Additional Information & Prices

1997 marks the tenth anniversary of the production of birding software by Santa Barbara Software Products.

BirdBase

By building BirdBase from the ground up for Windows 95, Windows 3.1, and birders, we can make it be an ideal match to your needs: BirdBase is the Windows sightings program that is the easiest to use, is extremely fast, has the most well designed and executed features, and yet uses the least computer memory and hard disk space -- a lifetime's accumulation of sightings will not even begin to fill the smallest hard disk. And with BirdBase you never have to discard your sightings database and start over again due to the frequent changes in bird names and taxonomy, or to an expansion of your birding territory from North America and Hawaii to elsewhere. The more sightings you record the more you will appreciate the complete protection from obsolescence these features give your database. A bird sightings database built by BirdBase will never be outgrown.

Below is a summary of all principal features of BirdBase for Windows:

• It contains on disk the ABA and American Ornithologists' Union list of North American and Hawaiian birds plus, optionally, a disk with Dr. James Clements' ABA-adopted list of all the birds in the world from the latest annual update of his Birds of the World. Every bird on each list is identified by its English common family and species names, by its scientific order, family, genus, and species names, and by a taxonomical sequence number that tells you at a glance where the bird occurs in the list.
  
  
• Changes in name or taxonomy are easily incorporated in either bird list: species, genera, families, and orders can be added, deleted, renamed, or moved. For example, a whole genus, family, or order can be moved from one position in the taxonomic sequence to another with a few mouse clicks. And species can be combined or split. In each of these operations all bird sightings previously recorded are brought into agreement with the new list of birds automatically (except for a split where the program displays the sightings of the split species and, for each, asks to which species produced by the split should the sighting be attributed). There is absolutely no limitation to the taxonomical changes that can be made, so your database can never become outdated. And the common names can be translated to European languages using letters with diacritical marks.
  
  Dr. Clements says the fifth edition of his book, expected in a year or so, will make changes in the ABA list of world birds as major as moving entire families to new positions in the taxonomical sequence. We will produce a utility that automates putting these changes in a copy of BirdBase and its sightings, just as we did on publication of the fourth edition in 1991. But contrast, much of the birding software now being sold does not allow users to make major taxonomical changes -- which certainly will continue as DNA studies advance -- only the publishers of this software can. Before buying birding software be absolutely sure the integrity of the database you will invest many, many hours over the years in developing will not depend on a software publisher remaining in business as long as you remain interested in birding!
  
  
• A sighting gives the date, location, and circumstances in which a bird was seen. After recording once the date plus general location and circumstances for all the sightings of a birding trip, each bird seen on the trip is recorded by scanning a list of common and scientific names for the bird, or by using a very fast name-finding feature, then clicking the mouse. A note of up to 5000 words can also be recorded with each sighting to describe its specific location and circumstances.
  
  
• When finding a common name you need to type only some consecutive letters located anywhere in the name. You do not need to capitalize or include the spaces, hyphens, and apostrophes that are so difficult to get right. For a scientific name you type the first syllable of the genus, a space, then the first syllable of the species. These simplifications, present in no other birding software, are very important in making it easy to record the birds seen on a trip.
  
  
• And recording is made even easier by the fact that either the "full list" or a "short list" of bird names can be used. If the full list contains the world birds the short list can be the birds of North America and Hawaii, or of anywhere else. If the full list is the North American and Hawaiian birds the short list can be the birds of any U.S. state or of any Canadian province.
  
  
• Nine built-in life lists -- plus thousands of life lists and annual lists that you design just as you like -- are updated automatically when sightings are recorded. The program can display any of these lists, and a hit list of the full list or short list birds you have not seen. Producing a complete screen display of more than 3000 species on a world life list (Tom Southerland's list) takes only twelve seconds (using a 100 MHz Pentium computer). The software of one of our major competitors (the one noted for very expensive advertising) would take something like ten minutes to produce such a display.
  
  
• You design a list for the program to display by limiting the sightings on it to one -- or several -- of the following: any of the eight world faunal zones; any ABA reporting region or area; any nation; any state, province, county, etc., of every nation; any area with boundaries defined by latitude or longitude, any particular location; any particular trip; any species, genus, family, or order; sightings which are or are not "marked" in any way you wish (e.g., "photographed," "heard but not seen," "seen on nest," "immature," "particular birder," etc.); any range of dates between 1900 and 2100; the earliest sighting of each species in any range of dates. These lists, which are produced in taxonomical and/or chronological sequence, can show full information about every sighting they contain or only the common and scientific names of their birds.
  
  
• A trip summary display shows the date, location, and total number of species seen for birding trips in any season of earlier years. It will suggest fruitful trips to take this year. Another display shows for each year the initial sightings (first arrivals) or final sightings (last departures) at any location of any migrating species. And there is a display tabulating species and individuals seen in Christmas counts and other population surveys.
  
  
• All displays can be put on screen, printed on paper, or written to text or data disk files for word processors, spread sheets, etc. The disk files let you include the information in a document you are writing or use it for technical purposes such as statistical analyses and graphing.
  
  
• Special provisions make it very easy for two people who frequently, but not always, do their birding together to record their sightings in the same database.
  
