When A Field Guide to the Birds was published in 1934, I doubt that anyone, including the author, even considered that it would still be around over 75 years later. But even though it has gone through many changes, Roger Tory Peterson’s field guide is still here and still relevant. And now it has made the transition into the digital realm as the Peterson Birds of North America app.

Platform

Peterson Birds of North America is an app that runs on the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad devices. It is a “universal” app, meaning that it is designed specifically to run on the smaller iPhone/iPod as well as the larger iPad. No, no Android version yet.

For this review, I used the app on an iPhone 3GS.

Content

Most of this app’s content – including the art, range maps, and species text – is from Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America. The app contains just about the entire print guide, with the main exception being Peterson’s famous silhouettes. This review will not focus on the content itself, but rather its presentation, as I’ve discussed most of the content in other reviews. Please refer to my review of the Peterson field guide for more information on what you can expect here.

However, I do need to point out that the Peterson app also incorporates information from seven other books in the Peterson Field Guide series: the eastern and western guides to Birds’ Nests, Molt in North American Birds, Feeder Birds of Eastern North America, and family guides to Hawks, Hummingbirds, and Warblers. This is a very welcome, and useful, bonus.

Interface

When you start the app, you’re greeted with icons of various bird groups – Chickenlike Birds, Diurnal Birds of Prey, Warblers, etc – in taxonomic order. However, this home screen is customizable; you can move the icons around in any order you like, and even add your own searches and lists.

Home screen

Browse by group

Tapping the Browse button on the toolbar brings up more ways to find birds. Groups is the same groupings as on the home screen, but without icons and in alphabetical order. Quickfind is an alphabetic list of birds’ “last names” (i.e. Trogon, Veery, Violoet-ear), mimicking the so-called quickfind index included in many print guides. Taxonomy and Species lists all the included species in taxonomic or alphabetical order, respectively.

Quickfind

Browse by species

Search

Search screen

Plates and Species Accounts

The Peterson app uses the plates from the print guide as its main interface. You can enlarge the artwork as well as turn the pointers and labels on or off. In a neat effect, tapping on an individual bird will “focus” on it by making the rest of the plate appear out-of-focus, and double-tapping will do the same thing while zooming in on that bird. Swiping left or right will change plates, just as if you were flipping pages in the book.

Full plate view

Plate with overlay

You can view the plates with or without the control overlay. The button on the top-right will switch to the text descriptions of each bird on the plate (and from there you can access the family account from the Molt reference guide). The buttons along the bottom do the following (from left to right):

Range maps

• Sound – plays a sound recording (only if a bird is “selected”)
• Toggles on and off the pointers and captions
• Displays the range maps for the birds on the plate
• Record a sighting of the selected bird
• Check off the bird on one of your lists
• Go to the species account

The species account shows an enlarged illustration of the bird, with a swipable series of illustrations along the bottom to select from. Every illustration of the bird from the guide is included here, even when they are on different plates. As on the plate screen, the top-right button will bring up the text, but it is greatly expanded here. In addition to all the text from the Peterson field guide (description, voice, habitat, and similar species), you get the species’ text from the Feeder Birds and Birds’ Nests books. And for hawks, hummingbirds, and warblers, you will find the text accounts from those Peterson guides as well.

Species detail screen

Species text

The buttons along the bottom of the species screen are slightly different (from left to right):

• Sound – tapping toggles the sound on/off
• Illustrations
• Range map
• Photo of the bird’s nest, if available (from Birds’ Nests)
• Quick Facts
• Similar species

Due to all of the sources used, this app includes a large amount of information, more than most similar apps. However, the Peterson app is very lacking when it comes to sounds. Tapping the speaker button will start playback, and the app will play through the recording for the species and then stop. It does not display any information, such as the length of the recording. Even more importantly, the sound selection is extremely limited. For instance, the distinctive calls of Eastern Towhee and Scarlet Tanager are not included, just their songs. A more extensive selection of sounds – including calls and vocalizations from different regions – is needed, along with a graphical interface displaying information about the sound being played.

