BirdsEye Bird Finding Guide

It wasn’t that long ago, when thinking about all the birds that could be close by but that I’ll never know were there, that I wished for some sort of device that could tell me all the birds in the immediate vicinity. That’s just wishful thinking, of course, since such a device is impossible. But then again, I didn’t foresee that a day would be coming soon when a device could not only tell me what birds others were seeing but could also guide me to them, much less that the device would be my own cell phone! That day has arrived thanks to BirdsEye Bird Finding Guide.

BirdsEye is an application, or app, that runs on iPhones and related devices (iPad and iPod Touch). Basically, it is a mobile portal into the incredible wealth of bird distribution data that is eBird. Within the United States (minus Hawaii) and Canada, BirdsEye can be used to either find particular birds or birding hotspots.

The main screen offers a multitude of options. Each of the main functions will be walked through, but I need to mention a couple things first. You will want to select your birding location first, as most of the app’s features key off of that. You can have it use your current location, or a given country/state/city combination.

One of the first things I noticed about BirdsEye was that it had a life list function. My initial thought was why would I want to enter my life list into yet another application? But then I realized that this is not intended to keep track of the birds that you have seen as much as those you have not seen. One of the best features of this app is that it highlights birds not on your life list. This makes it incredibly easy to filter results based on birds that you need.

Find Nearby Birds

This first option brings up a list of birds, in taxonomic order, that have been seen near your chosen location. The buttons on top can be used to filter the list:

• All – birds seen in the last three years
• Recent – birds seen in the last 30 days
• Star – “notable” birds and those not on your life list

Tapping on a bird will bring up its species account, from which you can see where it has been seen, as described below.

Notable Sightings and Rare Birds

This gives you a list of notable or rare birds (toggled via buttons at the top of the screen) reported within a specified distance from your location. “Notable” birds are those that are reported in unexpected places or times. They could be legitimate vagrants or early/late in the year. “Rare” birds are those that are truly rare on a continental level. The settings button in the top-left corner (looks like a gear) allows you to customize the distance BirdsEye will look for birds in each of these categories – 50 miles, 100, 250, 500, 1000, or all of North America.

Locate a Bird

Here you will find the entire list of species included in the app. Again, tapping on a bird will bring up the…

Species Accounts

BirdsEye includes 857 species (in version 1.3) that have been found in North America. The taxonomy is a little out-of-date, with neither Winter Wren nor Whip-poor-will having been split yet. The default screen presents a thumbnail picture of the bird, text, and some buttons along the bottom.

Tapping the photo enlarges it to full-screen, and many have one or two additional pictures accessed by a swipe. Overall, the photos are great – interesting and of high-quality. They give a good idea of what the bird looks like, usually at least showing male and female, but this should not be confused with a real field guide.

Most species have one or more sounds, played using a simple, but effective, interface via the speaker button. The selection of sounds is good, but not as extensive as field guide apps. But if you don’t have a more extensive collection, you could easily use this app to study or confirm vocalizations, or as playback in the field (responsibly, of course).

The screenful of text (by Kenn Kaufman!) summarizes the species’ habitat and habits. It gives a nice bit of flavor, but again, the focus isn’t identification. I consider these features to be, essentially, a nice bonus since they are not central to BirdsEye’s main purpose. Although they are not robust enough to serve as a true field guide, it is nice to have them available within the app so the user doesn’t have to switch to other resources to lookup basic information.

What will probably be the most-used portion of the species pages are accessed with the buttons on the bottom-right. The icon with the bird on a pin brings up the familiar Google map overlaid with sightings of the given species. The list-looking icon gives the locations in scrollable list form, from nearest to farthest. From either option, you can access the list of birds seen at that location and get directions.

View Birding Hotspots

If you’re looking for a good place to bird, this function will give you all the nearby eBird “hotspots” by way of map or list. Hotspots are public birding locations designated by users of eBird. Again, you can check out the birds seen at each location and get directions.

Issues

I haven’t encountered any problems using BirdsEye, but there are a few things that should be pointed out:

• BirdsEye does not upload data to eBird. There is a separate app for that – BirdsEye BirdLog.
• The use of eBird for data is a limitation. The app’s usefulness, in large part, depends upon birders submitting checklists to eBird. Thankfully, many birders are now doing that. But this does mean that BirdsEye will not completely replace books and internet resources for finding birds.
• It would be nice if locations could be saved or bookmarked for future use.
• There is a BirdsEye Lite version that includes most of the same features, but only 135 birds. The limited number of birds effectively cripples it, but it should give a good idea of how the app operates. That is exactly what limited versions of apps are supposed to do. The problem is that it costs $1.99. It really should be free, like most other lite apps. The only reason I can think of to get BirdsEye Lite is if you only want to use it to find birding hotspots. The Lite version is no longer available.
• The price, $19.99, is high relative to most apps. But that’s about the price of a single bird-finding book, making this not such a bad deal.

Recommendation

BirdsEye Bird Finding Guide is an amazing tool for the traveling birder, making it much easier to find birds and birding locations. I can’t imagine going anywhere unfamiliar without it.