Southeast Arizona Monthly Checklists -- General Information

NOTE: The brief information on this page is about usage only. Please read the detailed "Checklist Information" document (available from the link at left) to gain a full understanding of the checklist content.

These checklists cover southeast Arizona and provide detailed information for each month. I created the checklists to help you identify target species for the month of your visit. However, they obviously have greater utility beyond this primary purpose.

I published the original versions in 1996. The most recent release was published in October 2009. Please let me know about any errors -- thanks.

October 2009
This release corrects a few errors and incorporates minor changes in status and abundance for a number of species since the last release in 2005. For example, the formerly rare and local Eurasian Collared-Dove is now uncommon and quite widespread. Target list "forms" are no longer supported with this release.

March 2005
This release was a complete revision of my original checklists created in 1996. In addition to revised content in terms of status and abundance, this release provides checklists in either Clements or AOU order formatted as HTML, WORD and PDF documents. I

Copyright Information
Anyone can reproduce and distribute the checklists in paper form for personal birding purposes.
B & Bs, tour companies, guides and other birding businesses may print and distribute them to clients without my permission, provided a fee is not charged and that checklists are printed and distributed unmodified with my identification and copyright intact.

Checklists may not be copied in electric form other than mentioned below in "Generating Target Lists".
Checklists may not be displayed on a website and may not be incorporated into another body of work.
All such use and commercial use of any type is explicitly prohibited.

Please honor the copyright. Years of grunt work went into the data gathering and software design to create the checklists -- and it's an ongoing task. Please respect my work by not copying them for any type of commercial purpose.

Checklist Area
The checklists cover an area from Mexico to just north of Dudleyville (latitude 112); and from New Mexico to just west of Sells (longitude 33). The coverage area is shown on this map and is the generally accepted definition of southeast Arizona. Data is derived from currently published  information and from my own observations since 1993.

Checklist Taxonomy
Checklists are available in Clements (2004) and AOU (7th edition ) taxonomic order. Everybody has their own preference. I'm an AviSys user so I have to put up with Clements order. However, I much prefer my finches and House Sparrow at the bottom of the page a la AOU. You can toggle the order by clicking the "Switch to AOU" or "Switch to Clements" link. Be sure to select the order before displaying a checklist.

After selecting the order, click the monthly links in the appropriate boxes to display checklists in one of the following formats.

HTML format
This format is single column and intended for general browser viewing. If printed, checklists will be about 8-9 pages.

Microsoft WORD and Adobe PDF documents
Both these formats are two pages, four columns per page. You can easily create a three-fold checklist for field use by saving locally and double sided printing each page. Stiff card stock works best for this of course. If you use regular paper, you don't even need to print double sided - just lay the two separately printed pages back to back before folding to create a thicker, more substantial result.

Users who own WORD software can also edit and mark up the checklists. Note: If the checklists do not display properly in four columns, make sure that "Print Layout" is selected in WORD "view options" and set the magnification to "fit page". Also, make sure that the left, right and top margins in WORD are set to 0.3 inch and the bottom margin is set to 0.25 inch. Checklists should automatically open in a new window. If not, right-click on the monthly links if you have problems getting the checklists to fill the display.

For problem free formatting and printing (famous last words), use the PDF versions that can easily be read by anyone who has the free Adobe reader.

Printing Tip
When printing a WORD or PDF document, make sure that scaling is set to "none" in the printer dialog box. Depending on the printer that you use, you may get a warning message from the printing software about the document being "outside of the printer physical margins". Continue anyway and see how it looks. If too much clipping occurs, you will need to select "scale to fit" when printing and just hope that it still looks okay.

Generating Target Lists
With the October 2009 release, I've removed the "target list form" option that allowed target lists to be submitted directly via email. Unfortunately, this feature was just too unreliable and didn't function properly with many browser/email software combinations. However, there are a couple of ways to use the checklists to submit a list of target birds to me.

The quick and dirty method is simply to cut and paste the HTML checklist into a text editor and delete the species that are not of interest.

To copy the checklist, display the checklist then right-click on the main checklist window. Click “select all” from the pop-up menu;  right-click again and select “copy” from the pop-up menu. Paste the selected text into your editor of choice. Perform the deletions and save the edited file to your local machine. Send as an email attachment (or paste into the body of the email).

If you are a Microsoft Word user, you can mark up the Word format checklist (just “x” the boxes, or highlight each species in color); save the marked up version to your local machine than send as an email attachment.
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