If you're a keen bird watcher, you probably have notebooks full of sightings and maybe sketches, if you're any good with a pencil. You almost certainly have digital photos too but how can you consolidate them? The answer is to buy birding software.

There are many types of bird watching software on the market but this review will concentrate on Thayer Birding Software. The brainchild of Peter Thayer, an avid bird watcher since the 1980s, this software was created to fill a gap in the market. When Peter wanted to record his sightings, he found that there was no adequate birding software available so he set about designing some himself, starting with the use of a Microsoft Access Database program. However, that didn't have the capability to store photos so he went on to create the forerunner of today's Thayer Birding Software.

The latest version of this software comes on two discs containing information on 957 species of birds. There are more than 2,800 high quality photographs and over 700 songs, including mating calls and alarm calls. The photos can be enlarged and printed on your home printer. In addition, there are around 550 videos of birds, with range maps and abundance maps covering most of North America.

One fantastic feature of this software is that you can download the bird songs to your iPod or other MP3 player. For identification purposes, a photo of the bird is included with each recording.

The Gold Edition of Thayer Birding Software enables you to import and store your own data, be it photos, videos or song recordings and these are integrated with the existing data so that you can compare your own with that of the software. You can also store your list of when and where you have spotted birds but you are advised to keep backups of this data as other programs have been known to become corrupted and lose all the stored data.

There is an identification wizard which enables you to enter details of a bird you have spotted including colour, size, location and terrain and you will see a gallery of photos of birds which match your description. By zooming in on the photos, you will be able to identify your sightings.