I've been delving into bird watching for a couple of years now, and bird journaling even more recently. It's an awesome family time with my sons: learning together about birds and how to use the digital camera! There are a lot of birding software out there, but I found that Wings 4.3 has the potential to be the happy medium between just the ol' database program versus the near $100 University type. I was impressed at the extensive organization, categorizing, and details of Wings. I do wish that there was an ornithological key of some kind, otherwise the program is at the mercy of the user's judgement. Perhaps this is the newbie inside of me speaking, but it would also be nice to have a diagram of labeled parts of a bird, and what physiological characteristics one looks out for.

Now for the downside. I was ready to purchase the software until I read this on the home site, "What happens if I let my subscription expire? You will be able to browse, search, sort and export your sightings after your subscription expires. You will not be able to add new records or generate reports." What?!? As soon as your subscription expires, you're stuck with what you had done previously! What if I just took an even better picture of a Plain Titmouse? I imagine myself trying to make a mad dash in gathering all the information I can before the proverbial clock strikes Midnight! Bong! Bong! Bong...Please, let paid customers have Wings for life, or at least be "stuck" with the version they purchased. Don't cripple the software that was rightfully paid for!

Very thorough & professional implementation with tons of options and birding info. You'll need to manual to figure it out and it's a bit much for the casual back-yard birder, but if you're really into birding then you'll find everything you want for record keeping in this app. [Check out eBird.org for an online database that lets you post your own observations and pull up summaries of all posters from anywhere in the country.]