Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Birding database

Michelle designed a program this last weekend that has enhanced our bird watching/recording in countless ways. You search the database by the common name of the bird and it automatically brings up, of course, the common name, the Latin name, the family and (if applicable) the sub-family. You then enter the date you saw the bird, the location (i.e. backyard, Sauvie Island or where ever you saw the bird), feeder type (i.e. hopper, fly-thru, ground), food type, weather, temp, was it in a flock or a single, was it a yard bird, do you have pics and a notes section when you notice special markings or behavioral discrepancies (or whatever you think needs to go in the notes section). This is an AWESOME program.

After you have entered all of your data, you can then search by whatever criteria that you want to. You want to find only the birds seen in your backyard, that were eating black oil sunflower seeds, when the temp was over 50 degrees in January? You can. Find only the raptors that were at Sauvie Island in June? Found. Search by City, State or Country.Find the last time you saw the Variegated Fly-catcher? Done. It's a great program and I am so proud of her for designing it.

I'm sure that there are other programs that do similar things and have searchable options but, she wrote this one, on her own free time (which isn't much) and it didn't cost us a few hundred dollars. Now, we have a completely searchable life list, searchable documentation for every year that we have birded and it takes but a minute or so to find whatever criteria we are looking for.

It has made documenting birds so much easier. I am eternally grateful to her and we will continue to use this program for as long as we bird watch. If you would like to get this program just drop us a line and we'll be happy to get you set-up with this.

Good birding. Live. Laugh. Love.

Seth and Michelle.

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1 comment:

NW Nature Nut said...

That sounds cool. You should check out this site I just came across: http://www.sparroworks.ca/bigby.html I thought it might interest you.