BUBO Listing News
We are pleased to announce that we have just launched the BUBO Forums, and are looking forward to some great discussions about listing, the BUBO Listing website or just birding in general. Please see the full announcement for more details.
The BUBO Store now welcomes NHBS (Natural History Book Service) as a partner. This means that you can use BUBO Listing to buy from the vast selection of books and wildlife equipment that NHBS provides, and in return they pay a small commission to BUBO Listing which goes towards the costs of development and hosting.
NHBS offer a unique range of science and wildlife titles from around the world. On www.nhbs.com you will find many thousands of specialist non-commercial publications, conservation reports, local field guides and wildlife society titles that are not available from other wildlife booksellers, library suppliers or high street stores. They supply books for customers all around the world (more than 150 countries to date). It doesn't matter where a book is published, which language it is in, or how difficult it is to obtain, NHBS aims to include on www.nhbs.com all the publications that help birders, scientists and ecologists in the field. They also distribute books for leading conservation organisations such as BirdLife International, RSPB, Wetlands International and the BTO - supplying conservationists and libraries with their conservation books and reports.
In order for us to keep the BUBO Listing site free for listers werely on the contributions we receive through commissions, donations and advertising, so what better way to support us at no extra cost to yourself than by ordering the latest birding books?
We have recently changed the style of the lists used throughout BUBO Listing. They should now allow faster sorting and moving between pages, as well as hopefully looking more attractive.
Coupled with this the homepage has changed. It will now show lists according to the country you are in. For example, listers in the US will see the current year and life lists for Continental North America whereas British listers will see the current Britain lists. (Note that not all countries have lists available yet, in which case the default of British lists will be shown. We will introduce more countries and regions over the coming months). We have also added a new breakdown of the most popular list types. At the time of writing the most popular are British BOU Life Lists with 363 online (although this may well be out of date by the time you read this!).
You can also directly click on any list or list type from the homepage to see the full details.
We have now combined the old menu options of View/Edit My Lists and Add Species to List into a single menu option, "My Lists". This will make it quicker to switch between the different modes of adding individual species, batch editing and just viewing lists.
In addition your existing lists are now shown in a new format which will allow you to sort them (e.g. by location) and makes it much easier for those listers who have lots of different lists registered: the record at the moment is 30 different lists by a single lister!
What's the most difficult bird to see on a particular list? We have dramatically improved the performance of the "blockers" facility in BUBO Listing so that is now possible to see, in a matter of seconds, those species that have been seen by the fewest listers.
For example, there are currently five species on British lists that have only been recorded by single observers. Interestingly these are all American vagrants and include such megas as American Kestrel, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and Magnolia Warbler.
To view blockers for any list, just go to View All Lists as normal but ensure that you check 'Blockers' rather than 'Rankings'. Clicking on a blocker species will show you who has recorded it and where.