Birdstack Import Problems

Aborting an import and starting over is painful. Deleting the offending dataset from the dashboard is supposed to negate the whole batch but I still had 1996′s records in my observations after doing this. Admittedly the instructions on the actual import page say that the sightings are ‘fully imported when you click “Save”’; but this does contradict ‘to cancel the entire import operation, return to the main import page and delete the pending dataset’ in the help.

Would uploading the file again duplicate my sightings? Yup, but I’ve decided to suck it up. There are not so many of them and until I can pull counts out of the data it’s not an issue and even then they’ll only be off by at most a handful.

Now the subspecies problem: I’ve decided to rename those distinctions I do keep to their most generic name, e.g. white wagtail has become plain old wagtail. Then Birdstack will prompt me each time and I can fill in a full record with the subspecies in the tags. I believe I can then list and report on this field.

Now for good news. It looks like the first subalpine warbler that I saw, in Majorca, is actually Moltoni’s warbler and hence a different IOC species to the bird I later saw in Greece. Life list 1071! And my uploaded list to the end of 1996 is 193, which still matches the total on Wildlife Recorder. So far, so good.

Related posts:

1. Importing to Birdstack
2. Birdstack Import Complete
3. Scientific Names in Birdstack