As we creep closer to the beginning of a New Year it’s time to review our lists of nature sightings for 2009 and ponder the possibilities for 2010. I admit that I’ve been inconsistent in my record keeping over the last couple of years. Two young children under three means more emphasis on family. I used to keep a Life List of birds that I’d seen and, with several trips to Central America, eastern Canada, southwestern US, and the interior of BC, I think that I was close to 300 birds but don’t know for sure. My last official tally was around 280. I know that there are more species that I could add to the list since then if I took the time to pour through my field books.

To List or Not to List?

So I have a dilemma – I’ve taken an interest in listing again and asked myself if it was really worth digging through the books, checking records and ticking the birds off a list. Back when I started it was a fairly simple process. When I first saw a new bird (or Lifer) I would write the date and location in my guide book. The challenge was keeping an accurate count. Was that Ancient Murrelet number 153 or 154? And, while I’ve already ticked a fair number of North American birds should I make this interesting and start fresh? Who really wants to go digging through old field books for the sake of a bird list? I’ve decided to start from scratch.

What Kind of List to Make?

The next decision is what type of list to make. Many birders have both a Life List and a Year List. Keeping those lists separate is a challenge as well if you’re doing it on paper. And what about a Backyard Bird List? Since I also like other aspects of natural history, perhaps a Plant Life List or a Dragonfly Life List would be fun as well.

On-line Options for Bird Listing

Fortunately there are several on-line solutions to these challenges. Here are a couple of services that I’d recommend. There are, of course, many others and if you use something different please let me know!

iNaturalist.org

iNaturalist.org is a place “where you can record what you see in nature, meet other nature lovers, and learn about the natural world.” This is the only site that I know of that allows you to list your observations of anything in nature – you can create specific lists of taxa like birds, plants, insects, fungi, etc. or just keep an overall Life List. Plus they have a nifty widget that you can use to show your latest observations on your blog page or website – very cool! All observations can pull an image from your linked Flickr account and locations are recorded using a Google Map.

Tips of for Bird Listing with iNaturalist

• Set up your taxa lists before hand if you want to separate your bird, plant, mushroom, insect, etc. observations into separate lists.
• You may be able to set up a custom regional list like “BC Plants” when you create a list that isn’t associated with any taxa and then just adding your BC plant observations to it. I’m still playing around with the lists and am not sure if this will work.
• Use this link to generate the code to create a widget for your blog.

Birdstack

I actually saw someone using Birdstack on their blog and I thought that it looked interesting. Birdstack allows you to create bird lists based on a wide range of criteria but probably the most useful to listers is the ability to create a list based on location (i.e. province or state, country, etc.) and/or time frame (i.e. a Year List) or Trip. Birdstack does have a lot of functionality built into it. Everything starts when a bird observation is entered. Options to add a location and add a trip occur when recording this initial observation. These variables are used to create a variety of different lists.

Birdstack provides some really cool ways to use your data. Locations can be connected to a Google Map. You can “stack” your list and to generate html code that will create a blog widget that shows your latest observations for that list. Birdstack also has the functionality to export your trip lists in a format that to upload to eBird (run by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audobon Society). This adds your data to a massive pool of bird observations. I like that fact that I only have to enter a trip once and then export it to eBird. Very cool!

Tips for Bird Listing with Birdstack

• The observe first, list later feature of Birdstack seems counter-intuitive but it actually works really well. Take some time to think about setting up your trips and locations. For example, I use a “Backyard” location and then set up weekly observations of birds at our feeders as week long trips. My Backyard Birds list is then based on the Backyard location criteria – it sorts out my weekly entries and just adds the new birds to this list.

BUBO Listing

BUBO Listing is a world wide bird listing service based in the UK. With BUBO you create lists based on regional areas (i.e. province/state, country, world) and time frames (i.e. year, life). Once you’ve set up your list(s), inputting the data is easy and you can add your observations to multiple lists at the same time.

BUBO is a listing service – you’re just adding birds that are new to the list. A nice feature is that if the bird is already on your list when you type in its name in the data entry box it won’t show up as being available (because it is already on the list). If you add birds to multiple lists and one of them has a species recorded but the others don’t, BUBO won’t allow you to add the species until the list with the bird already recorded is deselected.

One of the cool features of BUBO is that you can compare your standing against any of the 1100+ current members of BUBO in a variety of lists. Totals update when you enter your observations. In addition, BUBO also provides a blog widget that creates the html code that allows you to post your latest observations and current totals of up to three lists on your website.

Tips for Bird Listing with BUBO

• If you’ve already set up a provincial list and inputted records into it and then decide to create a country list you can import the existing provincial records into the new list when you set it up.
• Make sure that you’ve selected all the lists that you want to add your records to when you’re entering your data. It might be confusing to find out which birds weren’t added to a missed list after data entry, especially if your list is long.

So there you have it – three (well four if you count eBird) ways to add some listing fun to your nature outings in the New Year. Get out there and get listing!

And yes, regretfully, the Rock Wren is not yet on my list. Fortunately this gives us a good excuse to plan a road trip to the Okanagan.