Andy Avram wrote:Mostly I like staring at my list which takes me back to when I saw that particular animal. I guess I like it more for the nostalgia it creates in me.
Absolutely. I think that is their primary purpose. But with this program, I can look back to see how many records I have for a particular species in a particular state and remember any specific sighting that I happened to record.
But, do you have an example of what a basic listing of what you have seen would look like from Avisys? There are some examples on the website, but they are more specific then just a listing of what the person saw. And, if you don't agree with the taxonomy can you write in your own?
Curtis gave an example of the standard output but there is a lot more.
You can also create checklists of critters for your local area, city, state, whatever and print them off to take in the field with you and have them note which species you had seen before in that area or anywhere else. You can create the lists as PDF files with checkboxes, for example, if you needed a checklist to the reptiles of Borneo for your next trip into the jungle -
http://www.birdsandherps.com/lists/borneo.PDF
One newer thing it does it creates HTML versions of your lifelist etc, with Next buttons at the bottom of the page. For example, here's a version of my reptiles lifelist from last year -
http://www.birdsandherps.com/lists/rept ... list1.HTML
One of the birding things I like is to check out the species that are on a particular area that you are missing. For example, I have seen/recorded sightings of 165 species at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. But with a few mouse clicks, I can create a list of the birds that are on the Aransas Checklist that I haven't seen there so I know what to watch out for on my next visit. For example, I haven't ever recorded seeing a Common Loon or Red-breasted Merganser from there. I've probably seen them, but never recorded that fact. So this winter I will specifically look for those.
It will also output data in a format that Ebird can read. So you can export all your bird sightings into Ebird to access your lists/records online if you wanted.
It does a lot of other cool stuff. For example, how many Western Diamondback sightings have I recorded per year over the last 10 years? Or per month this year? Or per month in 1998? Assuming you had that data, it is all there at the click of the mouse.
The power of the program is really only limited by the quality of your data.
Some other things I like:
What if I entered records for 500 sightings for Billie Bob State Park in Hudspeth County, TX (there isn't one, don't check
)? Later I find out that this park is actually in Culberson County, not Hudspeth county! DOH! I simply tell the program that the park is in Culberson county and now all my records for the park are moved at once.
As Curtis said, changing a name is a simple matter while in the program. Then there is the open taxonomy update tool that allows you to change large amounts of the database taxonomy (or create new databases altogether like I did with the ones above) by simply opening the whole taxonomy file up in Excel, changing all the toads back to Bufo, for example, the getting it back into the database without losing any sighting data.
The only thing I don't know how to do is to export all my NaHerp sightings and then import those into Avisys. It might be possible, I need to look into it?
Chris
Something I've wanted for years.