Creating Your Observer

Now that we have had fun learning how to add, view and edit sightings – as well as produce reports of your sightings – using the Sample Observer that came with Birder’s Diary, it’s time to create the observer for your sightings and start entering your own sightings. Remember, you can still use the Sample Observer to test other features of Birder’s Diary without having to create test sightings and later delete them.

Create a New Observer

1.  Click on the Observer toolbar button. This will display the Observer Maintenance window.
   
2. Click on the Add New button. This will display the Add/Edit Observer window.
   
3. Enter your First Name, Middle Initial and Last Name into the fields provided.
4. Now let’s select some locations for which Birder’s Diary will automatically calculate life count totals for you. As you learned earlier in this tutorial, a life count requires an observer, a location and a taxonomic list to calculate the total species seen. Since these settings are only for this observer, we have satisfied the first part of this equation. Now let’s set 3 different locations for your counts.
   Let’s assume that you always want to know what your state count is, so specify your state and the taxonomic list that covers that area for the first set of fields. For example:
   

   Do the same for the next two location/taxonomy pairs. Use your own criteria. NOTE: if you select a location (e.g. Africa) for a life count, but select a taxonomic list that does not cover that area (e.g. ABA tax list), your counts will reflect only the species seen in that area defined by the chosen taxonomic list.

5. Click the Save Observer button. Click Yes to confirm your action.

You have now created your observer in Birder’s Diary and you can go about using the methods you learned above to enter your own sightings.

Concept of Current Observer

You may have noticed that there is a button in the Observer Maintenance window labeled Set Current.

All this does is to set the Observer for which Birder’s Diary will automatically calculate and display the life counts setup in the Add/Edit Observer window. It displays this information at the bottom of the main Birder’s Diary window.

In all other functions in Birder’s Diary, you select the observer(s) to operate on.

Please continue to the next topic in this guide.