Scythebill 15.1 is now available, with the IOC 11.1 taxonomy, improvements to sp. and hybrid entry, and more. As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.
IOC 11.1
The IOC 11.1 taxonomy was just released, and when you download this version of Scythebill, you'll be immediately updated to it.
You can get the full list of species changes here (mostly South America), or after updating you can go to Special reports, then Splits and lumps, and see just what you gained and lost. For me, it's 6 splits, 2 lumps:
As always, checklists have been updated. To be honest, the wintering range and vagrancy patterns of the new Lesser Short-toed Lark split (Mediterranean and Turkestan Short-toed Lark) seems poorly understood, and these ranges should be taken with caution. I've largely guessed with respect to European records. (If anyone has insight into this and can suggest corrections, please do!)
Better sp. and hybrid entry
Scythebill's always made it easy to entry "sp." and hybrids from the "Enter sightings" page, but it's always been much more annoying to correct a sighting after the fact.This came to a head for me when this bird showed up in (literally) my own backyard:
At first, it seemed like a clear Costa's Hummingbird, a good bird for my neck of the woods. But after close inspection, a lot more photos, recordings of calls, and weighing-in by some of the heavy hitters of hummingbird identification here in the US, it's been re-identified as a hybrid with Anna's Hummingbird (and maybe an F2 backcross!)
Now, when you visit a sighting anywhere in Scythebill - in Browse by species, Browse by location - there's a "Sp/Hyb." button that lets you change the species into either a "Sp." (a bird that could be one of two species) or a hybrid.
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Click the button, and you'll see this dialog:
... where you can choose the second species in the "Sp." or hybrid.
Other changes and fixes
- Checklist spreadsheets created from Browse by location have supported a "Lifers in bold" option, which did the obvious thing. That option now does one more thing, which shows species that you haven't seen in that location in italics.
- Checklist spreadsheets in Browse by location no longer include not-yet-established (common escapee) species.
- The Flickr import did not work before creating a sightings file.