Version 6.2

  • V6.2 Build 26 – 18-Jun-2025
    • When selecting a media file from the vertical strip on the left of the Sightings Attachments window, the full filename plus path are put into the Windows Copy/Paste buffer for convenience. This is useful when you need to reference the file in another application, for example.
    • “B” on your keyboard was added as a shortcut key in the Sightings View/Edit window for the “Export to eBird” feature. Simply pressing “B” on your keyboard while that window has focus, will open the Export to eBird window as if you had clicked the corresponding toolbar button for the same feature.
    • When exporting records to eBird, sightings for the same species are combined into one export record; an eBird requirement. Comments from such combined records are appended to one another so as not to lose granularity of the comments. However, this posed problems when the comments were the same (as in the case of export from BD Mobile to BD Desktop, and then onto eBird). Now, duplicate comments from such records are not appended.
  • V6.2 Build 25 – 16-Jun-2025
    • Changed View/Edit Sightings grid column caption from Photos to Media.
    • Changed popup menu caption from “Sort taxonomically, then by date” to “Sort taxonomically”. As that is what was always happening.
    • Removed column headers from HTML Report. Not necessary and confusing.
    • Removed Lifer checkbox column and replaced it with the word “LIFER” in the column if that sighting was a lifer.
    • Changed formatting for HTML report on group header rows.
  • V6.2 Build 24 – 13-Jun-2025
    • Enhanced the HTML Report available from the View & Edit Sightings window. It now counts attachments to Sightings by category: Image, Video, Audio, Other. It only puts a camera icon on a sighting detail line if that photo was included in the report after rating exclusion.


  • V6.2 Build 23 – 14-May-2025
    • Some minor tweaks to changes in Build 22 and 23.
  • V6.2 Build 22 – 8-May-2025
    • Enhanced and corrected many things concerning drag-n-drop on the Trips Maintenance window. Cleaner, performs better, acts as expected. No bugs.
  • V6.2 Build 21 – 7-May-2025
    • Added new Sightings button to the Trips Maintenance window. This feature was and is still available from the popup menu on the same form. Users requested easier access to this.
    • Updated message when user tries to drag-n-drop a Trip onto another Trip that does not contain the dragged trip dates. 
  • V6.2 Build 20 – 20-Apr-2025
    • The new World report will now work for any location in your hierarchy. Results will vary based on accuracy of checklist data for specified location. You can now generate a one-location report for continents (e.g. Africa) or sub-locations such as “Continental United States”.
    • Added debug code for tracking down a rarely seen issue for the Sightings View popup. 
    • Refactored and improved some file-handling code.
    • Rebuilt how Sightings Attachment files are named when copied to the attachments directory from the source location.
  • V6.2 Build 19 – 6-Apr-2025
    • Fixed issue created in Build 17, and removed in Build 18. Now working correctly.
    • Fixed issue with Hint not going away when the user selects an option from the dropdown list on a dropdown control. The Hint text went away if the user typed, but not if they select from the dropdown. Fixed now.
  • V6.2 Build 18 – 3-Apr-2025
    • Fixed bug found by users in Sightings Entry Setup. “Run-time Error 340 Control array element ‘1’ does not exist”. This is due to a new ‘hint’ feature I added recently. It is not interacting well with this particular window. I have disabled it for this build on this window in order to get users working right away. I will fix and release a new build with this feature working properly on this window shortly.
  • V6.2 Build 17 – 31-Mar-2025
    • Corrected bug in eBird files that are exported from eBird and imported into BD. eBird changed their export format. This only occurred if you had the “Add Misc eBird…” checkbox checked on the Import window. This is now fixed.
    • On the eBird import window and a couple other places, I incorrectly truncated the location of import files in the display. This has been corrected.
