BirdsEye Bird Finding Guide (iOS & Android app)
Free + optional membership
Pros
- eBird sightings of what birds are nearby.
- Syncs with your eBird lists
- iPhone or Android
- Paid membership of regional or worldwide coverage.
- Rare and notable sightings.
Cons
- No range maps
- Requires internet connection if content not pre-loaded
- Not a traditional field guide app.
- Outside of North America, membership does not include vocalizations. These require and in-app purchase.
“A landmark in birding.”
( John Fitzpatrick, Director, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology)
“Best invention for birding since binoculars”
(Kenn Kaufman, author of the famed Kaufman Field Guides to Birds of North America)
Publisher’s Description:
BirdsEye is a unique and powerful tool that helps you discover the birds around you and find the birds you want to see. See more birds with BirdsEye!
BirdsEye is the perfect app for birders of any level, naturalists and educators. The free version of BirdsEye includes the 100 most common birds near you (or for any spot on earth), and stunning photographs from top birders, bird photographers and guides. When you are ready to see more, paid subscriptions give you access to every countable species in your region or worldwide.
Features:
INSTANT BIRD LISTS
• See customized lists of birds reported recently near you, at birding hotspots, or any random point on earth!
• Sea seasonal abundance for each bird for that location
• View recent eBird sightings and get driving directions to each one
INCREASE YOUR LIFE LIST
• See a list of “needs” – species recently reported nearby that aren’t on your selected life or year list
• Reports of rare and notable birds in your area and across the ABA region
• Automatically sync your life or year lists with eBird for the ABA area, world, country, state or even county!
TRIP PLANNING
• Find additional content in the Bird Guide Store for other continents, including sounds, images and bird-finding tips from local experts.
• Set Favorite Locations for your destinations to scope out recent sightings
• Get driving directions right to any hotspot or sighting
• Support for bird names in several languages
SOUNDS STORE
We have partnered with Birdsounds.nl, the premier online store selling bird sounds packages for many regions around the world. Access these extensive collections of bird songs from right inside of BirdsEye.
Currently available sound packages include:
Bird Sounds of Costa Rica, Brazil, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mexico, Northern Siberia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Peru, Colombia, Belgium and Holland, and Malaysia!
Most BirdsEye functionality is available to all of our users. Certain premium features require a regional or world membership to unlock their full potential. Premium features include:
• More checklists for species on the Rare Bird Alert
• Rare Bird Alert – see the latest reported ABA rarities and eBird checklist
• Search for Notables up to 250 miles from current location
• Unlimited Favorite Locations
• View Bird List for any month of the year
• Downloading content for offline use
Comments
Portability
9.50
Quality
5.00
Features
9.00
Usability
7.00
Completeness
7.50
BirdsEye is much more of a bird-finding app than a field guide. As a field guide (which is how it’s rated here), it leaves a lot to be desired. But as a bird finding guide it is actually quite unique and powerful.
I wrote it, so I’m biased, but trying to be objective here!
The information and content is crowd-sourced, so the quality is uneven. The completeness in some sense is very good, in that it includes every species on earth. However, text images and recent sightings are lacking or limited for many species.
Provides many features not available from books, like the ability to get a list of nearby species for just about anywhere on earth. However the usability of those features are clunky and irritating in spots.