Scythebill 20.2: Scythebill for Android!

Scythebill 20.2 is now available, with . As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.

Update Sept. 8: 20.2.2 is now out. It fixes the "Send to phone" feature on MacOS, and adds some further performance improvements.

Scythebill for Android!

I've gotten lots of questions over the years whether I'll ever support Scythebill on phones. The answer today is, partly, yes! Scythebill for Android is now available.

This is not a data entry app (at least, not yet). What it helps you with is answering questions in the field like "when was the last time I saw that species?" or "have I photographed it?" or "do I need that for the ABA region?" It gives you a basic version of "Browse by species" and "Show reports", right on your phone, with no need for an internet connection. As always, this is all free, and you don't need to create an account.

Just install the Scythebill app on your phone, then send your .bsxm to your phone. You could copy the .bsxm file manually to your phone (downloading from the cloud, or emailing it to yourself), or you can use the new "Send to phone" feature in Scythebill 20.2. Select "Send to phone..." in the File menu - you'll get a QR code, like below. Then, from the Scythebill Android app, use "Receive from desktop...", scan the QR code, and (after a brief pause) done! (You do need your phone and desktop to be on the same Wi-Fi network.)

(And for iOS users of iPhones and iPads... nothing to announce yet - no promises, but I'm looking into it.)

Better species information

The last release added a new bit of interface that let you bring up species information, everywhere you see a species. The new version makes that much easier to bring up and keep up, and shows you even more information.

Any time you've got an item selected with a circled I icon - ⓘ -, just tap the "I" key, and it'll pop up. Tap I again, and it'll go away. But - even better - you can use the up and down arrow keys, and it'll stay visible! So you can rapidly view species information for a lot of species at once.

But wait, there's more! There's more information now in the species information popup:

The popup shows all groups and subspecies and their ranges, all in one place. And there's a little "copy" icon in the upper-right - click that, and all the content will be copied to the clipboard.

Something else...

There's a small feature which I'll just leave as a surprise. You'll know it when you see it.

Fixes and small improvements

• Some aspects of using Scythebill should be much faster, especially if you've got a large list with many locations.
• The "Type a species name" boxes didn't show a full list of names in some cases when using anything other than Americna English species names.
• Trip reports now have a "Lifers in bold?" option
• Trip reports generally do a better job now when they're generated across multiple trips
• An error message that could appear after merging locations has been fixed
• There's a new "Daily" option for backup frequency. (Scythebill will still only back up if something has changed since the previous backup.)

Scythebill 20.1 - more usability improvements

Scythebill 20.1 is now available, with a bunch of polish on top of the previous release. As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.

Species information everywhere

In previous versions, Scythebill showed you a bunch of info about species - range, alternate names, taxonomic info, and links to eBird and Avibase. But it only showed it in a few places, and often without enough room to see all the information without scrolling.

Now, everywhere Scythebill shows a list of species, when you hover the mouse over one you'll se a small, circled "I". Click on it, and you'll get the full species info. This works in Browse by location, Show reports, Browse by trips, and even the new Ticks map and Lifers map.

Another nice addition: "Enter sightings" still shows the species information in a box in the bottom left of the screen, but if there's more text than fits by default, just move the mouse over it and it automatically expands to show you all the content.

Remembered reports are even more powerful

When you add a "remembered report", it appears on the front page of Scythebill. Now, it also shows up as an option for "Browse by location" and "Browse by trips" whenever it makes sense. For an example, if you've created a "Photographed" remembered report, then when you visit "Browse by location", you can switch to see all species that you might gain for your Photographed list with one click:

You can do the same thing in "Browse by trips", though this is retrospective - you can see what species you added to your "Photographed" list on a trip.

Speaking of "Browse by trips": the old "Highlight lifers?" checkbox is gone, replaced with a far more flexible drop-down just like that in "Browse by location".

Show reports re-styled

The "Show reports" screen has been re-styled to be generally easier-to-read, with the most dramatic improvements for "First records (lifers)". The screen now takes more advantage of font sizes and colors as well.

