The easiest way to enter data is to use your Field Card and enter the highest breeding code for each species found after each day of atlassing. It is a good idea to use a different color of ink when you go back into a block so that the entries for that date will stand out. After hitting "Enter Observations" and entering your block number, choose "Single Day", and hit "Continue". Enter the date in MM/DD/YYYY format. Then, for each sighting, choose the breeding code from the drop-down list. If you entered a breeding code by mistake, to delete the sighting, choose "-" from the drop-down list.

Hitting SUBMIT is analogous to hitting SAVE when working on a document. A problem on your computer or Cornell’s could result in loss of data.

If you have a sighting that is not on the list of species for your block, click on "Add Species", select the species from the list, and click on "Add". This does not affect species you have already entered.

When entering a Volunteer’s data, you should log in as that person, using their password, or the system will intersperse their data with yours. This is not fatal, but it will be hard to find your own data when you want to double-check or edit it.

After entering some sightings and hitting Submit, if you coded a sighting as "Probable" or "Confirmed" outside of the safe dates, you will get an "OOPS" message to Confirm or Edit the entry. This is a warning – scroll to that species, and if you mis-typed the date, correct it; otherwise, just click on "Confirm", then "Submit" again.

NOTE – this has been revised for 2005.

After entering a group of birds and hitting Submit, you may get a screen that begins "Please review…." – showing any asterisked or bold species which need location and notes, followed by the rest of the sightings you entered. At this time you should enter the location and notes and hit Submit. If you hit Submit again without entering the location and notes, there is a new option – you may check the box: "I'll input any missing required notes or coordinates later". You will not lose other data.

The system will keep track of any of your sightings for which you still need to input notes and location. At "My Home", there will be a message: "You have N incomplete observations". You can click on the message and it will take you directly to the sighting so that you can complete the entry.

Entering Location

If you don’t have the exact GPS coordinates for a sighting, click on "Plot" for a small map of your block. The directions here are self-explanatory and work well. You pick a point on the map, and it is converted to coordinates.

As you enter your sightings, the system saves the dates. When you go into "Enter Block Effort", it will display, under the heading "Incomplete", a blank record for each date for which you had a sighting in that block. The dates are in descending order – newest date first. To get them in ascending order, to match your field card, click on the "Date" column. You only need to check the TIME OF DAY and enter the number of hours. Then you MUST HIT SAVE after each record. Don't go down the list, entering all the hours, because when you hit SAVE, it only saves that one and the rest of the hours you typed in are gone. When you save hours, that record will move down under the heading "All Effort".

We should keep track of the time of day each time we atlas.

-- To Correct Problems Caused by Date Errors

If you mis-typed a date when you entered your sightings, you need to edit the sighting, but also, the incorrect date will still be listed under "Block Effort" as "Incomplete". To get rid of it, you have to enter some hours on that date. That will move it down under the heading "All Effort", and you can click on "Delete" to delete it. This erroneous date will also be listed under "Other Effort" as "Incomplete"; use the same method – enter some hours on that date to move it down under "All Effort". Then you can click on "Delete".

--To Add a Date

There will likely be some days that you atlassed in a particular block and there is NO blank Effort record for that day/block. This could easily happen if all the birds seen that day were later upgraded. You will need to click on "Add New Effort" and enter the Block, Date, Time of Day, and length of Time.

To enter your mileage and travel time, click on "Other Effort". This is NOT block-specific, but there will be a blank record for each day you atlassed. After entering the miles and total travel time for that day, hit "Save". If you worked on more than one block that day, you need to enter the total miles and total travel time. Don’t forget to add the data-entry time.

You should enter your Effort for each block before entering sightings for another block. This is not fatal, either, but – you will have a multitude of blank records, as described above, and it will be more difficult to enter your hours and time of day.

As soon as you have entered any data, you can click on "My Home" to see your Total Block Hours, Other Hours, Miles, Total Submissions, and Total Species.

This screen may also have the message "You have Incomplete Block Effort" or "You have Incomplete Other Effort". This means that you reported a sighting for that day and did not enter any hours or miles for that day. Either enter the hours/miles for that date or see "Correcting Problems Caused by Date Errors", above.

To check data for a particular block, enter that block number on the main screen. You can then click on "2004-2008 Results"; this will show a printable list of sightings for that block in taxonomical order, with the highest breeding code for each species. It does not show the sighting date, location, notes, or multiple records of the same species. You can access this data for any block, not just your own.

To check all of your data, from "My Home", click on "View or Modify My Observations". This will return every sighting that you have entered. To display just the sightings for a particular species or a particular block, you can enter the species name or the block number in the spaces provided. These lists can be sorted by clicking on the column heading. The default is All sightings, sorted in Ascending order by Block Number. To sort by species, click on either "Alphabetic" or Taxonomic"; you can also sort by Date or Breeding Evidence. To sort in the opposite order, click on the same column heading a second time. (e.g., clicking on "Breeding Evidence" will sort starting with Confirmed (NY) and ending with Observed (O); clicking on "Breeding Evidence" again will sort starting with O and ending with NY.)

If you need to edit or delete a sighting, click on "Edit" or "Delete" for the appropriate sighting on this listing, and follow the instructions.

By clicking on "View Results", you can enter any species, and a map of Pennsylvania will be displayed, showing that species’ breeding status in each block that has so far been reported.