Records in your Palm

Palm Pilot Bird Sighting Records - History and Conclusions

One of my reasons for getting a Palm Pilot was to record my bird sightings in it then copy the data to my computer. My goal was to find a way to accurately enter minimal sighting data once, then be able to copy it anywhere I wanted. I found a database program for the Palm where I could build a form so I could enter sightings one at a time, using the Palm's hand writing recognition capabilities. Initially, I entered the bird name, abundance, location and county. The database had the ability to automatically insert the date and time.

This proved awkward because I had couldn't write the bird names easily. I had to watch the screen and repeat characters often. I was not good at it and I am still not good at it. Fellow birders commented that my head was down looking at the screen more than it was up looking at birds. This didn't work.

Another birder told me he had used a bird ID to record sightings for the US Forest Service but had no idea where to find information about the IDs used. I called Frank Howe, the non-game biologist for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, and he sent me a copy of the 'approved bird code' list. The codes consisted of a 4 letter designation assigned algorithmically from the bird's official name.

These codes gave me a fairly quick way to enter bird names, but it required a program to look up the code and assign the bird name to the sighting. Now I needed a programming language to accompany the database. I chose HotPaw Basic, a basic interpreter for the programming language and Jfile Pro as the database. These programming tools are shareware so I purchased licenses and began to write programs to manipulate my sighting data.

I settled on the following data format:

Occasionally, I add additional data fields to try out different capabilities. One I added recently is a sequence number to facilitate record sorting. The sequence number is assigned when the bird name is looked up and provides the ability to sort the sightings into taxonomic order.

I had to create several other tables to support my sighting data, the BirdCode and SightingSummary tables.

The BirdCode table is simply the bird code with the associated bird name, and currently has 1080 bird species listed.

The SightingSummary table, however is a lot more complex because it was established to mimic an annual paper sighting document. It has the following fields:

The sightings field consisted of a string of zeros and periods, like this "0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0". If the bird was seen in the month, I would replace the corresponding zero with a "Y".

Note that the SightingSummary table is set up to include only those birds that are known to visit Utah, while the BirdCode table contains all the birds known to visit the US.

Further note that sometimes the Palm PDA forgets all it knows, or gets itself all locked up, requiring all information in it to be deleted. As of 3/15/2001, my Palm III died and I have not been successful getting it back running solidly yet (3/19/2001). This is frustrating because birds are coming through and I want to record them, and I cannot. All the usual guidelines apply, treat the machine with care and hot sync often. You have been warned.