BUBO Listing News
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 At the time of writing the most popular are British BOU Life Lists with 363 online (although this may well be out of date by the time you read this!).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 'Combined List' rather than 'Rankings'. Clicking on a species will show you who has recorded it and where.
In recent weeks we have been working to make it easier for us to add new location/regions and authorities for you to record your lists against. The main difference that users will notice is the new location selector within "View All Lists" and "Create New List". Instead of a short list of locations, plus a separate drop-down of UK counties, we have now introduced a hierarchical tree linking all potential listing locations to one another. The "location tree" will include anything from the scale of the world, down to the scale of individual sites (coming soon). Locations can be selected either by:
- Browsing through the tree and clicking the required location, or
- Typing the name (or part of the name) of the required location into the adjacent box, or
- Selecting (or typing part of the name of) a location from the 'popular locations' box
We have taken the advantage of the new location tree to introduce a few new listing locations. The "North and Middle America" location takes the American Ornithologists' Union checklist as its authority, whilst the "Continental North America" location, and subdivisions of this (Canada, Continental USA, Lower 48 USA), use the American Birding Association checklist.
.jpg "Black-and-white Warbler (Mniotilta varia)")
.jpg "Common Yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas)")
.jpg "Least Sandpiper (Calidris minutilla)")
.jpg "Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)")
We have also taken the opportunity to bring all of the existing authorities up to date, and have introduced new authorities for Ireland and the Channel Islands.
The range of locations currently included is not complete. To save on clutter, we intend to populate the tree gradually, and largely following the requests of BUBO Listers. Only locations that anyone wishes to record a list against will be included. Therefore, if you wish to add a list for a location that is not currently included then please get in touch with us and let us know as much information about the location as possible (e.g. name, where it is, description of boundaries). We'll try to add it as soon as possible. Some of our immediate plans based on listers requests are to add South America, Australia, India, Iceland, Connecticut, etc. When we have completed several of these large regions and countries we will then introduce individual site lists.
We have also decided to make the "View All Lists" functionality available via the home page to anyone, not just to registered users. Given that BUBO Listing is designed to be entirely transparent, we felt that this was in keeping with our ethos and might also attract more users to get involved.
As always, please send us your thoughts and ideas for potential improvements. In particular, as we are making a number of changes to the way BUBO Listing works, please let us know as soon as possible if you find any apparent bugs that might have crept in. Finally, don't forget to let us know if there are any new locations you wish to record lists against.