Subject: MS Access Bird Database ??
Date: Feb 7 20:34:13 2002
From: Allyn Weaks - allyn. at tardigrade.net


> Sure wish I could query a bird database by location and have it return all
> the birds that I might see there - at a certain season. For example, what
> might birds might I see in "Florida" in the "summer"?

The National Audubon Society "Birds" CD-ROM lets you do this.
There's a lot of useful data on that CD, including the texts from a
couple of their field guides. Unfortunately, the interface is
absolutely dreadful. But I was able to poke around on the CD, figure
out the index key, and extract most of the data into a filemaker
database (where I updated the names), with links to the pictures and
sounds that work when the CD is mounted. It wasn't a trivial job,
and I never did finish getting all of the field guide text sorted out
(a tedious editing job), but the basics such as
species/regions/seasons/size/colors/etc are doable with patience if
you have some database skills and a good text editor (NOT a word
processor) that will open any file and let you view invisible
characters and the ascii codes when necessary. I won't give more
details, mostly because I've forgotten a lot of it, but partly
because strictly speaking it might be illegal to do this today. I
did it before big media started being successful at stealing our
constitutional rights to actually use what we buy.
--
--
Allyn Weaks allyn at tardigrade.net
Seattle, USDA zone 7-8
Pacific Northwest Native Wildlife Gardening: http://www.tardigrade.org/natives/