The art, especially the entire plates, looks great on the screen. However, it did take me a while to get used to the interface and where to find particular information. I also found the overlay on the plates to be annoying. When present, it partially covers the plate. But when it disappears (which it does after a couple seconds), you have no way of going back to the home screen or accessing the other screens without bringing it back. It adds up to a lot of extra tapping.

Lists

To me, this is the best feature of the Peterson app. Like most other bird guide apps, Peterson will allow you to record sightings and keep a life list. But these are very rudimentary, you would be much better off using a dedicated app for listing. No, the real power is being able to create and import your own lists.

User-created list

County list with eBird abundance data

A list in this app is like a playlist for mp3’s – a shortcut to the birds you’ve selected. This would be extremely useful when birding in a new location. Simply create a list of the new birds you might find and you now have a quick, handy reference. You can also share these lists with other Peterson app users. Field trip leaders, for example, can create a list of expected birds and share it with participants.

You can also import some ready-made lists from the Peterson app’s Bird Finder site. They have lists for every county in the U.S. and Canada, as well as all the eBird hotspots. These lists also include abundance information in the form of bar graphs, with the data pulled from eBird.

Extras

Under the Extras button on the home screen you can find help on using the app, as well as material from the introductions of various Peterson guides. The entire introduction from the Peterson field guide is contained here, as well as topics from the Feeder Birds book. The most surprising inclusion is the entire text from Molt in North American Birds, which is a highly recommended reference on the subject.

However, with few exceptions, only the text from Molt and the other books is included, not any photographs or other illustrations. This means that, while it’s nice to have the information here, this app will not fully obviate the need to have these other books. The only exceptions are the photos of birds’ nests and the Warbler Undertail Patterns plate from the Warbler guide. I’m very glad to see the latter included, as it is one of the best features of that guide.

Issues

Here are a few issues with this app that have been reported or that I encountered:

• When viewing the plates in landscape mode, you can’t scroll smoothly, making it hard to view some illustrations
• Some range maps of common species are missing (i.e. Swainson’s Hawk, Red-headed Woodpecker)
• The text for some plates omits the very first species heading, making it a little confusing
• The sections from the Molt book are presented in alphabetical order instead of their order in the book, making it much more confusing if you want to read through the book.

All apps have issues like these, and none are serious. The most important thing is not how problem-free an app is, but how quickly the developers fix them. So far, I’ve found Appweaver very responsive, and would not be surprised if many of these things are corrected in short order (and maybe by the time that you’re reading this).

Free Feeder Birds Version

It’s hard to convey in words, or even pictures, the feel of using an app. Honestly, the best way to decide if an app is for you or not is to use it. Thankfully, you can do that with the Peterson app, even before you buy it. Peterson Feeder Birds of North America is a free, “lite” version of this app. It focuses on backyard and feeder birds, and thus contains 162 species (as opposed to 810 in the full app). But other than the species selection, it is identical to the full-featured one, even including support for lists and the full complement of “extras”.

Recommendation

The Peterson Birds of North America app does a good job of presenting the Peterson field guide, as well as many other sources from the Peterson guide series, in a digital format. If Peterson is your primary guide, then this app is a great way to carry it with you wherever you go. It would also be a good choice for beginners, as the Peterson print guide has always been beginner-friendly, and the ability to see entire plates at once is great.

Otherwise, I would not especially recommend this app for the iPhone over the other apps available. The iPad, however, is a different story. I have not personally used it on the iPad, but from what I’ve seen the larger screen really allows the app to breath and the artwork to be better appreciated. If you have an iPad, you should strongly consider this app, especially if you don’t have the latest print version of the Peterson field guide. And at the current (perhaps limited time) price of $14.99, it’s a no-brainer considering all the extra features that you get.

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.

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.

Find Nearby Birds

Notable Sightings and Rare Birds

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…

Locate a Bird

Species Account

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.

Bird Location Map View

Bird Location List View

Birding Hotspots

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. I believe that feature is being worked on, but for now you will need to use a separate listing app for that. Obviously, it would be nice if this feature could be incorporated seamlessly, but this is still an amazing app without it.
• 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 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 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.

