BUBO Listing News

Improved List Creation and Batch Editing

09 November 2009

We have just changed the way that Create New List and Batch Edit work. Instead of checking the various species and then hitting Save at the bottom, now all you have to do is check a species as seen and the update will be saved automatically. This means that it is faster overall and more reliable. Although it may take about a second to check a species (the screen will "freeze" until the update has been made) whereas this was immediate before, the old method of hitting Save could take several minutes to add the records. It was difficult to know whether the update was still working, and some people reported problems with it timing out and therefore losing changes that were in progress. For rarities, where date and location are mandatory, a new dialog box appears when you check the species as seen in order to capture all required information in one go. When you hit Add Record, the rarity record is saved. The new method works out faster overall so it is even easier to add those World lists!

Note that a similar method is used for editing sighting details, i.e. each time you make a change to the date, location, comments or sensitive flag the change is immediately updated in the BUBO Listing database.

New Batch Edit

A few small performance changes have also been implemented in other areas. If you notice any problems then please let us know, and do let us know what you think of the new batch editing. Also the next change due will be to the home page, so we'd appreciate any suggestions.

Green lists, BIGBYs, photo lists etc.

02 June 2009

We have just introduced a few new list "types" to BUBO Listing. As well as self-found lists that we have always supported, it is now possible to add the following.

Green Lists

Also referred to as zero-carbon lists, or BIGBYs (Big Green Big Year), we are allowing three different types of these:

Green: foot - true green lists, where all birds recorded must be whilst walking from your home or place of work
Green: non-motorised - as above, but forms of non-motorised transport (e.g. bicycle, canoe) are allowed as well
Green: public transport - birds recorded without using any non-motorised transport except for scheduled public transport (ground or water transport only, e.g. buses, trains, ferries - no planes allowed!)

You can read more about Bigby Birding at www.sparroworks.ca/greenbirding/index.html.

Ringing/Banding Lists

Record birds that you have ringed (banded).

Photographic Lists

Record birds that you have photographed (preferably identifiably!)

False Lists

A false list is birds recorded anywhere in the world, i.e. not just within the list location. Hence a False Western Palearctic list includes those species that have been recorded in the WP and which the observer has seen, either inside or outside the WP region.

To use any of these new list types is very simple: when you are choosing the parameters for a list, e.g. location, period and authority, just select the appropriate list type from the new dropdown. The default value is for a "normal" list, i.e. all records.

If you want to see a list type that we do not currently support then please let us know.

Garden/Yard Lists

03 January 2009

You can now keep your garden or yard list on BUBO Listing.

Simply use the new Add Site facility to add your own garden and you can then create a list for it as normal. Please set the location type to 'Garden/Yard' as shown in the example below - we will be using this for extra analysis in the future. You will also be prompted to ensure that the location name has the suffix ' - Garden' or ' - Yard' - this is to help distinguish these clearly.

We recommend you add your garden to the appropriate county in the location tree, but if you wish you could first add the town/city as a location if it is not there already, and add your garden to that. In the example shown below the garden is being added to the already existing location Worthing, but it could have just been added to the county West Sussex. Please use an appropriate geographical name for your garden - you don't have to include the street name as in the example if you think this is better kept private, but it does help in cases where you wish to keep different garden lists within the same area, e.g. if you have moved a short distance.

Add Garden

We recommend you use the list comments feature to indicate any particular rules you use for counting garden/yard birds, e.g. whether birds have to be actually in the garden, or whether you count anything seen from the garden.

This is an area we will be enhancing further, for example to allow you to compare all garden lists within a certain county or state. If you have any suggestions about garden listing then please let us know in the BUBO Forums. In the meantime, here's wishing you plenty of new garden/yard birds in 2009 with BUBO Listing!

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