    • Added Alt+F3 to SmartSearch dropdown fields. When pressed, this will force containing ONLY search on the dropdown. It will only match on text found inside matches, not starting with. For example, typing “est” will match on “west”, but not on “establish”. Normally, typing “est” will return both, but starting-with matches would occur first. There are a few rare situations where the user may want to only search for embedded strings, excluding starting-with matches. Pressing Alt+F3 will toggle this setting on/off for the current dropdown. Once the dropdown loses focus, however, and you return to the dropdown normal function will be the default until you again toggle Alt+F3.
  • V6.2 Build 16 – 29-Mar-2025
    • Added more error trapping code to attempt to track down and disable the “rte 401, cannot show non-modal dialog” error when starting BD. It occurs for some users on startup after an upgrade.
    • Changed the SmartSearch sort order when typing in partial names. Typing in “wes tan” used to show all the matches with “Western Tanager” at the bottom. Many other partial matches with longer names were sorted to the top. Now the shortest matches sort to the top. These are generally what one is expecting when typing in partial names; e.g. first 2-3 letters of each word in a name.

  • V6.2 Build 15 – 26-Mar-2025
    • Attempted fix to a bug where the user would get “Runtime error 401 Can’t show non-modal form when modal form is displayed”. 
  • V6.2 Build 14 – 20-Mar-2025
    • Users found a bug that occurred under certain situations in the new report just released in Build 13. It calculated incorrect numbers for a country sometimes. This bug was found and corrected. Tested by a few users and everything seems good now. Also added a few enhancements to the report.
  • V6.2 Build 13 – 17-Mar-2025
    • Check for unique first, middle and last names when creating a new Observer. Prior to this, it would error if you tried to create an observer with the same name as already exists.
    • Added Hint capabilities to SmartSearch dropdown fields. A hint is ‘grayed text’ that gives the user a short explanation of what is expected in the field.
    • Created a new World Lifer Report. This report is a long awaited report for World Birders. Found under “Features | World Lifer Report”. This will gather statistics for every country in the World and report which countries will give you the greatest number of Lifers and Endemics. Also, how many species seen per country, and much more data. An invaluable tool for determining which Country to bird next in order to get the most lifers.
    • Updated Compare Sightings window when setting criteria for left and right sides. The trip dropdowns are sorted by Trip Start Date, Descending. This allows you to quickly pick to recent outings/trips for comparison.
    • In version 6.0, BD introduced a background database upgrade worker process to do most of the work when the program was upgraded. This background process can sometimes interfere with use of the main program. Starting with this version, you will be notified if the background worker process is running and that this might happen. It will also notify you when that background process completes.
  • V6.2 Build 12 – 12-Feb-2025
    • Fixed an issue with an update in Build 9 concerning adding attachments to sightings. The user would sometimes get ‘File not found’.
    • Further code updates and improvements on the rare bug fix in Build 10.
  • V6.2 Build 10 – 6-Feb-2025
    • For years, a very rare bug has bitten a few users. It was most often seen when attempting to update Checklist data from the Report Designer window, using the Checklist Tab and the Update Checklist button. This should be fixed now. I have code that triple-checks where the error used to occur and notifies the user if the problem occurs again. 
    • When producing a Checklist report in the Report Designer, and the user checks the Endemics checkbox, the report produces a count of Endemics (species found only at the specified location) and produces a count in the header. Now, the report also will count and display how many of those Endemics have been seen by the observer specified in the For Which Observer dropdown, if specified. If not specified, then no count is produced.
    • Corrected a once-in-30-years bug with Sightings Entry Setup. If you do not select a location filter, and check the “Do not ask…” box and click “No” on the alert, Sightings Entry will never start. Fixed in Build 10.
    • Added Lat/Lng Bounding Box functionality to View Sightings Setup. 
      • You must have defined Lat/Lng UDF fields in your database, and have some Sightings populated with valid values.
      • If so, you can specify a center Lat/Lng value and a Radius (in Miles, Km, Meters, or Yards). It will return all sightings within a box with sides radius-units from the center.