Birders have a plethora of printed family-specific identification guides to choose from, so I guess it was inevitable that mobile applications (apps) would follow. Two of the first such electronic guides, devoted to two of the more “popular” North American families, are HeadsUp Warblers and HeadsUp Sparrows. Currently, these apps only support the Apple family of mobile devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad).

Features

Individual species accounts (57 warblers and 47 sparrows) and a compare function make up these apps. Each species page includes:

• Photographs – one or more (max of three in the latest versions)
• Range – color map shows permanent, breeding, and winter ranges
• Notes – what to look and listen for
• Sounds – multiple sound clips

The pictures look fantastic on my iPhone and you can zoom in on both them and the range maps using the familiar pinching motion. The notes are very succinct. They mention a few field marks and maybe something about behavior or habitat, but nothing in-depth.

Species page

Range map

As would be expected from apps produced by birdJam, the sounds are the best part of these apps. On average, each species has around 6 sound clips that total two minutes. These include multiple songs and a selection of chip notes, each labeled with the state and month in which it was recorded (as well as subspecies or “type” when appropriate).

You can easily select two or more birds to compare. When comparing, you can view the bird’s head shot and range map, and listen to the first song. You need to open the species page to access the rest. An extensive set of predefined comparisons based on song types have also been included, allowing easy comparison of confusing songs. Examples of the song types include “buzzy”, “slurs”, “trill”, and “ending ‘Meetcha’”. The latter has been especially helpful for me, as those warbler songs tend to confuse me.

Sounds

Comparison view

Usability

When opening the app, the user is greeted with profile shots of the birds’ heads arranged in three columns. Tapping buttons on the bottom can change it to four or five columns. These head shots, while visually striking, are not very helpful unless you are already familiar with these birds. But you can tap the Info button and labels will appear with the species’ name.

Who do we have here?

Ah, that's better.

To open the species’ page, double-tap on the bird. If you single-tap, a green box will appear around the picture. This “selects” the bird for comparison. After selecting all those you’d like to compare, tap the Compare button to view just those birds.

The user interface and navigation are clear and easy to use. The sound-playing interface, especially, is clean and well done. The only possible point of confusion is the double-tapping, as that’s not a very common action. But the help screen that appears when first running the app makes this clear.

At first I was confused as to how the birds are ordered, as it is clearly not taxonomic or alphabetical. Instead, it is based on appearance with species that share common characteristics, especially in the facial area, being grouped together (e.g. warblers with black throats and sparrows with prominent crown stripes). Appearance-based sorting doesn’t work well for birds, particularly those that tend to be as polymorphic as the warblers. A taxonomic or alphabetical arrangement would be preferable. Or better yet, make it a configurable option so the user could choose which of the three works best for them.

Purpose and Comparison

While the HeadsUp apps seek to help birders with the identification of two potentially difficult groups, I think the audible component will be the greatest help. The photos may look great, but I wish there were more. With no more than three per species, that’s not nearly enough for some. For instance, three Yellow-rumped Warblers, a highly variable species (or perhaps two), are shown: a male, female, and winter bird. Oddly, the male and winter are “Myrtles” while the female is an “Audubon’s” type. And Connecticut and Mourning Warblers just have adult males. This is also an issue with the sparrows app, where only “Slate-colored” Dark-eyed Junco and “Red” Fox Sparrow are depicted. In terms of visual identification, these apps don’t compete with the full field guide apps.

Sound-wise, the HeadsUp apps deliver a marginally superior selection than the Sibley eGuide and iBird apps, two of the most popular general field guide applications. There’s not an appreciable difference between the sound selection for most species between the HeadsUp apps and Sibley; a similar number and types of sounds are included in both. However, that’s not the case for most rarities and vagrants. The Sibley app doesn’t include sounds for some such birds (i.e. Rufous-capped Warbler) and doesn’t include others at all (i.e. Fan-tailed Warbler), whereas these are given full coverage in HeadsUp. iBird has vocalizations for most of those that Sibley does not, but on average includes fewer sounds per species than HeadsUp.

