Entering Sighting Records

Entering sighting records is one of the simplest things to do in AviSys. You just walk up to the program and double-click (or press Enter) on a bird. That starts a sighting entry sequence.

Each of the elements of recording a sighting is covered in other Help topics. Click on a highlighted/underlined element, below, to view that topic, then click "Back" to return here.

You are first asked for a sighting date, via the Date Entry dialog.

After entering the date, you are prompted to select a Place for the sighting via the Places Tables. If you don't understand the Places scheme, we highly recommend you read Chapter 1, The Fundamentals in the manual. Birding data recording is not a trivial application. You need to consider your strategy and data requirements, and how they can be applied to AviSys' powerful Places facility. Without a little study and planning you will not get what you should out of AviSys.

After selecting the sighting Place, you are presented the Comments dialog. The comment can also include a bird quantity, Attributes and Key Words, as made available in the Comments dialog.

If there is no quantity it is considered to be 1 for Census (Spreadsheet) Report purposes.

When the record is complete, you are taken to the Record Confirmation dialog to confirm the record. (You can edit your work there, if necessary.)

When you OK the confirmation, the record is immediately written to the sighting file on your hard drive. There is no need to do a Save when exiting AviSys -- your data is always saved the instant you enter it. If you change your mind later, you can go to the Journal and edit or delete the record; or if AviSys has been closed and reopened, List the record and edit or delete it.

Fix plus Triple - for Speed

Once you have entered one record, if you have more records to enter for the same date and/or Place, you can Fix any of the sighting elements, including the comments or parts of the comments, so you don't have to re-enter them in subsequent records.

Further, because the Confirmation dialog comes up with the mouse pointer on its OK button, and if you have everything "fixed," just "triple-click" the species and you will record the sighting and OK it, all with one mouse action.