We would like to wish you a very Happy Christmas and joyful New Year. 

Bird Journal can be ordered online throughout the holiday period.

Boxed versions will be received in time for Christmas, within the UK, if ordered before Monday 21st December.  International posting dates have already past, however we will still be posting and hopefully they will reach you shortly after Christmas.

Have a wonderful time birding during the holidays.

Version 1.4 of Bird Journal has just been released.  We have taken the opportunity to fix a few bugs that occur occasionally when running the software.

What's changed:

• Fixed: Further crash when using mouse wheel on species entry box.
• Fixed: Rare crash in Locations dialog.
• Fixed: Some dialogs could be resized, where shouldn't have been allowed.
• Improved: Error report dialog now allows email address to be provided.

Download a fully functional trial version of our latest release, Bird Journal v1.4 now, by following this link: http://www.bluebirdtechnology.com/birdjournalDownloaded.aspx

 

eBird is an online community website used to share sightings to help with the conservation of birds, used in America.  It was launched in 2002 by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society.  

We have integrated eBird required properties into Bird Journal to make it easy to share data with eBird.  eBird properties are optional and can be enabled or disabled.  When enabled, eBird properties are displayed in the New/Edit Entry page where the values can be assigned directly to the entry.  Assigning eBird properties to your entries speeds up the process of exporting to eBird, as the required eBird fields are already filled out.

See how to assign eBird properties and export to eBird in our eBird tutorial guide.

We hope that the tutorial helps to demonstrate how easy it is to export entries from Bird Journal into eBird.  

If you have any questions, we are happy to help.

We have launched a series of tutorials to show how Bird Journal works. 

An overview of the software can be found on the Bird Journal Product page; here it shows how easy it is to enter new sightings, look through your photo gallery, filter your species lists and analyse your data. 

For more in depth tutorials refer to the Bird Journal Tutorial page; here demonstrates specific features of the software i.e. applying hierarchical locations, creating custom properties, and database backup.

If you have any problems playing the videos then let us know.

Hope you find the tutorials helpful, and as always we would love to hear about your thoughts.

Thanks!

We would like to share with you our latest work to help spread the word of Bird Journal.

Here is the web banner in the making, starting with our first prototype to the final version:

To see it live in action, visit www.fatbirder.com, shown under the menu on the left hand side, refresh a few times if you don't see it immediately.

Let us know what you think! :)

ps. if you would like to help us spread the word of Bird Journal using this banner then please email us.

The British Bird Fair 09 is only days away.

We'll be there on Saturday.  If you would like to catch up, then just send us an email.  We'd love the chance to meet you and to discuss any thoughts you may have about Bird Journal.

Version 1.3 of Bird Journal has just been released. As you can see we've been quite busy. The custom properties feature in particular was requested a number of times, so we hope this update will satisfy a lot of users.

With this release we're pleased to be able to welcome birders in Australia to enjoy Bird Journal too, thanks to a taxonomy update.

We've also made the installer download size smaller, so it's now even easier to download the trial version.

What's new? 

• Added: New Taxonomy, Australia - Christidis, L. and W.E. Boles.
• Added: Custom Entry and Sighting Properties. Record whatever information you wish with CheckBox, DropDownList and TextBox types.
• Added: CSV Export of a range of entries.
• Added: Dedicated fields to store eBird required data. This makes exporting to eBird much easier.
• Improved: Export action selection is now made easier, via a drop down menu.
• Improved: Help actions are now clearer, via a drop down menu, and a link has been added to the Online Support page.
• Improved: Validation no longer prevents you from leaving a field, and additional information is available via tooltips.
• Improved: Partial time values can now be entered. Eg, 12 will enter 12:00.
• Improved: AOU range now correctly specified as "North & Central America".
• Improved: Manual now has more detail for a number of features.
• Fixed: Print preview would just show lots of blank pages, for some printers.
• Fixed: Crash when trying to print, and no printers are installed.
• Fixed: Crash when using the mousewheel over the species box, and the selection popup is not visible.
• Fixed: Edit Locations screen created visual artefacts when scrolling.
• Fixed: A select few minor issues.

 

One of the next new features for Bird Journal is Import.

As always we want to make it really easy, and we want to make it capable of importing almost any birding records you may have.

In the Americas, eBird has made great progress in standardising birding data formats.  This has lead to AviSys, Birdbase and Birder's Diary all supporting export to the eBird CSV format.  We'll provide import from eBird Record format, and perhaps also eBird Checklist format.

But a lot of birders have records in Excel spreadsheets, and we'd like to be able to import from these too.

• Do you record sightings in Excel? How do you lay out your records? If possible please send us a sample, so we can try to make the import process as easy as possible.

• Would it be easy for you to convert your spreadsheets into a standard Bird Journal layout? Or would it be preferable to have a tool to auto-detect the layout of your spreadsheets?

 

Version 1.2 of Bird Journal is now live.  In this update we've added a complete new edition - the Continent Edition.  This edition includes all taxonomies available in a given continent, excluding world taxonomies, and is priced at £39 / €45 / $59.  The Local Edition has been reduced in price to £29 / €35 / $45.

Our website now accepts payments via PayPal, instead of SWReg.  This makes the order process much clearer and easier.  I also think most people are more comfortable with PayPal.

What else is new in Bird Journal 1.2?

• Calendar date picker.
• Species entry improvements. Improves clarity, discoverability and speed of entry.
• New Taxonomies: Ireland - IRBC and Spain - SEO.  The Spanish list includes English, Spanish and Catalan names.
• Support for our new continent edition.
• The installation process now automatically installs the .Net Framework if needed.
  

We hope you will enjoy using this new version.

Bird Journal version 1.2 is almost ready now. The new calendar date picker is in, and the two extra taxonomies for Spain (Sociedad Española de Ornitología) and Ireland (Irish Rare Birds Committee) have been added. The Spanish list includes bird names in Spanish, English and Catalan.

The improved sighting entry is moving more slowly, as we're being very particular about what we want. The improvements will be especially apparent in the Americas, where many birds are prefixed "American". For example, instead of having to type out "american ro" for American Robin, you'll be able to type just "robin" or "a ro". Much quicker.

This change will also allow us to add support for the BTO 2-letter species codes, in the near future. If anyone knows of any similar codes for America, please let us know.

We're being very careful to ensure the changes to the inputting do not make it more difficult for anyone. Two steps forward and one step back would not be good. As such we'll be rolling these changes out to testers before the official release.