While I like the comparison feature, it’s limited to just that family. For example, if you hear a trill-type song, but don’t see the songster, you can use the app to compare likely warblers. But it could be a Chipping Sparrow and not a warbler at all. Thus, the songtype comparisons are useful for studying, but less so for field identification.

Recommendation

I love family-specific identification guides. Well, I should clarify: I’m a big fan of family-specific ID guides that have value above and beyond general field guides. Otherwise, what’s the point? Right now, I don’t think HeadsUp Warblers and HeadsUp Sparrows have crossed that value threshold. Their vocalization collection and songtype comparison is the main thing that sets them apart from the general field guide apps. But even then, that advantage isn’t enough to warrant an unconditional recommendation since it can largely be overcome by a few downloads from a site like xeno-canto.

But the phrase right now is key. Apps, by their nature, are easily updated and improved. Already, additional photographs have been added to HeadsUp Warblers since it was first released. I’d like to see many more photos added to cover a full range of variation and viewing angles in order to aid visual identification. More textual information, especially about behavior, habitat, and natural history, would also be a welcome addition. And how about some video? In the meantime, unless you just want a mobile app for warblers and/or sparrows for some reason, I’d stick with one of the general field guide apps or birdJam proper.

Birding is, essentially, finding and identifying birds. But I would add a third component – recording your observations. Sure, I guess you don’t have to, but then your experiences will never benefit anyone else (via eBird, for instance) and won’t even benefit you in the likely case you eventually forget what you saw. And now there is an app for it, just as there are for finding (BirdsEye) and identifying (a plethora of choices).

Birdcountr is an app for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad (Android version coming soon) that allows birders to record the birds they encounter. It includes just about every species found in the United States (minus Hawaii) and Canada, so it will be of interest primarily to those in the “North American”/ABA area.

The basic functionality, creating lists, is simple and straightforward:

1. Tap the large “Start A List” button.
2. The app will attempt to initialize the GPS. You can wait until the blue dot “finds” exactly where you are, or you can skip the process.
3. Enter the location name, or choose from a list of favorites.
4. Hit the “Start Birding” button.
5. To enter a bird, tap the family, and then the species.
   
   

   Family list

   

   Species list

6. 

   Species entry screen

   On the species entry screen, you’ll see four selector wheels. First, choose the type, which is the wheel on the far left. You will always have options for “Unsexed Unaged”, “Adult”, “Juvenile”, and “Heard Only”. But you can have over a dozen more for some species (“Adult Breeding”, “Second Cycle”, etc). For the most part, if the Sibley guide has a label for it, you can find it here. The other three selectors are for the number seen, one selector for each digit. Thus, the maximum you can enter is 999. After you enter your number, you’ll see the total updated in the “This Entry” box. You can now select something else from the first wheel and enter more numbers. This is very handy if, for example, you see a male/female pair and would like to specify that instead of just entering a generic value of 2. A text note can also be entered if you want to record additional information. Finally, you can send an alert via twitter if you see a species unusual for your area.
7. When done entering all the numbers for that species, hit “Save” and then “OK” in the pop-up confirmation.
8. When done with the list, hit the “end list” button at the bottom-right.

Once I got used to the interface, I found the list-entering process easy and fairly quick. However, it seems like it still takes a little longer than writing it down, and much longer than speaking into a voice recorder.

One of the app’s most important features is that it collects GPS data for each individual record. This data can then be used to map your sightings (more details below). I found the GPS data to be fairly accurate, though some were a bit off. Of course, any inaccuracies are the fault of the device and not the app.

Species list in scroll mode

There are three options for the default bird list – eastern, western, and custom. All three are user customizable, which is very nice. And if, while entering sightings, you find that you need a species not included on the list (which probably means you’re having a very good day!), you can hit the “All” button to have it display every bird.

