Scythebill 14.0.2 - the IOC 8.2 taxonomy is available

Scythebill 14.0.2 is now available with support for the new IOC 8.2 taxonomy and a few smaller bug fixes.  As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Google+, Facebook, or by email. 

IOC 8.2

The IOC taxonomy (now released twice a year) has its usual batch of changes.  Those affecting the largest number of birders will doubtless be:

• A five-way split of Eurasian Magpie, some easy-to-see (Oriental Magpie), some extremely difficult (Asir Magpie, a Saudi Arabian endemic!).
• A two-way split of Western Whipbird (an Australian species)
• A two-way split of White-collared Seedeater

There's more splits and lumps;  you can see all the changes, including the dreaded lumps, at the IOC website.

Other changes of some interest, depending on one's interest in these sorts of things:

• One wide-ranging subspecies of Japanese Bush Warbler (canturians) has moved into Manchurian Bush Warbler.  If you've seen Japanese Bush Warbler, you may need to be re-evaluate which species you've really seen.
• Two enigmatic species - Madanga (endemic to the Indonesian island of Buru) and Sao Tome Shorttail (no prize for guessing which island it's found on) - have both been proven to belong to the Pipit and Wagtail family, Motacillidae!
• Vangidae (formerly just the Madagascar Vangas) now includes Helmetshrikes, Wattle-eyes, Batises, and more.

Other changes

A few other changes snuck into Scythebill 14.0.2.

• IOC 8.2 now includes names in the "Northern Sami" language of Scandinavia.  If you're one of its ~25,000 speakers, you're in luck!
• Show Reports is now more consistent about showing sighting flags, like "uncertain identification" with (?) or "dead" with (†).
• In Browse by location, the list of visits is now sorted most-recent-first, to be consistent with other parts of Scythebill.  And for places you've visited frequently, clicking a location selects (by default) the list of visits, and not the first species.

Scythebill 14 (Beta) - multiple observers now supported!

Scythebill 14.0.0 is now available.  This version adds a long-requested feature - you can now store sightings for multiple observers in a single .bsxm file!  This is a new enough feature that I'm calling it a beta.  I've tested it as I can, as always, but I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a glitch here or there.  (There's enough features now that testing all combinations is getting increasingly hard.)

I could really use your help  - even if you don't use this feature - in testing it out and letting me know if things are working or not!  And if you do use the feature, please let me know if any part of it is confusing or just doesn't work the way you'd expect it to.  I'm sure there'll be things to improve!

I also haven't yet updated the manual to describe supporting multiple observers, but this page will include a quick walk-through of the feature.

There's also a bunch of other bug fixes in this version, described below.

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

Using multiple observers

If you want to use multiple observers, visit the Preferences page and click the new "Enable multiple observers" button:

You'll get a window asking you to enter your first observer.  Enter a name, and click OK:

Scythebill will automatically pick an abbreviation for you, though you can choose your own if you want.  And Scythebill will give you the choice to add this first observer to all existing sightings automatically.

After that, you can add more observers with the "Add..." button on the Preferences pane:

(You'll need to use bulk editing in Show reports... if you want to add a second, third, etc. observer to more sightings.)

From this point on, when you're adding sightings, you'll get a chance to choose the "Who?" in addition to "When?" and Where?"  (If you don't enable multiple observers, you won't see this box, or any of the other changes.)

(To add entirely new observers, you currently have to go to the Preferences window;  here, you add observers already entered in Preferences.  That might be a confusing choice on my part... let me know!)

Choose the set of observers to add by entering observer names in the new box up top and click add, and remove observers by clicking the red X.  This lets you choose a default set of observers for the sightings, but you can choose a different set of observers for a single sighting too (if someone missed a bird, or only one person got on a bird, etc.):

Beyond that, there's:

• A new "Observers" reporting rule for choosing reports with specific observers
• New "Observer names" and "Observers" columns in Scythebill exports and imports
• Wildlife Recorder import support for observers
• Support for choosing the observers for all other sorts of imports
• Bulk edit support for adding or removing observers

I'll be updating the manual to fully describe this feature, but this should be enough to get most of you started.

Again, I'd enormously appreciate any feedback you have on this feature - what works well, and what doesn't work for you.

Other fixes

Imports should be better at dealing with data where common names have been updated for splits, but scientific names not fixed (or vice versa).  For example, an import of "Lesson's Motmot", "Momotus momota" (that's not the right scientific name!) in Lesson's Motmot's range will ignore the scientific name, but in Amazonian Motmot's range will ignore the common name.