      • You can paste “lat, lng” into either lat or lng fields and it will be detected and both fields will be properly set with lat and lng.
      • If you have BD Mobile for Android (see page on this site), it automatically records and saves lat/lng values for every Sighting. It is free.

    • Updated eBird World Search form with new lat/lng paste functionality. You can paste “lat, lng” into either lat or lng fields and it will be detected and both fields will be properly set with lat and lng.
    • Enhanced the Sightings Document window Crop feature. It now allows dragging and resizing the Crop frame at the corners.
  • V6.2 Build 9 – 27-Jan-2025
    • Corrected a rare situation where the user might experience an error on startup. It reports ‘cannot show modeless dialog when modal dialog is present’, or something similar.
    • Added code to check and correct invalid Windows filenames when adding photos/files to Sightings.
  • V6.2 Build 8 – 8-Jan-2025
    • Correct issue with Exporting to Excel/CSV from the eBird World Search window. It was not properly setting the field delimiters and would show junk chars when opened in Excel.
    • Correct rarely seen issue on updating taxonomic lists. Do not update Thing Description if it is blank. Performance saver.
  • V6.2 Build 7 – 7-Dec-2024
    • Fix a rarely seen issue with the Reset button on the View/Edit Sightings window.
    • Updated code for possible bug on cClassificaitonLevel Class.
  • v6.2 Build 6 – 25-Nov-2024
    • Fix bug in Lifer Alerts when you edit a sighting during Sightings Entry. Lifer Alerts stopped displaying after editing a sighting during an entry session. You had to exit the entry session and start anew to reset the Lifer Alerts and start getting them again.
    • Correct species sightings popup for the Compare Observers feature. If mouse is not over grid, do not popup.
    • If copying attachments in the View/Edit Sightings window, and a Rating was specified in Sightings Setup, only copy those attachments that agree with the Ratings specified. Before, it used to copy all attachments regardless.
  • v6.2 Build 5 – 11-Oct-2024
    • Created a workaround to an issue that occurs rarely on some computer configurations. The issue is only seen when the computer is without an internet connect when you start BD. On some computers you will get a message titled “Internet Access Error”, followed by another message stating “Run-time error ‘401’: Cannot show non-modal form when a modal form is displayed”. In one customer instance, this workaround was tested and did solve the problem.
  • v6.2 Build 4 – 28-Sep-2024
    • Fix bug on HTML Report creation wherein a rare common name combination would cause invalid HTML creation and the report to fail.
    • Fixed bug with Detailed Report from Counts form accidentally created by previous code change.
    • On the eBird Sightings Export form, correctly remember the last used setting for “Are you reporting all species?”. This got cleared on Incidental exports. That no longer implicitly occurs. The user must explicitly clear it.
    • Create new Match button on the Sightings Import window (File | Import/Export…, Sightings Tab). This button allows users to defined permanent name matches on import from eBird Sightings files. Prior to this, it would not remember your name matches (such as “Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)” to “Rock Pigeon” on imports. Now you can define a list of names that will always be remembered when importing from eBird files. It comes by default with the Rock Pigeon name match pre-defined.
  • v6.2 Build 3 – 29-Jul-2024
    • More code corrections for Build 2 bug on dropdown controls.
    • Fix small issue with World Sightings Search form on searching for eBird region and hotspot names.
  • v6.2 Build 2 – 15-Aug-2024
    • Corrected a rare bug on only 2 customer systems involving presetting dropdown controls with remembered settings.
  • V6.2 Build 1 – 10-Jul-2024
    • Fixed issue when using the popup menu item for “Show Sightings for This Trip” on the Trips Maintenance window. A change to the code for 6.2.0 fixed a problem that had been here for a long time. Unfortunately, the fix caused this feature to take > 1 min to complete. This has been fixed now. It takes less than 1 sec. 
    • Fixed an issue when updating eBird locations/species, where if a call to the eBird API produced no data, BD crashed. It no longer crashes, and moves onto the next location/species instead.