Viewing Archives and Life List

Archived list

Map view of a list

The Archive button on the main screen will allow you to view saved lists either by date or by bird. If you browse by date, you select the month, and then the list you want. The summary screen will display the location, date, time, number of species seen, and a list of the birds. From here you can reopen the list, either just to edit, or “in the field” which will record new GPS data. You can also export the list (as described below) and view a map of your sightings. The map shows the birds you’ve recorded as pins on a Google map, using the GPS data. By default, all are displayed, or you can filter by species.

If you view the archives by bird, instead of date, you have a rudimentary life list. It will give you a count of how many birds you’ve recorded, along with a selectable list. Tapping on a species will tell you how many you’ve seen this year, the location of your most recent sighting, and allow you to get details from specific lists or view them on a map.

This works great if you want to bring up details from individual bird sightings. Although it can tell you how many birds you’ve seen, birdcountr was not designed to function as a life list application. It doesn’t tell you how many birds you’ve recorded in a particular year or location, or do any of the advanced filtering a birder needs from such a program.

Life list

Details of species you've seen

Export Options

You’ve got several different export options available. You can email the list to yourself as either a simple list of species seen with the total count for each, or with all of the plumage notes. But those, along with the location and date, are the only details included. I would like to at least have the start and end times added to that.

Additionally, you can export the list in a format accepted by eBird, as a Google KML file, or a HTML page with the map and checklist embedded. The eBird export works great, but I haven’t had a chance to fully explore the other two. But they are very promising, especially for bloggers.

Issues

Here are the issues I’ve found with birdcountr, starting with the most serious:

• It runs through the battery very quickly if GPS is being used. Even when starting with a full charge, you can’t use it for longer than 6-7 hours without charging. This may be mostly due to the device rather than anything the app is doing wrong, though.
• It crashes. A lot. However, the crashes mostly occur while viewing archived lists. It has crashed on me while entering a list once or twice, but each time I was able to restart the app and pick up where I left off without an issue. Updates made since this review was published seem to have fixed this issue. It is much more stable now and hasn’t crashed on me in a while.
• There is no easy way to upload your lists into eBird or another listing program. This isn’t a big deal if you don’t use anything else, but many birders will also want to have their data available in a more robust listing-oriented application. This feature has been added since my review was first published, as mentioned above.
• The species selection is very good (over 900 species), but doesn’t include every bird on the ABA list. For example, Mangrove Swallow and Stygian Owl are not included. Ok, it’s pretty unlikely you’ll ever have the need to enter one of them. But, oddly, only one parrot is included (Monk Parakeet). On the other hand, included are a few that, if they have been seen, have not been accepted, such as Saffron Finch and Red-crested Cardinal.
• Although GPS data is recorded, it is not accessible for individual sightings. You can view the location on a map, but cannot get the actual coordinates.
• When you email a list, it doesn’t include the start and end times.

Recommendation

I found birdcountr to be easy to use and it should do a great job of recording the birds you encounter. But its usefulness largely depends on your individual preferences and needs. For instance, this app may be a godsend for those wanting to collect GPS data for each sighting. But others may prefer the speed of a voice recorder. Even though I haven’t fully switched over from my digital voice recorder, I have been very glad to have birdcountr available whenever I need it.

You can always try out birdcountr lite for free. It includes a limited number of species, but will let you get a feel for the way it functions.

The version reviewed here covers North America (United States minus Hawaii and Canada). A European version is also available.

My, how times have changed. Imagine, if you would, a decade ago when The Sibley Guide was published. If you were told then that you could have the entire guide, along with an extensive collection of bird sounds, available electronically in a device small enough to fit in your pocket, you would have been incredulous. And then you would have asked how you could get one! But today, it’s “just another app”. But is it really? Or is it just as amazing and groundbreaking as it would have been at the turn of the millennium?

The Sibley eGuide to the Birds of North America is an “app” for Apple devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad), Android, Blackberry, and Kindle Fire. For this review, I used the app on an iPhone. For an overview, please see my initial review of the Sibley eGuide. But here’s the gist of that overview – the eGuide is a fairly straightforward port of the Sibley guides from a printed format to an application.