If you add a lot of photos to a sighting, the later ones would become invisible.  Those now pack a bit more tightly into the screen and a scrollbar appears if you have a lot.

"Save a copy as..." will now ensure that you have a file name ending in .bsxm.

Google geocoding was sometimes picking latitudes and longitudes for the entirely wrong state/province (for example, "Springfield" in the United States was always the lat-long of the city of that name in Massachusetts!).

Scythebill should do a better job of choosing decent fonts on Linux.

eBird/Clements once again supports Hebrew names.

Locations with a slash in their names gave unexpected results when exporting to CSVs or spreadsheets on MacOS or Linux.

Scythebill 13.9.4 - small bug fixes

Scythebill 13.9.4 is now available!  As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Google+, Facebook, or by email.  This version includes a number of small bug fixes, including one that will become important in a month!

Bugs fixed

• Google has changed its policies around Maps and Geolocation APIs - and as a result, as of June 11th, earlier versions of Scythebill will stop displaying location maps or being able to use Google to "geolocate" (find latitude/longitude given a location or vice versa).
• The "New Location" dialog would have the OK and Cancel buttons hidden off the bottom for users that chose the largest font size.
• Scythebill now gives a useful warning message if you move or delete a ".bsxm" file, instead of just surprising you with the "New/Open" screen.
• Scythebill will (I hope) no longer show an odd error message in some rare cases when typing species names (perhaps, in particular, in extended taxonomies?).

Scythebill 13.9.3 - small changes and fixes

Scythebill 13.9.3 is now available!  As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Google+, Facebook, or by email.  This version includes a number of small improvements and bug fixes requested by users.

Faster checklist data entry

In non-checklist species entry, you've long been able to type numbers right into the species selection field, and Scythebill would jump you straight into the "count" field for the current species;  and from there you can type letters like "h", "i", "m", and "f" to flip some of the sighting flags;  and then Return jumps you write back to species entry.  Handy!  But not very helpful for checklist entry.  Now it works there too!  You don't even have to tap the space bar to enter a species - just start typing the number of individuals you saw, and it'll add the species to your list, and start entering the number!

Small improvements

• Scythebill has upgraded to the 2017 IUCN Red List - a list of species conservation status, from Least Concern down to Critically Endangered and Extinct.  The news isn't all bad ... but it's mostly not good.
• In Show reports and Browse by location, genera are now only abbreviated after the first time they're shown (so Rhea americana and R. pennata, not R. americana and R. pennata).
• In Browse by species, sightings are now ordered starting with the most recent sightings, with the oldest at the bottom.  (Everything else always behaved that way;  this is a long-standing inconsistency.)
• As always, this version has a number of smaller range corrections and first-country records.

Bugs fixed

• On MacOS, dragging photos into Scythebill was broken.  This should now work.
• BirdLasser imports started behaving very oddly in Scythebill 13.9.1 if you hadn't set an explicit name for each location you entered in BirdLasser.  This should be fixed.
• Clicking "Add species" in Browse by location in Species you haven't seen here mode showed error dialogs and otherwise behaved oddly.  It should now work.
• In the Show reports screen, the "Print..." and "Export to a spreadsheet" options now treat "Show threatened status" consistently - anything Vulnerable or worse (so not Least Concern or Near Threatened).

Scythebill 13.9.1 - IOC 8.1, Wildlife Recorder imports, and more

Scythebill 13.9.1 is now available!  As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Google+, Facebook, or by email.  This version includes the brand-new IOC 8.1 taxonomy, support for importing from Wildlife Recorder, and a bunch of smaller changes.


Update: Scythebill 13.9.2 is out, largely to fix glitches in Wildlife Recorder imports.  There's also now an "and save..." checkbox when entering sightings, enabled by default, which will save altogether as soon as you click "Done".

IOC 8.1

The IOC 8.1 checklist is now available, and you can update to it just by installing the latest version of Scythebill.  This time around, there's 6 splits from around the world, as well as a couple of lumps.

There's also a couple of subspecies which have moved from one species to another - in particular, the Indochinese subspecies "viridis" has moved from Black-backed Swamphen to Grey-headed Swamphen, which might affect your list.

Wildlife Recorder imports

Scythebill now supports importing Wildlife Recorder "trip" exports.  Please export with headers and coordinates enabled.  This is a beta version - please do let me know if you run into any problems.

Better imports

"Scythebill"-format imports are now a lot more flexible in handling the date column.   I still recommend "yyyy-MM-dd" formats (like 2018-01-27), but most date formats should import cleanly.  Let me know if you hit upon one that doesn't!