You might also notice in this screen shot that the Taxonomy chooser has moved to the upper-right of the screen. This lets the species name "Jump to" move up to the upper-left of the screen, saving just a bit of vertical space on the page.

Smaller features

• There's a new preference to choose whether you want AM/PM times or 24 hour times. Scythebill has long followed your location's default, but now you can choose it explicitly.
• The first page of "Enter sightings" now has a small calendar icon - click it to set the date to today.
• When an import finishes, it now tells you what dates and locations were in the import.

Small fixes

• Spanish users could not load the import page.
• German users could not see all of the text on the Preferences page.
• "Browse by location" checklists omitted introduced species altogether if you disabled "Count introduced?"
• Editing trip names or other details now properly enables "Save".
• Upgrading an extended taxonomy now retains the existing order of taxonomies.
• Scythebill CSV imports with potentially ambiguous dates (3/4/2026) now consistently prefer the month/day or day/month ordering for your location. (It already did the right thing if the import had any entries with unambiguous content - 3/25/2026 or 25/4/2026, for example.)
• Some smaller fixes have been made to the new Lifers and Ticks maps

Scythebill 20.0 - a big release!

Scythebill 20.0 is now available. It's got ... a lot!

• The front pages of Scythebill have been redesigned, including...
• The "Remembered reports" feature can now be reordered, and names can be edited
• The "Lifers map" is now a dynamic, in-app map
• There's a new "Ticks map" in "Special reports", also a dynamic, in-app map, supporting states in nearly all countries and even US and UK counties!
• "Manage Taxonomies" can automatically download and install or upgrade world taxonomies in bulk.
• ... and more.

I'll publish posts that give more details about these new features - but today, I'll just talk about the new front page and a few smaller things.

As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.

Update: Scythebill 20.0.3 was released on July 13th to fix a large performance problem on "Enter sightings".

Update 2: Scythebill 20.0.4 was released on July 15th to fix an error on "Enter sightings" for the first sightings on a new location; it includes some other small changes (noted below).

New front page design

Scythebill's main pages have long been rather plain. I could insist that was an intentional design choice, but that isn't really true - I'd just never put in the time to improve it. I think the new design is a substantial improvement - without going too far:

 

But it's not just a visual change. The "Remembered reports" section at the top is much more flexible. You can drag to reorder items within the list, and when you move the mouse over an entry you'll see a pencil icon - click that, and you can (at long last) edit the name of a remembered report!

And what's more, "Remembered reports" now connects to "New for" messages across Scythebill! Because I've saved "ABA region" above, and ordered it near the top, Scythebill will automatically tell me when a new sighting is new for the ABA region in "Enter sightings" or in the post-import summary, and if I create a checklist spreadsheet for a US state or Canadian province, it'll tell me if a species would be new for my ABA list.

Safer .bsxm file management

A number of users over the years have gotten confused by having multiple .bsxm files. As a reminder: Scythebill saves all of your data in a single .bsxm file. Backups are great, but if you accidentally open a backup .bsxm file and start adding sightings to that backup, your main copy doesn't get the new sightings!

Scythebill now automatically catches these conditions, warns you, and offers to re-open the newest file instead:

But that's not all!  Before, if you renamed or moved your .bsxm file, or had it stored an external drive that wasn't available, Scythebill would dump you at the new user screen without any guidance why it happened. Now, that screen will tell you why you're here and where the .bsxm file had been (and this new user screen is also redesigned)!

  

Easier World Taxonomy management

The Manage Taxonomies page has also been updated. But most importantly, there's a new button at the top - "Download world taxonomies...". But look closely at that screenshot - there's an "Updates available" message! Scythebill now automatically detects when updates are available to the five most-used world taxonomies.

Click that button, and a dialog appears. On my list, it shows that I'm fully up-to-date with Mammals, but I could update Butterflies, Reptiles, and Odonates, and never installed Amphibians.

