Let me begin this review with a warning. Do not judge a book by its cover. I am all too guilty of committing this cardinal sin, especially when it comes to anything to do with computers. When it comes to birding software though, I beg of you – don’t. Few birding programs look great and the horrible reality is, functionality often increases as the appearance worsens.
Jones Technologies’ Birder’s Diary is a case in point. It would be a forgivable error to open the trial of this program, click around for two minutes, then head straight for the control panel to remove it. It is ugly and its best features are buried in an ocean of awkward presentation. The interface feels like it belongs in Windows 95. Don’t be fooled however, the grittiness grows on you and you will get a sense of accomplishment just from learning your way around.
With that warning out of the way, here is the long overdue review!
Purchase and Trial
The Birder’s Diary trial is fully functional with all taxonomic lists available. Birder’s Diary has standard tiered purchasing model, common to nearly all birding and wildlife database programs.
First, it offers a basic or advanced user license, the basic offering reduced functionality. The price gap is quite large with the basic at $34USD and the advanced at $79USD. This is significant as the basic licence misses some huge features like user-defined sightings fields and the ability to edit taxonomies.
Second, a taxonomic license must be purchased. There is a huge range of licenses, including many for North American and British plants and animals. Unfortunately, for Australians, the only options are for birds. The taxonomic list used is the up to date Christidis and Boles (2008). It would be nice to see the range available expanded but as there is currently no active program that offers anything other than birds, it’s difficult to fault Birder’s Diary on this. I will include a full explanation of pricing in the conclusion.
The Program
Installation and setting up
I had no problems at all downloading and installing Birder’s Diary on my Windows XP machine. No hiccups, no confusing questions, nothing. A straightforward download and installation. As I mentioned in the introduction however, after opening the program, setting up was not something I looked forward to. There is more junk than usual floating around this program. I use the term ‘junk’ tentatively however, as I am sure there are those that find the poorly rendered computer-voiced talking parrot endearing and the ‘tip of the day’ splash screen charming. I do not. Thankfully both of these features are easy enough to turn off.
‘Petey’ the talking parrot unfortunately plays a critical role in the program. If you wish to get a quick run down of how any window works, the only way you can do it from within the program is to get a an irritating, slow, and grating lecture from this annoying psittacine. If you make the mistake of starting him off, hold on for the ride because there is no stopping him once you get him started (seriously). Unless you are a masochist, do not get him to run through the whole ‘basics’ tutorial. Petey also plays a critical role in the speech recognition feature of this program. I personally deplore speech recognition and I especially despise Petey, so the effectiveness of this feature is not covered in this review.
Thankfully, there is a better way to learn about Birder’s Diary. I have encountered few programs with as thorough a user guide or as helpful support than Birder’s Diary. From the quick start guide which will get you immediately more comfortable with the user interface, to the video tutorials, actual demonstrations of how to use the software, Birder’s Diary is the best I have seen. If you have any problems, which are likely to come if you don’t read the guide, you can go to the dedicated support forums on the product website. If you don’t like this model, message Jeff, the developer, directly. A nice guy who is happy to answer questions. This is customer service.
Entering a new sighting
Birder’s Diary offers two entry methods for inputting data into its database. The first is the Keyboard entry mode where each sighting is entered manually. As horrible as this sounds for those with thousands of sightings tucked away in journals, entering data into Birder’s Diary in this way, if you are a decent typist, is actually incredibly speedy. You can tab through the fields at speed, there are different keyboard shortcuts to do anything you would need and there is an alert sound once an entry is completed this. I trialled this entry method and found myself eventually being able to enter ten or so records before I even had to look at the screen!
The second entry method, the one that Bluebird Technologies’ Bird Journal so desperately needs, is the checklist entry method. You select ‘Checklist Entry’, select your taxonomic list, type in your location and it will generate a checklist of all the species found in that area. All species already sighted in the said area are highlighted. Well, at least that’s how it works if you live in North America. For Australian users, there is no native data for where different species occur so the only way a checklist can be generated is from sightings you have already entered through the keyboard entry method.
All the data fields are user customisable so you can enter whatever information you please. Well, at least under the ‘advanced’ license anyway. There are ‘min max’ count fields and the count defaults to one if you leave it empty. Birder’s Diary also has the ability to group sightings in to trips, a nice feature lacking from some other programs. Surprisingly, where Birder’s Diary irritated me was the ‘SmartSearch’ fields. These are a common feature and Birder’s Diary took them one step further with ability to search for the scientific or common name, something I long for with Bird Journal. Where it gets it wrong however is that if I mistype something, it’s not possible to simply backspace and start again. Each time I made a mistake I had to reset all the fields in the sighting window with a button on the right side. It is a small idiosyncrasy, but an annoying one nonetheless.
Finally, as I mentioned in the Bird Journal review, the ability to modify the date format is desperately needed. We do not all live in the USA. If I had to pick one thing that slows down data entry more than anything else, it is this.
