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.