Click "Download and install", and Scythebill will do the rest!

But it gets better: previously, if an upgrade had some taxonomic issues it couldn't automatically handle, Scythebill would write a .csv file to disk containing everything it couldn't handle, and ask you to remember to use "Import sightings" later. Now, Scythebill will direct you straight to the import flow without any extra files.

And more...

Some of these additions are big enough that I'll talk about them in another blog post, but I like to provide a full list of changes with each release, so:

Special reports

• The lifers map and "total ticks" special reports have been massively overhauled and improved
• "Verify against checklists..." and "Find checklist rarities..." are no longer in the File menu, but are condensed into a new "Checklist status report" that shows inside Scythebill. As a small improvement, it lets you also see species which are marked as a variety of others checklist statuses - Extinct, Endemic, Introduced, and Not established.
• The "Splits and Lumps" report now shows if you lost any species from a split because of an unresolved "sp.".
• 20.0.4: the Splits and Lumps report now gives a graceful message when you switch to a non-bird taxonomy
• 20.0.4: the Ticks Map now always uses the eBird names for states

Preferences

• The Preferences page has been redesigned and separated into multiple tabs
• The Backup page can now - with one click - point your backups at one of several cloud providers (DropBox, Google Drive, Apple's iCloud, and Microsoft's OneDrive)

Other

• The Western Palearctic "magic location" now automatically incorporates latitude and longitude to rule in and out sightings in all the countries where the border does not fall along exact state lines. The boundary in Kazkahstan is still not right - it should follow the Ural river, but currently uses a line of longitude as a poor approximation.
• The Spanish and German translations are massively improved.
• The Scythebill CSV format now correctly preserves manually entered photo names and "starred" favorites.
• Imports which purely pass latitude/longitude now typically resolve not just to country, but also to state and sometimes (in the US and the UK) even county.
• BirdBrain imports were completely failing if any sighting had a non-country location (like deepwater pelagics)
• New users are automatically given a "Download taxonomies" dialog to add any of the 5 world taxonomies.
• 20.0.4: eBird updates to the list of states for Vietnam, Tanzania, the Seychelles, and South Korea have been incorporated
• 20.0.5: an error introduced by the previous update made some .bsxm files with records from South Korea or Vietnam unloadable.

Scythebill 19.4.0: the IOC 15.2 taxonomy and the Windows Store

Scythebill 19.4.0 is now available. It's got the new - and last - IOC 15.2 taxonomy. It's also now available in the Windows Store!

As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.

Update: Scythebill 19.4.1 was released on May 16. See fixes at the bottom of the page.

Update 2: Scythebill 19.4.2 was released on May 31 with more fixes, and one small feature: when you import a single visit (or trip) - say, a single eBird checklist - there'll be a "Visit sightings..." button on the import results which lets you immediately edit those sightings.

Update 3: Scythebill 19.4.3 was released on June 3rd with one more fix.

IOC 15.2

The IOC taxonomy has released its latest, and last taxonomy. More than anything else, I'd like to thank the prime movers behind the IOC taxonomy - David Donsker, Frank Gill, and Pamela Rasmussen - for all of their excellent work over the years. They've set a very high bar for future taxonomy maintainers!

This last update is largely one of alignment with AviList, and as so it contains more lumps than splits. There are some splits from the SACC (South American Checklist Committee) which I would expect to be mirrored in the AviList and eBird 2026 taxonomies. As always, you can visit the "Split and Lumps" report in Special reports to get a full rundown of how it affected your list:

The obvious question is what I'll be doing with IOC - and AviList! - going forward. My current plan:

• eBird has stated that in 2026 they will be fully aligned with AviList. Therefore, the eBird 2026 taxonomy release will be AviList, so when Scythebill upgrades to that taxonomy (expected in October), it will support AviList.
• I plan to keep IOC 15.2 supported in Scythebill for about one year. By the time the eBird/AviList 2027 taxonomy is released, I plan to remove IOC altogether from Scythebill.

