BUBO Listing News
You can now add overall comments to any list. These comments can be used in many different ways, some examples being:
- highlight the best records, or your favourites
- mention your last tick or ticks
- mention any major dips!
- explain any rules that you use for this list, e.g. not counting heard only species
- include the date you started the list
You can enter comments for a list when you first create it, via Create New List. Alternatively you can add comments to an existing list, or edit them, via My Lists. When you have selected the list and clicked View/Edit List you will see a comments box on the right hand side. Enter your comments here and click Update Comments. The comments will be saved and the page reloaded.
Comments are displayed when you view list rankings for any list. Because the comments can be quite long they may be truncated for display purposes. However, hovering over the truncated comment with the mouse will cause it to be displayed in full. Comments can also be seen for lists that are displayed on the BUBO Listing homepage: here an underlined total means that a comment has been entered for the particular list, and you can view it by hovering over the list total.
As always, if you have any thoughts about this facility, or anything else to do with BUBO Listing, let us know via the BUBO Forums.
The most requested change to BUBO Listing has been for the ability to add a species to more than one list simultaneously, e.g. whilst adding a record to your Britain life list you could also add it to your year list. We're pleased to announce that this facility is now available.
Now when you add a species record to a list, via the My Lists menu option and the Add Species button, you will see a checkbox for 'Add to multiple lists?'. Checking this will show a table of all your lists. (Use the page navigation links if not all your lists are visible.) To select a list use Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on a Mac) - you may select as many as you like this way. When you then click the Add Species button, BUBO Listing will attempt to add the species first to the main list and then to all of the additionally selected lists.
Since the selected lists may be for different authorities and/or different locations, the validation performed is quite complex; the species may already be on one of the selected lists, it may not be available according to the taxonomy used, it may be considered rare or it may not be present for the location. BUBO Listing will show you a list of any errors it encountered so that you know which lists to retry.
If you have any comments on this, or other aspects of BUBO Listing, please let us know in the forums.
We are pleased to announce that we have just launched local patch lists, or site lists. This means you can now create lists for any birding site and compare these with other listers. Currently we have added most key birding sites in England, and will be adding sites for the rest of Britain and Ireland very soon. Other countries will be covered as and when they are requested. If you have a particular local patch that is not included then let us know by email or in the BUBO Forums. Similarly if you can provide a suitable list of sites for countries not currently covered then it will save us a lot of work!
Creating a list for a local patch is the same as for any other location, i.e. either enter part of the site name in the 'location name' box, or browse the 'location tree' to find the required site. Sites that straddle county boundaries are included under both 'parent' counties so they should be easy to find. If you notice any errors or have any requests regarding the site set-up then let us know.
We will be developing this area further over the next few months and would welcome any suggestions.
Obviously the more lists entered for a site the more interesting BUBO Listing becomes, so please encourage your birding friends to join up.
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.