thanks for the advice. I will check out both Ebird and Avisys.

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Osprey877
Canon Rebel XSI
70-300 IS USM

I use eBird because AviSys doesn't support Mac.

Hi again,

Thanks for putting me onto eBird! It is a great site and I now a bit obsessed with getting my data in there.

Happy Birding

If not Online (like eBird, Avibase, Observado) or not only, you can maintain own database.
Here is sample template:
database template for observations of birds


An several other links:
BirdJournal
MapMate
Birdwatcher's Diary - for iPhone
Birder for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad and it's forum
Wildlife Recorder
birdcountr - for Android and iphone
BlueBill Mobile - for smartphone
Twitcher - for iPhone and iPod
Dutch Bird Alerts - for Android
Jeffs' Birding Database - for Microsoft Access like the template above

I have used AviSys since the early to mid 90's, can't remember exactly when but back then it was a DOS based program (Ver 2.0). Oh how far we have come !!!!

I have found it extremely easy to use and data entry is a wiz. You can also locate species using the four alpha code system. I found the 4 code system very usefull when entering data from out of country trips.

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Larry Cowan
Pitt Meadows

I have found it in the internet:
http://www.avisys.net/
version 6 for Windows

eBird is very easy. I use for many reason including the eBird alerts, automatic month, year, ect. lists, and I am helping the birds. But, using a software that updates eBird is great, but they cost money, and eBird is free! BTW, eBird can also use four letter codes.

Wesley Greentree
Campbell River, BC

To throw in my two cents, I will also recommend eBird.

Some data can be seen, ie by searching Top 100 listers for a partcular area, or if one searches for a particular species in a particular area, a map of sightings will show up with notes as to who saw it and when.

Other than that, as previously mentioned, eBird reviewers will send requests for information to clarify exceptional sightings.

Among the things I like about eBird: I can view recent sightings for species I would like to see, I can build checklists for any area that exists within eBird using either my own sightings or all sightings, for the listing side, eBird provides an easy to use summary of species that I have seen in any major world region, any country, any province or state, and any county (which can also be a pain, I now have 1000 extra lists to build up!). Ebird does make trip planning a little easier.

The downside of eBird is that the beast works best when supplied with a constant diet of data and checklists.

If you want something low maintenance, www.bubo.org is a listing site at its purest. All you do is create checklists for whatever area you like, and basically tick the birds off, with the option to add single sighting info. The downside of Bubo is that your information is public, and one can see a summary of where everyone's, say, Victoria Checklist or Canada Checklist is at. If you want that, then Bubo is quick and easy. Birds can also be added to multiple checklists as well. One other Bubo feature is the ability to generate a "target list", ie birds you haven't seen in a particular checklist area yet. This will also let you know how many, and what percentage of listers who have submitted lists for this area, have seen said species.

I use both (and also act as an eBird Regional Reviewer). My own reasoning for this is that eBird is the recipient of all detections, whereas on my "lifelists" I only count birds seen. Also, Bubo lets me build individual year lists with ease, and with a glance I can compare year lists from 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. From Bubo, lists can also be downloaded into Excel.

There you have it.

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Jeremy Kimm
Victoria, BC

http://www.victoriabirder.blogspot.com