Newbie Combo Box - Form/subform Dlookup ?

Here goes my problem, and how I am attempting to solve it, but I am open to advice.

I have a table that contains all of the bird species in the US; (fields: common name, scientific name, species ID) I want to be able to update another table, (birds to chase) with particular bird species that I have not yet seen, (fields: species ID, common name, scientific name) and link that to a sub form that links to another table (chase birds locations) which shows geographic location data as to where I might be able to see new/unseen birds; (fields: species ID, date, other geographic data).

My problem is this. I created a form for the unseen birds table that allows me to only select a bird using a combo box of birds from the larger table of US birds. I want to select a bird using the common name in this box, and have it automatically populate the scientific name and the species ID into the birds to chase table. I link this tables to the location table using species ID.

A workaround that I have used is to close the form, run two update queries that populate the proper fields for scientific name and species ID and to re-open the forms. Although this works, when I return to the form it does not return me to the proper record, so that I can enter data into the sub-form.

Obviously this is a workaround and will work for me in the short run, but I want to learn how to do it properly within Access 2003.

I'm not a programmer and hence do not have access to the .NET tools or Visual Basic. Any hints for me out there?

Patrick

Victor, Montana