Imports from eBird checklists (and Wildlife Recorder imports) should be even less work, as Scythebill now takes advantage of latitude/longitude from existing sightings and eBird's database of birding locales.  (And this should continue to get better in the future.)

Smaller features

Scythebill now supports "Big Months" in addition to "Big Days" and "Big Years".

Scythebill now comes with "United States (Pacific Ocean)" and "United States (West Indies)" checklists.

The "Heard only" indicator - (H) - on sightings in "Browse by species" now comes right after the date, instead of after the date and location.  (It was often scrolled off the screen altogether

You can now generate reports by exact breeding codes (like "Nest Building"), not just categories like "Probable".  There's also a couple of new breeding codes from eBird - "Multiple (7+) singing males" and "Singing Male Present 7+ Days", both of which are considered "Probable" breeding.  You can read the full list of breeding codes and their descriptions on the eBird site.

The "Visits" header inside "Browse by location" now shows the total number of visits to a site (e.g., "Visits (83)").

Bug fixes

In some unusual circumstances, data entry could drop single-digit species counts.

Scythebill 13.9 - ABA region updates and bug fixes

Scythebill 13.9 is now available!  As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Google+, Facebook, or by email.  This version updates the definition of the ABA region - most notably, now including Hawaii, and includes some other fixes.

ABA Region improvements

As of the ABA Checklist Version 8.0, Hawaii (including the Northwestern Islands, like Midway) is now part of the ABA Region.  Scythebill now adopts that treatment.

If you want to keep track of the old definition, Scythebill has added a reporting region called "ABA region (without Hawaii)".

Related to ABA listing, though not the ABA region itself: the Azores and Madeira are now included in Europe, after confirming this treatment with the ABA listing committee.

Small changes

• The Scythebill installer will now add desktop shortcuts on Windows and Linux.
• Banggai and Taliabu Leaf Warblers - two undescribed taxa from Indonesia - are now supported.
• The preferences for IOC and eBird/Clements common names previously included an  "English (UK)" option which confused multiple users.  It makes Scythebill use BOU names where applicable, names like "Wren" and "Swallow".  It's been renamed to "English (BOU)" to make clear its intent.

As always, there's lots of small checklist improvements reflecting both corrections and recent new records.

Bug fixes

• The "Verify against checklists..." feature would incorrectly report some species as not found in the United Kingdom (e.g. Black-bellied/Grey Plover).
• If you accidentally dragged some built-in locations (e.g. "Orange County") out of their parent, and wanted to move it back to its original location, Scythebill would give an error message.  This is fixed.
• One user reported that on Windows 10, trying to import a checklist was now crashing Scythebill!  This should be resolved, though it apparently was not happening to most users.
• Fixed an error ("Comparison method violates...") that could happen in "Browse by species" in some unusual cases.
• Fixed an error triggered when editing a custom checklist and then switching between IOC and eBird/Clements.
• Exporting eBird checklists for Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Marianas would potentially not handle those regions' "states" correctly.
• The built-in checklist for the Åland Islands was not loading.

Scythebill 13.8 - the 2017 eBird/Clements taxonomy is available!

Scythebill 13.8 is now available!  As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Google+, Facebook, or by email.    This version includes the recently released 2017 update to the eBird/Clements taxonomy and a number of bug fixes.  Thank you to all of the users who reported these bugs!  Your help in keeping Scythebill reliable is invaluable.

eBird/Clements 2017 Taxonomy

The 2017 update is now available and supported in Scythebill.  

See eBird's page on the update for an excellent summary of the species level changes, and Cornell's page, with details on all the 11(!!) new families and many species and subspecies changes.  For North American birders, these reflect the recent American Ornithology Society (AOS, formerly AOU) changes.

As always, the update will be largely automatic.  There's some finer details here where subspecies have been moved from Gray-eyed Bulbul into Olive Bulbul, from Fork-tailed Drongo-Cuckoo into Square-tailed Drongo-Cuckoo, and from Indian Scops-Owl into Collared Scops-Owl.  If you have seen these species, you may need to reanalyze your sightings to be sure of what form you've seen.

Bug fixes

Scythebill will now - on Windows - provide you with a warning if you're saving files into a "Program Files" directory and prompt you to move the file to another directory.  Users have done this and, while it sometimes works, it often causes problems.  (Do let me know if Scythebill is now a little too insistent at asking you to move out of this directory.)

Some Scythebill CSV imports with "spuh"s could fail under relatively unusual circumstances (but not so unusual that a user didn't find it!)

As always, Scythebill includes a number of smaller checklist improvements (along with the general updates to all of the checklists to reflect the new taxonomy).