  
• At all times the program describes on screen every choice currently available to the user, and there is on-screen help. The carefully prepared users manual contains complete click-by-click tutorials that assume very little prior computer experience.
  

BirdArea

The latest addition to our software for birders is the Windows 95 and 3.1 version of BirdArea, a database management program that has detailed information about the range of every bird species. It and BirdBase are independent programs. BirdArea used alone can produce check lists for any world area from the range data, with endemics labeled, that are invaluable when planning birding trips and during the trips. In fact, we sell BirdArea without BirdBase to world birding tour operators who use it to produce check lists for their clients. And some BirdBase owners do not have BirdArea. But most of them do because when BirdBase has recorded sightings BirdArea has many additional capabilities. Furthermore, BirdArea makes the BirdBase short list feature much more powerful.

Here are the main features of BirdArea for Windows:

• It can list, in detail, the range of any bird species.
  
  
• Check lists can be produced for 319 world areas almost instantly. These include every U.S. state, every Canadian province, every nation in the world, many islands or island groups that have endemic species or are important for other reasons, and the major world oceans. Furthermore, BirdArea can make check lists for many predefined combinations of the 319 areas such as the ABA reporting regions or areas and the major world faunal zones (including the West Palearctic as well as the entire Palearctic). It can even make check lists for combinations of the 319 areas you can define for yourself, like Scandinavia or Northeastern U.S. states.
  
  
• All BirdArea lists can be displayed on screen, printed on paper, or written to text or data disk files. So that a check list printout will be most useful when taken on a birding trip, it can be produced in a variety of formatting styles which, for each species, have places for multiple check marks and/or for writing field notes. Any endemic species on the check lists are labeled to give them the emphasis they deserve.
  
  
• If BirdBase is used then BirdArea has many additional capabilities: It can label each bird in any check list to show if you have already seen the bird within the area, outside the area, or both. For the birds of any area, BirdArea can list those you have seen within the area, or anywhere, as well as make a hit list of the birds you have not seen within the area, or anywhere. It can search your sightings for ones in which a bird is seen within an area although the range data predict the bird is excluded from it, or search for ones in which a bird is seen outside the area although the range date predict the bird is endemic to it. And it can search all of your sightings for ones in which a bird is seen outside its known range. Only the combination of BirdBase and BirdArea offers you all this valuable information.
  
  
• In most of the procedures described in the preceding item the sightings inspected by BirdArea can be limited to those which are or are not marked by BirdBase in any way you wish.
  
  
• BirdArea can provide BirdBase with a short list for every area mentioned in the second item of this section. This capability, unique to our birding software, allows world birders to use short lists with BirdBase when recording trips, no matter where, making them much easier to record and making it obvious when recording if a bird is seen outside its known range. Emphasizing these very important out-of-range sightings "in real time" encourages you to document them with detailed sighting notes.
  
  
• A utility program called EditData is included to let you update the ranges in BirdArea's range data file, using published information or information from your own sightings. And EditData lets you handle all possible changes in the bird names or taxonomy in this file. Alternatively, you can use annual updates of the ranges, names, and taxonomy available in a disk file from Santa Barbara Software Products.
  
  
• At each step of their operation, BirdArea and EditData describe on screen every option currently available to the user. There is also on-screen help and click-by-click users manual tutorials.
  
  
• The bird names and taxonomy in the range data file are taken from the most recent annual update of Dr. James Clements' Birds of the World. Its ranges come from many hundreds of authoritative publications, in ten languages. The major project of collecting and analyzing detailed ranges for every bird species was carried out over a period of years by Shawneen Finnegan -- with the assistance of private communications from dozens of experts all over the world. Ms. Finnegan was also responsible for putting the range data in a computer file that contains more than three million "yes" or "no" entries, and produces the range data annual update files. She is a professional birding tour leader.
  
  

Prices, ordering, and computer requirements

BirdBase with Clements' world species list sells for US$59.95 + US$4.00 airmail shipping to the U.S. and Canada or US$8.00 airmail shipping to elsewhere. You can also start with only a North American and Hawaiian species list for US$39.95 + US$4.00.

BirdArea, including EditData, costs US$59.95 + US$4.00 airmail shipping or US$8.00 airmail shipping to other than the U.S. and Canada.

We accept Visa, MasterCard, checks or money orders payable in U.S. dollars, and purchase orders from major organizations.

Credit card orders can be taken directly from our Order Desk or sent by phone (800) 779-7256 or (641) 472-7256 or FAX 641-469-5065.

BirdBase, BirdArea, and EditData will run on any computer that uses Windows 95 or 3.1 and has a 3.5 inch (9 cm) diskette drive, several megabytes of unused hard disk space, and enough RAM to run a substantial Windows program. DOS versions of the software are available.

Santa Barbara Software Products has been producing professional and personal software since 1985, and software pertaining to birds since 1987. All the software is sold with a satisfaction guarantee -- you can return it if for any reason it is not satisfactory within four weeks of receipt and will be given a full refund, except for the shipping fee. Thus you cannot regret purchasing any of our products. Do so today, and join the birders, ornithologists, wildlife managers, and environmental monitors all over the world that use them.