That means that the eGuide contains just about everything included in the printed Sibley guides, both the “big Sibley” and the two regional guides. This is a good thing, since the Sibley guides are arguably the best field guides for North America. The app contains just about all of the illustrations, the range maps, the text (the more extensive text from the regionals, along with some from the big guide as appropriate), and even the introduction. There are some things, like text boxes and ancillary illustrations, that didn’t make the transition. For instance, you will not find some of the illustrations of hybrids (including Lawrence’s and Brewster’s Warblers, and Olympic Gull) in this app. But overall, I was very pleased at what was included. (I will not be reviewing the content, such as illustrations and text, here since that is covered in my review of the printed Sibley guides.)

You have three different avenues to access the species from the app’s main menu: a taxonomic index, alphabetic index, and “Smart Search”. The first two are exactly as they seem, with the latter being alphabetized by the bird’s “last name”. The Smart Search allows you to filter based on a set of characteristics. Whichever method you choose, you will be presented with a list of species. You can scroll through them using the usual methods of finger swiping or the scroll bar on the right. There is also a search box at the top.

The filtering capabilities are relatively limited. You can use the following:

• Occurance – two options: Show only common birds (only when you have set a location to use as the basis), and to exclude saltwater birds
• Distinguishing Features – includes color and visual characteristics like wingbars. You can select multiple attributes
• Types – a list of shapes such as “Heron-like” and “Slender bill”, along with habits like “Aerialist” and “Tree-climbing”. You can only select one
• Size – “Thrush-size”, “Goose-size”, etc. You can only select one

Your choices for searching are pretty limited, especially compared to iBird Explorer. The Types list is especially weird, as it includes both shapes and habits, and you cannot combine them since you can select only one.

Once you select all of your characteristics, the eGuide presents a list of matching species. The selections are appropriate for the most part, but with something like this, there will always be puzzling inclusions and omissions. Personally, I don’t consider the House Finch to be Thrush-sized (and for that matter, what’s the difference between Thrush-sized and Robin-sized?). Additionally, Scarlet Tanager is not listed among the yellow birds, though the females and young birds are best described as that color. I’m sure there are plenty more examples, but to be fair, all apps that have a feature such as this (yes, even iBird) have issues of this sort.

The navigation, layout, and functionality are easy to understand, provided you have at least some experience with the platform. However, I did encounter a few annoyances:

• The Sound button brings up a scrolling selector that overlays the previous screen. This means that you cannot use the arrows to go directly to the next bird’s sounds.
• Some of the illustrations are quite small, and you cannot enlarge them. [Update, 8/1/2010] Version 1.5 of the app has rectified this. You can now enlarge the images, as shown here. With one fell swoop, this has been transformed from a serious issue to a major strength.
• There are no pictures on the species list, which could make it more difficult for some to browse through the list to find what they are looking for.
• Some species have so many illustrations that it can take some time to scroll through them to find the one you want. I suppose this is a good problem to have.
• The range map screen is not scrollable, so it displays only a single map. If a species has multiple range maps, say a separate map for a subspecies, then they are included at the end of the bird illustrations or as a small inset within an illustration. Instead, it would have been preferable to make the map screen scrollable and place them there.

Extra Features

The Sibley eGuide also includes a rudimentary life list application. You can keep track of the species, location, and date, as well as add comments. However, the reporting functionality is extremely limited, so much so that this won’t really do much for you other than give you a count of how many birds you’ve entered on your list, or let you know what birds you’ve seen in a certain location or on a given date. Until this functionality is upgraded extensively, I don’t see it as being very useful.

Of much more use is a compare feature. On any species list is a “Comp.” button in the upper-right corner. Tap it and a radio button will appear next to each species. Select the first bird that you wish to compare, and then another. Your first choice will be displayed on the bottom of a split-screen view, with the other bird on the top. Each bird is independently scrollable, so that you can compare any of their illustrations. Even better is that you can also compare sounds and range maps (but not the text). Further, you can swipe the top bird to change species. You can also rotate to landscape mode and have the birds appear side-by-side, increasing the size of the images. The ability to make an easy and direct comparison of any two species is a significant advantage of printed field guides over electronic versions. This compare function goes a long way toward leveling that playing field, especially in landscape mode.

