January 30, 2:30 PM Birding
While driving east on highway 3 near Purple Springs we spotted a white bird flying toward us and adjacent to the highway. As it went by it became clear that we had just seen a Snowy Owl. This was a new "lifer" for us. After updating my Bento database I was able to determine that it was #144 on our Alberta list, #202 on our Canada list, and #605 on our Global list. It is only the second owl that we have identified - the other being a Great Horned Owl which we have seen 4 times.
Then later that afternoon we spotted a Ring-necked Pheasant beside the road just as we were leaving Taber. This was the 4th time that we had recorded seeing this species in Alberta, plus twice in the US. I have added these sightings to my eBird website.
January 15, 3:10 PM Birding
We watched a Merlin in the large spruce tree across our front yard enjoy a meal of a small bird. We then saw 3 Juncos in our back yard. This will be 2 new birds for 2012. Report submitted to eBird and Bento data base updated. Total new birds for 2012 is now 7.
January 13, 1:30 PM Birding
I took my camera and binoculars and walked around Henderson Lake to see if there were any birds on the water. The sun was shining and there was no wind so it was a good time to be outside. The lake was completely frozen over with the exception of a small spot that was about 10' x 4'. There were about 150 Canada Geese around this area. I was pretty sure that I saw some Mallards in the center because of the orange legs. When I returned home I zoomed in on the digital photos and sure enough, there were about 15 Mallards. I have submitted a report to eBird and updated my Bento databases.
January 13, 10:30 am Birding
We spotted a Black-capped Chickadee on a neighbor's tree a few minutes ago. That will count as another new bird for 2012 (bringing my total to 4). Bento databases updated (data entered into iPad2 and synced with laptop). eBird report submitted.
January 11, 2:40 PM Birding
While on the walk to the store I saw a Blue Jay fly in front of me and on the return walk I saw 9 Black-billed Magpies in a birch tree. A good opportunity to add a couple of common birds to my 2012 list. I have updated my Bento data base, and submitted a report to eBird.
January 11, 6:30 am Birding
Now to produce a few quick reports using Bento with my birding database.
The first step is to carry out a search for all records meeting a particular criteria. Normally this would be Country, but if I want to focus on just Alberta then I can search "Alberta Unique Number" for all records that "are not empty". In the case of Alberta this returns 424 records.
Then I sort the records, first on the field Time and then on the field Date. This will order all the records in the order that they were observed.
If I scroll down to the last record I see that the last entry for Alberta was on August 17, 2011 when we saw an American Dipper at Waterton.
If I sort on the field "Alberta Unique Number" and then scroll down to the last entry I see that it is number 164. That is, we have seen 164 different species in Alberta. The last unique Alberta value was on May 31, 2011 when we identified a Cliff Swallow for the first time.
I can change the search by looking for Cliff Swallow in the field "Species English". The program looks for all occurrences of this name in the data base and returns 2 records. One is the Alberta record, the other is a Canadian record (in this case Ontario) indicating that we first identified a Cliff Swallow on May 20, 2011 while birding at Prince Edward Point with the Larry & Mary Ann.
If I remove the search criteria so I can access all 1381 records, and then sort on "Unique Number" and scroll to the bottom I see that we have identified 604 different species of bird since we began keeping records.
When we begin birding in 2012 (i.e. later today) we will keep a record of each bird we identify for the first time this year. After I enter the basic data (species name, date, time, comments, location, habitat, country), I then will do a search on the species name to see all of the records for that bird. I can then see if it is a new "lifer" (i.e. first time ever for that bird) or, as is more likely - the values for unique number and unique number for each country that we have birded in (Canada, USA, Australia, Mexico, Panama). I can then fill in the values for the new record.
For example, suppose we see a Black-billed Magpie today (which is very likely). Then when I do a search for Black-billed Magpie" of the entire data base I see the following display:
This tells me that this species of magpie has been seen (and Recorded in this database!) on 5 previous occasions. It was the 23rd different bird that we had identified, the first time being in 2003.
I have just added my first record for 2012 to the database. It was for a Canada Goose. I saw about a hundred of them on Henderson Lake while I was geocaching. The database worked perfectly and the new format was even an improvement over the one I had been using with Filemaker Pro. I am delighted.
I also submitted a report to eBird for this sighting. ( http://ebird.org/content/canada ) Not too exciting, but I am trying to get into the habit.
I just checked that although it is a Canada-based website, one can submit reports for any sightings world-wide.