Reviewing entries and generating reports
Please note, I am fighting off goosebumps as I write this. I like reports; I am a report man. Generating a report in Birder’s Diary takes some understanding and patience, but once I picked it up, I was very impressed. Everything in the report is customisable. I can choose what data to output, how many columns per page I want, what font I want it in, even what taxonomy I want it generated in. This last option may sound pointless but believe you me, it’s not. Being in Australia, nearly all my sightings are recorded using the taxonomy endorsed by Birds Australia (RAOU). So, if I were to give my life list to an American or British birder, there would be discrepancies as to what counts as a tick and what doesn’t. Birder’s Diary remedies this problem with the ‘things’ concept.
‘Things’ may confuse a user new to Birder’s Diary so here is a quick run-down. Each living creature or plant is treated as a ‘thing’ by this program. Taxonomies then use these ‘things’ and categorise them and assign them as they see fit. One taxonomy can classify a thing as a subspecies and another classify it a full species, regardless the properties of the underlying ‘thing’ do not change. By doing this, it is easy to generate new lists and reports using different taxonomies from the same original entered data. Pretty clever, huh? I thought so too.
Birder’s Diary goes even further with ‘things’ by giving you the ability to view their associations through the ‘Rosetta Stone’ section.
Arguably the neatest feature insofar as report generation goes, is the number of formats you can output to. Whether you just want to print the report, email it, or get it in HTML, PDF or RTF, Birder’s Diary has got your back. I feel empowered just writing about it.
Treatment of Taxonomies
There is little lacking from Birder’s Diary in this department. There is a full blown taxonomy editor, a taxonomy viewer and even a ‘thing’ editor. You can create your own taxonomic lists, although the process is multi-stepped and time consuming due to the programs use of ‘things’ as a base for taxonomies. However, I reiterate that ‘things’ are a net positive.
In addition to the ability to edit or create taxonomies as you see fit, Birder’s Diary also has the common names in a number of different dialects and languages. These can be assigned to any taxonomy you wish, although they are only available in Spanish, French, German, generic ‘American’ and ‘European. A useful feature for some nonetheless.
Import/Export Functionality
While I have not tested the import/export functionality of Birder’s Diary, it appears to offer a decent selection of import options. It is possible to import directly from AviSys 4 and 5 in addition to CSV (comma separate values) files. Most other birding programs support export to CSV and even the format is wrong, it would not be a monumental effort to clean it up in a spreadsheet and re-export it to CSV.
Thumbs up from me, although I think many new users would be thankful for straight out direct import functionality from other birding programs. There really aren’t that many out there so it wouldn’t be too difficult. While there is no option to export to eBird in Birder’s Diary, but there is a toolkit to enable user to do just that available for download from the website. I have not tested it as I don’t use eBird, but there you have it.
Missing Features
For an out and out birding program, there is not much missing from Birder’s Diary. If the developers wanted to take it in a different direction, the ability to handle media, whether sound recordings, video or photos, would transform this into something really special. A more useful reference list would be useful too, Ibis Publishing is hardly an ‘important birding site’. Links to major ornithological organisations would be far more useful. Even a Wikipedia search box that automatically opens a new browser window would be helpful. Wikipedia use is controversial but it is better than nothing.
Conclusion
Birder’s Diary is not going to win any beauty contests. Opening it to enter sightings conjures memories of opening Matlab for the first time, you know it’s good, but you wonder if it’s worth diving into the hornet’s nest at all. I am here to tell you that it is! If you plan on downloading the trial to give Birder’s Diary a go, be sure to check out the quick start guide, it’s worth the effort to read.
I have thoroughly enjoyed learning my way around Birder’s Diary. This truly is an incredible program that will transform how you bird. Unfortunately, the program is largely geared towards North American and British users, but with a little patience and tinkering, it is definitely malleable enough to be useful for Australian birders. It is wonderful to have a piece of proprietary software as customisable as this one.
While the SmartSearch fields leave much to be desired, inputting sightings through both the keyboard and checklist methods is a breeze. I am still drooling over the reports generation functionality and it is clear that the developers have put much effort into developing this aspect of the program. The taxonomy viewer and editor are top-notch, as is the Rosetta Stone feature. I can see myself entering this program to use this feature alone. The ability to import AviSys data and CSV files should make the transition smooth for users of other software. Even eBird users can now easily export Birder’s Diary data using a downloadable toolkit found on the Birder’s Diary website.
Probably the only major let down of Birder’s Diary is the price. It is considerably expensive and not an investment to be undertaken lightly. Assuming you want the taxonomy editor, taxonomy viewer and Rosetta Stone, you will be looking at USD$79 for the ‘Advanced User License’, not including any taxonomies. The price of taxonomic lists vary, but here are the lists I would imagine are the most popular:
World list (Clements and Cornell Lab of Ornithology) – $99
North America (ABA/Clements w/ subspecies) – $69
Australia (RAOU) – $49
As I said, not cheap. There is also and option for you to desktop share and have the program completely installed for you for a one off price of USD$49. All major upgrades to the software also incur additional charges, around USD$49 if you are upgrading from the last major version. There go your savings.
All in all, pricing aside, I would highly recommend Birder’s Diary for the serious birder as it will definitely fulfill any need a birder is likely to have for a birding program. The major competition for this industry leading software is AviSys, but unfortunately the developers have not returned my requests for a test copy of the product. From the descriptions and screen shots however, it does not look like it us up to the standard in any case.
Hope you enjoyed the review!
*Please note, the developer has responded to this review with some corrections. Be sure to check it out!