  • V6.2 Build 0 – 2-Jul-2024
    • Updated the Find Any Feature (F1) window to include as many features as possible available in BD. Now finding any functionality is as simple as pressing F1 and typing in a few keywords.
    • The Sightings Document window has upgraded the Crop feature. It is now more intuitive and functions like other crop tools. You can resize the drawn crop area by clicking and dragging on any edge.
    • Fixed bug where importing Checklist Data from the Checklist TAB in the Reports window would say it found zero names.
    • Added feature to dropdown menu in Sightings View/Edit window allowing users to create any new Thing from this window. Pressing “T” on this window will auto-activate this function.
    • Optimized Name Search rebuilds to reduce the number of times this happens due to changes in names, etc.
    • Added the Family name to the ‘Thing Xref’ window. e.g. [Family] Genus species
    • Updated the new Find Any Feature (F1) functionality. It will now search for any words entere in any order for matches. Prior to this entering “one bird” would only find topics that had “one bird” in the text. But now it will find any topic with both “one” and “bird” anywhere in the text.
    • New feature for eBird Sightings Imports. There is a new checkbox on the Sightings Import Tab. If checked, it will auto-create a Trip for the sightings being imported and attach those sightings to that Trip. This is already done for BD Mobile imports.
    • Fixed bug in the Import Checklist code that would fail under rare circumstances.
    • There is a new feature that is available from the Trip maintenance window. It will summarize your trips by month or year, specifying number of outings, total time and average time.
      If you use BD Mobile for Android, and have it configured to do so, it will automatically create Trips on each Outing uploaded. This is a great way to track your time spent birding each month and year. For this to work, you need to have trips defined and then have your sightings attached to those trips. There is an option on this window to Show on Startup.
    • Corrected issue where pressing Ctrl+N on the Sightings Documents window doesn’t popup the add new file window to the front.
    • Added new Memory checkbox to the User-defined Fields/Data section of the Keyboard Entry window. If checked, then UDF settings from the previous sighting are not cleared after clicking Add Sighting. A convenient way to set the same UDF values on subsequent sightings.
    • When Cloning sightings in the Sightings View/Edit, the Name field is automatically selected and Focus is set to the Name field. A convenience update.
    • Corrected the “NC?” (Not Countable) column in the Sightings View/Edit window. It used to be labeled as “Countable”, when it really meant “Not Countable”.
    • Corrected some instances where the Sightings History popup window on the Sightings View/Edit window (when the mouse is paused over the Common Name column for 1.5s) does not auto-hide.
    • Fixed bug where selecting for only the First Sighting of a Thing in the Sightings View Setup window would correctly pick the first Sighting entered when multiple first sightings of the same Thing were entered on the same date.
    • Fixed bug where some comments were not correctly shown if they contained double-quotes, on the Sightings View/Edit window.
    • Fixed bug where filtering on a Trip did not properly select all Sightings from all descendants of the selected Trip also.
    • Fixed bug when creating HTML report from Sightings View/Edit window. In rare circumstances, strings were not displayed properly in UTF-8 format.
    • Fixed bug in HTML report where it would crash if the size of the report exceeded 32MB in size.
    • Fixed scrolling bug in UDF section of Sightings Keyboard Entry window. Sometimes the bottom UDF field was partially hidden.
    • Created a new feature available from the Life List Tab of the Reporting (F7) window.
      Many users keep photos of their birds, butterflies, etc. in BD. If you do so, you can produce a sharable HTML photo report of all the species for a given location.
      For example, I wanted to produce a report of all the butterflies (or birds) seen at my home. It should list all the species I have seen and the top X photos for each species. I have dozens of each species rated from 1 to 5.
      You can specify the Image Size, Max Photos, Min Rating of any photo to include. It will pick the X top-rated photos to display.
      You can also append any text or image file(s) to the report; such as an abundance chart produced in BD!