Eric, I have been using Birdbase for about 5 years and have been reasonably
satisfied. It lacks some reporting abilities that I'm used to having in dBase
III (the original Ashton-Tate), so I maintain my Alaska bird list on dBase still
also.

Birdbase has a world list (Clement's) which runs in memory along with the
software programs when you launch them. You can search a name either as a common
or a scientific name by putting in partial spellings, so it is really easy to
jump to the right place in the list and highlight a bird. It is also not too
hard to modify the world list when naming revisions are made, or to add your
own 4-letter codes after the common names that you encounter most often. The
set-up page for each birding outing lets you designate which of your lists the
birds will go on: country, state, local area, home, plus several other
name-it-yourself lists.

If not for the world list, I would probably have checked into some of the other
softwares more thoroughly.

Birdbase is now availabe in a "Birdbase for Windows" upgrade that corrects some
previous shortcomings (such as a click-on help screen for country codes, more
room for comments, and removal of copy protection).

Because of the requirement that the world list be in active memory (that's that
640K barrier), the program will not run at the same time as other
memory-resident things like utilities and personal organizers. At least the
version I have won't. I never let anything stay resident on my system anyway
because you never know when it's going to pick a fight with something.

More details if you're interested, or order a trial copy from Santa Barbara
Software Products, Inc., 1400 Dover Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93103; Phone/Fax
805-963-4886.

Chris Maack
Anchorage, AK
73201.3124 at compuserve.com