Comparison to other apps

Before the Sibley eGuide, iBird Explorer was my pick for the best bird app. But now I think the choice of app depends on what you’re looking for. Here’s a brief list of advantages for each:

Sibley eGuide advantages

• Better illustrations
• More variations and poses are shown
• Easier for experienced birders to use for identification
• More extensive collection of bird sounds

iBird Explorer advantages

• Both paintings and photographs
• Better framework for beginning birders to use for identification
• Much more information, overall
• More, and better, navigation and filtering capabilities
• More species included

For a more comprehensive look at these and the other field guide apps, please see my Comparison of iPhone Bird Apps.

Recommendation

The Sibley eGuide is a faithful translation of the acclaimed field guide. I would recommend this app to anyone who normally carries their Sibley with them while birding, or more experienced birders who would like to have a field guide with them wherever they go. Personally, I love being able to always have my Sibley with me.

However, I don’t think it’s for everyone. If you’re trying to identify a bird that you have seen, but have no idea what it is named, this app is much more difficult to use than iBird. Thus, I would recommend iBird to less experienced birders and backyard enthusiasts.

Updates

One of the best things about iPhone apps is that they can be continuously updated with no cost to current users. Here are some updates that have been made to the Sibley app since it was released:

• Version 1.5.1 – Adds capability to enlarge images, among other useful changes. More Details

iBird Explorer is one of the digital field guides that are now available. It is available for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices. There are several versions available, ranging from basic to super deluxe (I’ll talk more about these later). The version I’m reviewing is the iBird PRO (the super deluxe one), running on an iPhone 3GS.

Species Accounts

The heart of any field guide, printed or digital, is the species accounts. iBird contains 924 accounts, covering the birds of the United States (including Hawaii) and Canada. Each account includes:

• Bird – this first screen has one or more paintings of the bird and a brief description
• Range – map showing breeding, non-breeding, year-round, and migration ranges; text summarizing the range and habitat preferences
• Identity – detailed description and biological information
• Photos
• Sounds – one or more sound clips; a phonetic rendering; list of similar sounding birds
• Similar – list of similar birds to allow for a quick comparison
• Facts – interesting behavior and other facts
• Birdipedia – detailed information and external links (requires internet connection)
• Notes – you can add your own notes and observations here
• Ecology – conservation info
• Flickr – searches the Flickr website for photos of the species (requires internet connection)
• Family – information on the taxonomy, habits, etc of the family as a whole
• Portrait – an enlargeable version of the bird’s primary illustration

There is a lot of information in these accounts, much more than traditional field guides. Want to know how many eggs a Gray Vireo lays? You can find it here with just a couple of taps and swipes of a finger. Chances are, most anything you want to know about the bird can be found here. And you could easily kill a ton of time just reading through the “Interesting Facts”. They live up to the title.

Illustrations

Each bird has one or more paintings on the main screen. Most of these show the bird both perched/standing and in flight. This is only the second guide, after Sibley, to show most of the songbirds in flight.

My reaction to the art ranged from eh to wow. The vast majority are at least serviceable, but not up to the standards of the major field guides like Sibley, National Geographic, and Peterson. A few are fantastic. The Northern Cardinals work as both field guide illustrations and works of art. And I still can’t tell if the Crescent-chested Warbler illustration is a painting, a photograph, or some mix between the two. But whatever it is, it is amazing.

On the other hand, I don’t even recognize some of these birds. When I saw the Field Sparrow, I immediately thought of Alexander Wilson. That’s not a good thing (this Audubon contemporary drew birds ok for the time, but definitely not up to today’s standards).

Gorgeous art

Not so much

The number of illustrations is still somewhat limited, with most species having only one. That means for many species that have different plumages (based on age, gender, season, subspecies, etc), only one of them is shown, usually the male. However, the inclusion of photographs greatly reduces the impact this has on the user.

Multiple photos are included for most birds. They are sized so that each one fills the available real estate on the screen, and they look great on the device.

