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Help Lesson 1 - The Windows |
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Location: Home ► Help Lesson 1 |
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Database Status Window
Attributes and Groups
Values Window
Matches
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Database Status Window |
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When you first go to the WhatBird search page this small window
appears at the top. It tells you the total number of birds in the
database (it grows as we add new birds). There is also a link called
All Birds that will open a new
window containing icon representations of all the birds in the
database. WARNING: On a slow connection All birds may take a while
to load. |
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Attributes and Groups |
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Attributes are icons that represent characteristics of the bird,
such as location, shape, color, etc. There are many attributes for
searching but to keep things simple the search defaults to the 7 most
basic. You can see the other attributes by clicking on a name in the
Groups area, such as Pattern, Head, Body, etc. To start your search
you simply click on an attribute icon. For example if you click on Size you
will be presented with a new page the contains 5 basic sizes of
birds. |
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Values Window |
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After clicking on an attribute, such as Size, the "values" for that
attribute are displayed. For the example below we see that you can
choose from 5 values for size. So if you think your bird is Very
Small you would click the check box next to Size 1. Very Small (3 -
5 in). Note you can select more than one size in case you are not
sure how big the bird is. However this will result in more birds being matched, and
since your goal is to fine the one bird you saw, this will not
narrow the search as much. After you have selected the Size you must click
the Next button to see what birds have been found by WhatBird. |
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Matches |
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After you have selected the value for your attribute and clicked the
Next button the Matches window appears. It always shows just the
first 12 birds that have been found. In the upper right corner
you see how many total birds have been found, in this example
Found: 1 - 12 of 66. This represents all the birds of North
America which are considered Very Small (3 - 5 inches) in size. To
see all 66 birds you would click on the All Matches link. You
can also click on any of the numbers in the link called Result
which will present the next group of 12 birds that have been
found, e.g. birds 13 to 24. While the search is not over, at any
time you can click on any bird icon and go directly to the species
account for that bird. We will learn about that in the next lesson.
Click Next Lesson. |
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