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.

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 message.
• 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)

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.