Windows Store

Scythebill can now be installed directly from the Windows Store!  No more dire warning messages from Windows, just a fast and easy install.

The direct downloads will still be supported going forward, for those who prefer that path.

If you've used the old direct downloads and are moving to the Windows Store, you may want to uninstall (the old) Scythebill to prevent having two (potentially incompatible) versions installed.

Other fixes

• A few species were accidentally marked as "Undescribed" (Principe Scops-Owl, Timor Nightjar, and Ampay Tapaculo), which removed them from life list totals.
• Trips which crossed top-level regions - and were therefore "World" trips - no longer block editing the trip name.
• A (harmless) error message when closing the "Edit..." dialog in Browse by location is now fixed.
• Opening a non-.bsxm file as if it were a .bsxm file now gives a clearer error messages
• 19.4.1: Imports from non-eBird software might fail with a NullPointerException.
• 19.4.1: Wildlife Recorder imports support trips that use another trip as a location.
• 19.4.1: BirdLasser "lifelist" exports are now supported 
• 19.4.1: the "Report issues" menu item has been removed (Bitbucket stopped supporting this feature, so the link didn't work)
• 19.4.2: Scythebill lets you load eBird "My Data" exports directly from the .zip file... or did, until it broke in recent versions. It's working again.
• 19.4.2: In some cases, using the "Sp." or "Hybrid" buttons when viewing a single sighting could cause an error when clicking Save.
• 19.4.2: Windows users storing their .bsxm file on OneDrive get a better error message when OneDrive isn't working or is misconfigured.
• 19.4.3: eBird made a slight change to their checklist CSV files, which caused Scythebill to be unable to parse the start times.

Scythebill 19.3: fast location checklists from eBird

Scythebill 19.3.0 is now available. It's got better integration between eBird regions or hotspots and Scythebill locations, and can take advantage of that to make checklists in a blink.

As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.

Fast location checklists from eBird

Scythebill can now create checklists for many locations with just three clicks. Once you've selected the location, click "Create checklist...", then select "Use the eBird Species List API?", then "OK".

And done! You'll have a list of every species ever reported to eBird for that location, and you can immediately see all your potential lifers. (The checklist won't have information about how rare each species is for that location - it will inherit rarity from the country information Scythebill already has.)

Scythebill won't update the checklist automatically for you - but you can always delete it and recreate it as needed.

This works both for built-in locations (like states and provinces, or US counties) and for eBird hotspots once you've entered a hotspot ID - see just below.

Quick links to eBird hotspot and region pages

Scythebill has a new field for locations - "hotspot ID":

You could manually enter it, but Scythebill will enter it for you any time you import from eBird "My Data" exports or choose an eBird location while manually entering or editing a location. (It's not automated yet for eBird checklist imports, but I'll add that soon.)

With a hotspot ID, locations get a new "Hotspot page" link that'll take you right to the eBird site, where you can see recent reports, target species, bar charts and such. 

New "Hotspot page" link

If you create locations before going on a trip, this gives you a fast way to look up information about the sites you're visiting.

There's also a "Region page" link for any built-in locations, like countries, states and provinces worldwide, or US counties. (There's no link for continents.)

Bug fixes

• Some Windows users had a problem where file dialogs would immediately trigger an error.
• "Copy-and-paste automagic" checklist creation now handles slash species - previously, it would import something like "Eastern/Western Warbling-Vireo" as just "Western Warbling-Vireo".
• eBird "geolocation" (Search nearby) results could be dropped if they were at exactly the same lat/long as a Google result.
• "Lifer" highlighting in "Show reports" and "Browse by trip" missed some sightings when using the eBird Clements taxonomy for species entered against the IOC taxonomy.
• Intentionally duplicated sightings with the same taxon, location, and date/time could be erased when re-editing with "Edit sightings".

