Subject: [Tweeters] Birding software
Date: Feb 22 17:28:28 2008
From: mattxyz at earthlink.net - mattxyz at earthlink.net


Hi Maxine & Tweeters -

I'd be interested in hearing some other opinions online, personally,
since I believe this hasn't been discussed in a while.

Here's my experience [usual caveats, no financial interest, etc]

Mac:
I've used Birdbrain version 5.0 for Mac for years now. It is good,
but I wish there were something else. Birdbrain hasn't been updated
since 1998, and it doesn't yet even run on OSX. I haven't tried to
use their customer support in a long while, but when I did try a few
years ago, I never received a response. Basically, I'd be happy with
Birdbrain if it were being updated. It runs a bit slow on some of the
listing functions, but I bet a revised version could clean up a lot
of that.

There is also a program called Wings - has anyone had experience with
this? From what I can see on the web, it looks decent. One thing that
doesn't sound great is that it looks like you have to 'subscribe' to
it, paying an annual fee -- and if you don't pay, you can't enter
more species. That sounds dangerous to me, and I'd rather buy
software free & clear than remain on the hook over the foreseeable
future.

PC:
The only PC listing software I have experience with is Avisys, and
I've found it to be really excellent. It is regularly upgraded, the
support responses come quickly, and it seems clearly made with a
birder's record-keeping needs in mind. You can easily keep state &
county & other checklists, and running reports on these lists [life,
year, species not seen, etc] is easy and fast. There's a lot of
flexibility and power inside the program, but it is set up so that it
can be used pretty easily at any level, without having to spend a
long time becoming a computer programmer to understand it.
I'm sure there are other downsides, but the biggest one in my mind is
the reliance on a checklist in Clements taxonomic order, an ordering
of species that can take some getting used to if you are more
comfortable with the ABA [US fieldguide] ordering of species. I
imagine it is pretty hard to work around this problem though, if one
wants to present the whole world checklist of birds.

Hope this helps a bit,

Matt Bartels
Seattle, WA





>I know that there has been past discussions on Tweeters about the
>best birding software to easily organize lists etc. I am ready to
>buy a program now and would like to find out what I should get. I
>would like something simple that would allow me to make a life list
>and sub-lists via state or country. I don't think I need lots of
>bells and whistles.
>
>Please reply to me via email if you don't want to launch a new full
>Tweeters discussion.
>
>Thanks
>
>Maxine, Seattle
>
>
>--
>In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the
>silence. - Robert Lynd
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>Tweeters mailing list
>Tweeters at u.washington.edu
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