SightingsTOcsv

If you are interested in exporting your AviSys records to eBird, one big problem is that the CSV exports that AviSys does do not include the text of your AviSys Field Notes.

I have created a standalone program, named SightingsTOcsv.exe, that dumps all of your AviSys data, and includes Field Note text with the Comments.

Version 1.1 August 2021

Enhancements

1. New option "MyEBird", which is described below
2. Attempt to set "X" counts when appropriate, as described below
3. Ignore corrupted data

How to use:

Download the file SightingsTOcsv.exe to your AviSys data folder. Open a Powershell window or command window in that folder. Enter the command .\SightingsTOcsv with an option.

There are three possible options:

• .\SightingsTOcsv eBird
• .\SightingsTOcsv MyEBird
• .\SightingsTOcsv AviSys

The program will create two files, a .csv file and a file named FieldNotes.txt. The file FieldNotes.txt just includes the contents of all your field notes, without the rest of the data. I have found that this makes interesting browsing, but the file isn't actually used for anything else.

The .csv file is named as follows:

Each .csv file contains all of your sightings, sorted by date and location. The different types of .csv are as follows:

AviSys.sightings.eBird.csv

The file is in a format similar to what the builtin AviSys export to eBird produces, except that it includes your field notes. The data is almost ready to export **TO** eBird, except as noted below.

AviSys.sightings.MyEBird.csv

The file is in a format similar to the format of the MyEBirdData.csv file that you can export **FROM** eBird. You may be able to use this file to export your AviSys data to some other listing program besides eBird. I have tested it successfully with Scythebill but it should work with other programs that accept the MyEBirdData.csv file.

AviSys.sightings.AviSys.csv

The file is in a format similar to what the builtin AviSys export produces, except that it includes your field notes.

There are a few things that you will want to check in the .csv file before exporting it to another program.

• SightingsTOcsv does not provide any features for subsetting observations. If you want to export only certain observations you will need to create the full .csv file and then edit it to delete unwanted observations.
• AviSys defaults to recording a count of 1 individual if you do not specifically enter a count; there is no distinction between a count of 1 meaning no count entered and a count of 1 meaning you recorded seeing 1 individual. In the .csv files, if all observations for a particular date and location have a count of 1, the count will be replaced with X, meaning no count. There may be cases where you will want to edit to change Xs to 1.
• The first row of the spread sheet provides column headings, to make it easier to understand the columns in Excel. In the AviSys.sightings.eBird.csv file, you must delete this row before uploading to eBird.
• If you edit the .csv in Excel or similar spreadsheet program, it may change the date format in an undesirable way. In particular, Scythebill will not be able to import the AviSys.sightings.MyEBirdData.csv file after saving from Excel, unless you set the date format in the date column. You must set it to the YYYY-MM-DD format.
• In the AviSys.sightings.MyEBirdData.csv file, the column “Number of Observers” has a value of 1 throughout. You might want to change this in some cases.

The program code can be found at https://github.com/kfiala/AviSysDataAccess.