Jeff,

I've been down this road before but don't remember all the steps to adding a "Thing," in this case Bunting sp. or Unidentified Duck in a checklist that I use. I went to the online support for Birder's Diary but in the section of Taxonomic Editor I could not find any help under "How to" or the "Windows" help. Could please give me some direction?

Thanks,

Roland

Hello Roland,

Here we go. I will paint with broad strokes here and you let me know if more details are required on any step.

1. Open the Thing Editor (toolbar button under the Advanced toolbar buttons) in order to create your new thing
2. In the Thing Editor...
   1. Enter a Description such as "Bunting Sp." (the syntax I often use), Note: to turn off auto-complete in the Description field, press Ctrl+DnArrow while in that field. This is often necessary to prevent auto-matching on a pre-existing description.
   2. Enter a comment if you like.
   3. Check the "Auto Create Name on New Thing" checkbox. This will automatically add your Description to the "Current Alias Names" list for this thing.
   4. Add more alias names using the Common Name field.
   5. When you are done with #4, then click the ADD button at the bottom of the window to add your new Thing to the database.
3. Now - let's add your new thing to an existing taxonomic list.
   1. At the bottom of the Thing Editor, click the Taxonomy Editor button.
   2. Type your new things description into the Thing field (e.g. "Bunting sp.")
   3. Select the Taxonomic list to add this thing to from the Taxonomy dropdown.
   4. Select your "Preferred Common Name" for this thing from the list of alias names you created above in step 2.4, from the drop down. This will be the name that shows up for sightings of this thing, when using this tax list.
   5. Under "Classification => Preset" field, enter the name of something that is close to your new thing. This will preset the scientific name fields so that all you need to do is to edit. So, for your "Bunting sp." example, you might enter "Snow Bunting" into the Preset field.
   6. Since this is a genus level thing, TAB down to the Species field and press the Delete key while in this field to clear the species name. You will notice that the "Full Species" checkbox clears and the Sort After dropdown presets.
   7. All you need to do now is to click the Add button to add this new Thing to your tax list.

DONE.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Jeff

Also, you can paste into the fields to save typos.  Be careful not to paste in any unwanted spaces or punctuation though. The process can get a little tricky.  I ususally convert the copy source into .txt (note Pad)and double check for any trailing spaces by hitting "end" and backspace. 

Good Luck!  Al