Filter records in the desktop app, how-to
Filters let you search through your records in a convenient way. Below are the common filters found throughout Bird Journal.
The filter bar hides and shows as you scroll up and down, allowing you to see as much of your content as possible, while still allowing fast access to filters.
Filters filter each other. For example, if you filter to the year 2005, only locations visited in 2005 will be available to select. This makes it quicker to find what you're looking for and avoids wasting time seeing "No matches" in many cases.
Location filter
The location filter provides suggestions as you type. It accepts partial letters, for example, entering the letters ‘M H’ will result in the location filter filtering the location names to words beginning with ‘M’ or ‘H’, see below:
Date
The date filter lets you filter your records by year, month and day. You can filter to year or month alone, but both year and month must be set before a day can be selected. Only dates with observations are available to select, making it easier to find what you need.
End Date
Once a date has been set, it is possible to set the end date filter, which looks much like the date filter. End date is inclusive. Year to year, year-month to year-month and date to date ranges are allowed.
Species/Taxon
There are three fields for species filtering. The category lets you filter by Birds and other wildlife like butterflies and dragonflies etc. To the right of the category drop-down box you can filter by Species, Genus, Family or Order (taxonomic rank). There there's the species/taxon filter itself which you can set by typing into it.
For example, leaving the category filter unset, leaving the rank set to Species and entering the letters 'G' & 'W' searches through species of all wildlife categories for names beginning with ‘G’ and ‘W’.
Checklist
The checklist filter lists the checklists and taxonomies that you have used to record observations. If you are on the species page for example you can set the checklist filter to show you all the species you’ve recorded according to a specific checklist. Note, that the checklist filter does not currently limit observations to those within the geographical range of the selected checklist.
Properties
Property filters refer to the custom properties set within your Journal. Properties can be set for both entries and observations. In the example below there is an entry property called Wind Direction, allowing us to filter to all records with a specific wind direction.
There are three types of property: textbox, checkbox and drop-down list. Textbox properties are not filterable.