Introduction to J-Bird

What J-Bird does

J-Bird provides a system for recording observations of birds. It is oriented toward recording information made on single-day birding trips. Information recorded includes region, locality, key words, date, notes about the trip, observer, species seen and notes about individual species. From information stored in J-Bird, you can generate trip reports, lists of species observed in your life or in various regions or periods of time, and you can generate tables that display counts of species that have been observed in various regions and periods of time.

What J-Bird doesn't do

J-Bird does not provide access to encyclopedic information, images or sounds.

License

The J-Bird program is free and freely distributable under terms of the GNU General Public License.

J-Bird is distributed with some third-party components that are not part of J-Bird itself and are subject to their own terms of use. The underlying database engine Mckoi SQL Database is distributed under terms of the GNU General Public License. The dBase database engine that is used to import data from dbf files is used with permission of its author. The list of world bird that is distributed with J-Bird is included under terms specified by its maintainer. Terms regarding use of the list are specified below. Alternative lists of species are available but are not distributed with J-Bird. Instructions for making use of those lists are provided below. Finally, the sound files that are distributed with J-Bird are distributed with the permission of their owner for use with J-Bird. The sound files are (P) Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics, Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, all rights reserved.

As indicated in the GNU General Public License, this program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Warning

J-Bird is still alpha software. Expect bugs and limited functionality.

User support system

Free software comes without someone at the other end of a phone line, waiting to answer your questions. Developers of free software have lives and real jobs and cannot spend all their free time answering questions. The community of free software users largely supports itself through public forums. Forums e-mail lists are available at J-Bird's SourceForge page. The usenet news group rec.birds may also become a useful forum for support.