What's New in Bird Brain 6.3

What is Bird Brain? | Order here | FAQ | Downloading and Installing Bird Brain

New Features

New, expanded data entry capabilities

• Checklist entry option — You can now create new records by checking off the species from a checklist. This may speed up the entry of records from the same date and location.
  
  
  
  
• Choose bird by family description — When entering a new record, you can now restrict the list of birds to choose from by family name. And you don't need to know the Latin name for the family. As in previous versions, you can also restrict the list by typing in part of a bird's common or scientific name. However, if you want to do it the old way, and search by letter code, you still have the option to bring up the old Choose Bird dialog box.
  
  
  
  
• Incremental export and import — You can now export the data from any Found Set of records and re-import it. This is helpful for couples who bird together but keep separate copies of Bird Brain. If they come back from a trip, they can enter their data just once, into one person's copy of Bird Brain and export it into the other person's copy.

New, expanded reporting capabilities

• New Sightings List with Number Seen includes the contents of the How Many field. It also shows Common Name, Date, and a concatenated field with state/city/location/nation.
  
  
  

• New Sightings List with State includes a concatenated field showing state/city/location/nation. We had several requests for this.
  
  
  

• New Sightings List As Table Plus is similar to the familiar Sightings List As Table, but it includes more fields: Letter Code, Flag 1, Flag 2, Notes, and More Notes.
  
  
  
  
• New Group by Family view lets you display any set of records grouped under their family names. For any set of records, you can click on Make Life List and restrict the list to the earliest sighting for each species. There is a record count for each family.
  
  
  
  
• New Nation Bird Count report displays a list of all the nations for which you have records, with the number of species shown for each nation. You can drill down to the records for each nation.
  
  
• New Families Seen report displays a list of all the families (of the 228 possible) for which you have records, with the number of families seen. You can drill down to the records for each family.
  
  
• New Orders Seen report displays a list of all the orders (of the 34 possible) for which you have records, with the number of orders seen.  You can drill down to the records for each order.
  
  
  

Help with your splits

• New Splits Report shows you all your splits-eligible records in one list and helps you sort out which records require a decision about their species. The report's Splits Decided radio buttons let you quickly check off the decided status of a whole series of records. The Date and a concatenated location field are also included to help you make the decision.
  
  
  
  
• Splits Decided choice is marked automatically when you enter a new record. It is assumed that you have made a choice when you created the new record. Of course you can always override it.

Improvements in user interface

• Container fields markers — A small, blue dot now appears above the Species, Sighting, and Media container fields if they are not empty. You no longer have to click on the tab to know if there is something in the field.
  
  
• Selected tab comes forward — When you enter a new record and the Sighting Record window opens, now the active tab is the one that was active in the previously viewed active record. (In earlier versions of Bird Brain, the Auxiliary Info tab was always the default.)
  
  
• More power to the Power Replace feature — The power and flexibility have been greatly enhanced. The Letter Code and How Many fields have been added, and one can now change the species itself in an entire Found Set of records. You can now append text to the existing text in the Notes and More Notes fields. There are button to Omit individual records or multiple records from the Found Set without having to go to the Records menu.
  
  
  
  
• New Finder Icon for Bird Brain — Bird Brain now has a proper Finder icon, replacing the generic Filmmaker icon, which looked like a folder. You now double-click on the birdie to open the program.

Reference database changes

• Latest world bird list — Bird Brain 6.3 reference birds data have been updated to the latest Clements list. The reference database contains all the current Clements species, subspecies, and range information.
  
  
• AOU and ABA bird lists — Checklist data have been updated
  
  
• Nation and state range data — Checklist data have been updated
  
  
• Updates — The new Updates feature allows Bird Brain's creators to provide updates to Bird Brain's reference data and to subspecies and range data that might occur before the next major program upgrade. For example, if we discovered a mistake in our data, we could send you a file to fix such mistakes without your having to download a new version of Bird Brain and transfer all your records.
  

Free Trial

Download free trial of Bird Brain 6.3

You can download a free trial of the full working version of Bird Brain 6.3, in which all the features function. However, the number of records that can be entered is limited to 70 until you purchase a license.

Check out the documentation

You can also download the User Guide (6.8 MB PDF file) to see a complete, detailed description of Bird Brain 6.3. This file is also included in the regular download of the program.

If you are coming from Bird Brain 5

Here are instructions for getting your records from Bird Brain 5 and importing them into the new Bird Brain 6.2.

Minimum System Requirements

Bird Brain 6.3 requires Leopard, Snow Leopard, or Lion. Your system must match or exceed one of the following:

Bird Brain 6.3 v.267 bug fixes

Here are the changes in Bird Brain 6.3 v.267, from Bird Brain 6.3 v.262. If you have Bird Brain 6.3 v.262, you can re-download and re-install the program if these changes are significant to you. Before you do this, in order to install the newer version, you'll need to change the name of your Bird Brain 6.3 Folder, in your Documents folder. (For example, you could rename it "Bird Brain 6.3 Folder Old.")

The current download is Bird Brain 6.3 v.267.

BC Checklist
The checklist data for British Columbia was omitted from v.262. It has been restored in v.267.

Enter by Checklist
It works slightly differently now. It's really a choice, not a bug. Previously, for US states and Canadian provinces, the checklist that popped up included only species that were on both the state-or-province checklist and the respective nation list. In v.267, birds do not have to be on the national checklist to be included on the state/province target list. In some cases, this means you have a few more birds to choose from.

Crimson Rosella
In v.262, the Splits tab for the Crimson Rosella showed a split into Crimson Rosella and Adelaide Rosella. However, there is no species named Rosella, since the Adelaide Rosella has been lumped into the Crimson Rosella. The spurious split has been removed in v.267.

Save as Excel...
Although Save as Excel... has a grayed-out icon in the Preview mode that checklists, targetlists, and wishlists display in, you should be able to choose Save as Excel... from the File menu. In v.262, this did not work. It does work in v.267.

Export state range data
It didn't work in v.262. It does work in v.267.

Questions?

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