BirdingCentral User Manual - Getting Started
The goal of Birding Central is to allow you to easily track your bird sightings online, and to share information on sightings and birding locations with other users.
If you are new to birding or haven't kept a bird list in the past, you can simply start entering sightings. Birding Central will automatically update your life list and allow you to see your sightings by date, state, location or species.
If you already keep track of your sightings, perhaps in a journal or using checklists, it may be useful to enter this information into Birding Central. There are two ways you can do this:
- Enter your Existing Sightings - You can enter your existing records into Birding Central just as you would new sightings. If you use commercial or other software to track your sightings, we may be able to import the information directly into birding central for you. Contact Us to let us know what software you use, and we'll try to help. The advantage of entering your existing sightings is that the sightings will be included in the relevant state and locations reports.
- Create a Starting List - A starting list is simple a checklist of the birds you have already seen when you started using Birding Central. It allows you to include these species in your life list without having to enter all the individual sightings. The disadvantage is that the species will not be included in any state or location lists.
You can use a combination of these two approaches. For example, you could create a startint list with all the species you have already seen, and enter specific sightings for some of the species to ensure they are included in the relevant state and locations lists.