Between the paintings and photos, most plumages are illustrated. As expected, extremely variable groups like raptors and gulls have a much smaller percentage of plumages represented. But that’s the case with most general field guides. However, there are some plumages missing that are really surprising. The only Cerulean and Chestnut-sided Warblers shown are breeding males (that includes both the illustration and photo sections). Additionally, the Red Fox Sparrow is the only one of that complex shown.

Sounds

Almost every species includes one vocalization, which is played when you tap the sounds tab on the account page. Where appropriate, there is also a list of similar sounding birds that you can play from the same screen, making direct comparisons very easy. Lastly, a description or phonetic text of the sound is given.

Playing a bird’s vocalizations from within a field guide is obviously useful, though having just one sound each is very limiting. However, the editors are now adding more sounds per bird through software updates. I don’t know if the sound selection will ever be extensive enough to make any other sound collection on your device obsolete, but it certainly has that potential.

You can also play a random song by giving the device a shake. You can use that feature to give yourself a quiz.

Navigation

This is where the app really shines. If you know the name of the bird you want to look up, or just want to browse through the species, then the Browse screen is for you. You can browse by either species or family. Species can be sorted alphabetically by first or last name, and families either alphabetically or taxonomically. Or you can use the search box and look for a species by common name, latin name, or band code.

But what if you don’t know the name of the bird you want to find? You’ve just seen something new and are not sure what it was. In that case, switch to the Search tab. Here you will find 33 different criteria that you can use to filter 900+ birds down to a manageable few. Everything from location to primary color to cere color is included.

Browse Screen

Search Screen

Issues

No field guide is without mistakes, and this is no exception. I’ve found mistakes in range maps (wrong color used for American Dipper), illustrations that had some weird colors, and species’ attributes set incorrectly (which affects the search functions). But the difference between this and print guides is that this one can easily be updated. If you find an error, report it. I’ve done so and the email response from an editor came back ridiculously quick. They are constantly releasing updates to address issues and add new features.

Updates

This is one of the primary advantages for digital field guides. iBird has had several updates recently, fixing bugs and adding features, paintings, photos, sounds, and even new species. When a new update is available, users can easily install it using iTunes. And to make a good thing even better, these updates are free.

Recommendation

So will digital field guides make print versions obsolete? Before using iBird, I would have thought not. But now, I’m not so sure. I don’t see reference books going away anytime soon; I still find it much easier to learn the birds and their field marks using a printed guide. Here I’m thinking of guides such as the “big” Sibley and hardcover Collins guide. But I can see how field guides as identification tools, especially in the field, may evolve into the digital realm. iBird could certainly be your primary field guide today.

I would recommend iBird to most birders with an iPhone or iPod Touch (heck, it may be worth getting one just to have this app). It is one of the best iPhone bird guide apps, and the people behind this project have shown a commitment to continuous improvement. The main issues I have with the app (missing and sub-par illustrations) are being incrementally rectified with each update. And there is so much that you can do with it now. Having a field guide – actually, make that a field guide, sound collection, and natural history reference – that you can have with you everywhere is just incredible.

Which version?

Ok, so you’re interested in iBird. Now you just have to decide which version you want. Here are the currently available versions, with the number of birds included and the price (subject to change):

• iBird Explorer Lite (30) – Free
• iBird Backyard Plus (234) – $4.99
• iBird Explorer Western (828) – $9.99
• iBird Explorer North (537) – $9.99
• iBird Explorer South (747) – $9.99
• iBird Explorer Midwest (585) – $9.99
• iBird Explorer Canada (685) – $9.99
• iBird Explorer Plus (924) – $19.99
• iBird Explorer PRO (924) – $29.99

I think most birders will want the Plus or PRO versions. Check out the extra features of the PRO version to see if it’s worth the extra money to you. If you’re not sure, go with Plus. If you later decide you want more, you can upgrade from Plus to Pro for $10.

If you’d like insight into the creation of this app, check out the This Birding Life podcast, episode 20. It features a revealing interview with the app’s creator.