I am going birding in Costa Rica shortly, taking a small computer which can run spreadsheets but not Birder's Diary, and plan to record sightings in a spreadsheet which can later be imported to Birder's Diary. Have used this procedure before, but have now run into problems in trying to export a checklist as the basis for this spreadsheet:

1. When checking the subspecies box in the Checklist Editor form, this appears to include ALL subspecies and not just those that occur in Costa Rica - e g Highland Tinamou shows three "South American" subspecies as well as the "Costa Rican" subspecies frantzii. This gives a total of 4069 taxa which is too much to sort through.

2. From the Import/Export Checklist form, with Taxonomy set and Costa Rica as Location, the file exported contains all 4069 species+subspecies taxa, instead of 890 for species only, and is also in alphabetical order which is not desired. I have been unable to find any way of setting either "species only" or "taxanomic order" for this export.

I may be overlooking some solution to these problems and would be grateful for any help.

Thank you - Ian Smith

Hello Ian,

Sounds like a great trip coming up.

1. The subspecies checklist data have been a work in progress. In this case, it is likely that most of the subspecies of species that occur in Costa Rica share their parents total locations for sake of completeness. For example, if species X occurs in Costa Rica, then most of its subspecies will be attached there as well.
2. This is the way the Checklist export has always worked. And the names that are exported are NOT common names for the selected tax list, but rather BD internal names - that don't always match the common name in use. There is no way to get 'species only' or to have them in taxonomic list order.
   Instead, what you want is to produce a checklist report. This you can get in 'species only' and in 'taxonomyic order'. Save it as a text file and import the text file into spreadsheet software. Before 3.7, you used to be able to export in CSV format - but no longer.

This is a start. Let me know if that will work for you.

Also, as a side note, what 'small computer' will run spreadsheet software but not BD? Is it not a Windows computer?

Jeff

Thanks Jeff. I have exported the Costa Rica checklist as a report and can use it to set up a sightings import file.

Re the small computer, the comment should really have been "don't know whether it could run BD and too much hassle to find out". It is an Asus Eee with a solid state hard drive and only 1.3 GB available, a lot of which is cluttered up with other stuff. Also runs Linux not Windows. There would also be the issue of synchronising database versions with what's on my desktop. So I tend to record on spreadsheets while away on trips for import when back home. Do use BD beforehand to create lists with highlighting for birds that would be lifers, for instance.

Ian

Thanks for the info Ian.

Have a great trip and let us know what the best birds you saw were when you get back! I you send me a pic, I will post it on the home page!

Jeff