Scythebill 20.3 is out, and the big new feature is something I've been working on quietly for awhile - itinerary planning! There's also a more reliable way to transfer files to Android (or the iOS beta), and lots of smaller improvements and fixes. As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.
One note, though: this may be the last version of Scythebill that will include the IOC taxonomy. Its last release was in May, and its last "big" release is more than a year old now. It's not going to receive further updates, and I'd rather simplify as eBird and AviList convergence nears completion.
Update: Scythebill 20.3.1 was released on October 12th; it fixes an error when loading some saved itineraries in Excel, along with some smaller fixes.
Update 2: Scythebill 20.3.2 was released on October 13th; it fixes a date parsing bug introduced in 20.3 which broke parsing of dates in eBird checklists, and improved itinerary support for users with "Count heard-only" disabled.
Itinerary planning
Scythebill's got a brand new feature to help you plan your trips - whether you're building a new itinerary for yourself, or want to prepare a list of targets for a set itinerary, this can help you out! It relies heavily on eBird data, especially as prepared by another open-source birding software provider - OpenBirding. My thanks for all their work!
To start, select a country or state in Browse by location or on the Lifers map (in Special Reports) and click the new "Plan itinerary…" button:
Itinerary stops go into a list in the center, where they can be renamed, reordered, removed, or combined. And the list for each stop isn't just "present" or absent - it's also categorized based on frequency, from "common" and "uncommon" down to "scarce' and "rare".
And if you're wondering when to go, just click "When to go..." at the top and a wealth of additional information emerges:
... and even an eBird-style per-species barchart!
Once you've got your itinerary set, save it as a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has both the itinerary and the species list in two tabs. You can reopen it later with Open itinerary... in the File menu. And if you share it with another Scythebill user, they can open it and see how the same itinerary works for their target species!
There's so much here that I've made a demo video.
Some quick points of caution: all of this is based on what other birders have reported to eBird. Sparsely "eBirded" locations will have less accurate data. eBird "Sensitive Species" will not show up in itineraries at all. And the existence of a hotspot doesn't guarantee that the spot is publicly accessible or even safe to visit - you'll need to use your own judgement before visiting a site.
Encrypted cloud transfer for "Send to phone"
The "send to phone" feature for the Android (and iOS beta) app sends your sightings straight across your local network. That fails on networks that keep devices apart, such as many hotel, office and guest Wi-Fi networks. The dialog now has a "Use encrypted cloud transfer" button. The file will be uploaded to a server Scythebill runs - but only after end-to-end encryption is applied. The "key" for decrypting is in the QR code, and not sent to Scythebill's servers; I cannot read the file contents in any way. It's also deleted immediately after your phone receives it (and in 2 hours if that doesn't work).
Smaller changes
- All requests to eBird, Google, and the new OpenBirding APIs now are routed through an intermediate Scythebill server. This should have no effect on your usage, but means (in particular) that your IP addresses and other information never gets to eBird or Google.
- eBird taxonomy families and orders now have common names in Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Dutch. Some of these names are invented (though derived from proper translations of species), so if I've gotten any wrong, let me know!
- A bug where editing visit details showed stale report information (making it look like data was lost, though it wasn't) has been fixed.
- A few small import fixes have been made - in particular, Scythebill now supports importing with dates containing four-letter month abbreviations like "Sept".
- Species entry was broken for locations with hierarchies of county/state/country in an unexpected order.
- Species entry is more graceful when resized for a tall screen.
- 20.3.2: undescribed species that you've already recorded were sometimes shown as if they'd be lifers when "Count undescribed species" is turned off.
Am I correct in assuming that when the next Avilist update arrives you will be replacing IOC support with Avilist support and that we will still have two taxonomies supported? I understand that Clements intention is to synchronise at species level this update but subspecies synchronisation is a way off, timescale in years not months. I do wonder what has been gained by effectively replacing IOC with Avilist but that is a different question to be discussed elsewhere
ReplyDeleteI am not planning on supporting two taxonomies at this time, just the one. We'll see how far off the subspecies lists are in this update before finalizing that decision, but it is a lot of work to have two lists if the species-level taxonomy is identical or nearly so.
DeleteIf the one taxonomy you support is Avilist then I'm OK with that. If it is Clements then Scythebill becomes a fantastic piece (Pair?) of software which is of no real use. I record Avilist to subspecies level and this last year has been a significant irritant. I would have preferred Avilist to wait a year till they were more ready, I'm not really sure they are ready yet. I have only recently discovered that Clements don't intend to synchronise at subspecies level yet (if ever), but I'm not really surprised, which means that I will have ongoing differences between the two.
DeleteThe one taxonomy would be eBird/Clements, as that's becoming the dominant taxonomy, and the species-level alignment should be strong. I'll see how big the subspecies differences are once both have a 2026 release out, but AviList 2025 was quite stale, as it was mostly from an IOC 2021 (11.2) release.
DeleteThis is what I feared/expected. Clements is dominant in the US, less so elsewhere. ebird as a free app is a good tool to increase reliance on Clements. The intention of Avilist was that it would replace both IOC and Clements. I never believed that Cornell would let go. We shall see
DeleteI've just been having a look at the plan itinerary functionality and wonder if you have investigated adding a radius round a hotspot, rather than just the hotspot. There is the weakness, as you mention, of itineraries built on ebird observations as those don't necessarily tell you the best place to find a particular species, just where an ebirder has seen one. Having to choose particular ebird hotspots makes that issue worse and all hotspots within a 10 mile or some other radius of a hotspot reduce the 'damage'. A specified radius round a point on a map would be even better as I know which road I will be following but not necessarily where I will be stopping. Less of an issue in well birded areas with lots of ebirders.
ReplyDeleteThe feature I've considered is letting you automatically add and combine hotspots within a certain radius - it already has that for eBird hotspots named with the standard grouping pattern.
DeleteI'm not so much thinking of adding the hotspots themselves, just the species from those hotspots. Including the hotspots themselves could very quickly get into the 100s in well birded areas
DeleteAs usual incredibly comprehensive and well designed. Thanks!
ReplyDelete