Scythebill 19.2.0: trip filtering and bug fixes

Scythebill 19.2.1 is now available. It's got a new feature for fast filtering the list of trips and a several small bug fixes. (Scythebill 19.2.0 had a bug preventing startup for some users who were updating.)

As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.

Trip filtering

If you've been birding for awhile, you may have a very long list of trips. Sorting through that list to find the trip you're looking can be annoying. Now, you can filter the trip list in a blink:

Just type a location name, and only trips to that location will be shown. You can enter a region - as seen above, enter "South America" and you'll see all trips within South America. But you can also enter a state or single location - below it's all the trips where I visited Mindo (a site in Ecuador).

In addition to "Only trips to", you can filter by "Notes contains" for those of you who use trip notes.

If you've got other ways you'd like to filter trips, let me know!

Fixed bugs

• OpenStreetMaps maps are working once again.
• iNaturalist imports gave an unhelpful error message when “Geo” and “Taxon Extras” columns weren't all included; it now gives a good one.
• A few (harmless) error messages in various parts of Scythebill have been resolved.
• Changing font sizes didn't correctly update report results until you left and returned to the report.

Scythebill 19.0: eBird 2025 and automatic photos-to-species entry

Scythebill 19.0.0 is now available. It's got the brand new eBird/Clements 2025 taxonomy, and a new way to add a bunch of photos in one step, automatically assigning them to species.

As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.

Update: Scythebill 19.0.1 was released with a few improvements for the automatic photos-to-species entry feature and smaller changes. 19.0.2 added some further fixes.

Update: Scythebill 19.1.0 was released on December 13 with improvements to importing, especially for non-bird taxonomies, and some small bug fixes.

eBird/Clements 2025 taxonomy

The headline for most users will be the new taxonomy. All the details on that taxonomy are nicely wrapped up on the eBird site in an article which includes a nice summary table. This update gets eBird very close to the AviList taxonomy, though in a handful of cases ahead of it.

As always, Scythebill will handle a large majority of taxonomic changes automatically for you. If you want to know how it affected your list, visit the Spits and Lumps special report:

I was "lucky" to avoid the big lumps in New Guinea and the southern oceans.

Update: Scythebill 19.0.1 added links to Avibase for all eBird species, groups, and subspecies.

Automatic photos-to-species entry

This one might be big for the photographers out there!

If you've entered a lot of sightings with photographs in the past, you've had to drag each photo, one-by-one, to the correct species. This was tedious and error-prone. But if you've labeled photos with species names already in Lightroom, ON1 Photo RAW, or any other image editor, you can now handle that all in one step. A video will explain better than words:

Just drop the photos on the new region at the bottom-right of the species entry page, and all the photos will be examined and automatically assigned to species, adding species if necessary. You can drop hundreds of photos in one step.

This isn't using Merlin or any AI to identify the photos. Scythebill just looks at the file name and the text of any description you added (EXIF or IPTC tags, for those who know these things), and sees if it can find species names. (If you don't do that work already in your photo editor, then this won't save you time.)

Any time Scythebill can't find a species name, it'll leave a photo behind in the drop box. You can manually drag it onto the correct species, or leave it unassigned and have it added to the visit or trip.

Visit photos

Scythebill has supported attaching photos to individual sightings, and attaching links to trips. Now, you can add photos to a visit. If you took photos of the crowd at a giant twitch, or habitat shots, or anything else you'd like to remember, you can add those.

Bug fixes

• Fixed in 19.0.2: The "Edit sightings..." button in visit info was incorrectly disabled in many cases.
• Fixed in 19.1.0: Trip data in the Scythebill format was improperly imported - locations were dropped.
• Fixed in 19.1.0: Chinese and Japanese characters were displayed as boxes on Windows.
• Improved in 19.1.0: Scythebill is now much more careful when importing to avoid seemingly good name matches for clearly erroneous locations. For example, a "Wood Frog" recorded from Australia is not Wood Frog (Lithobates sylvaticus) but rather the Australian Wood Frog (Papurana daemeli).