When I started birding, I carried a pencil and small notebook into the field to record sightings and make notes. It was a great way to learn, but a little cumbersome. A few years later, I met a birder who dictated sightings into a cassette-based voice recorder. How cool was that! Well, not the cassette part. So I bought a digital voice recorder with a remote mic. I could keep the device in my pocket, clip the mic to my binocular strap, and be able to record notes without ever lowering my binoculars. Plus, it could record bird sounds in a pinch. I love that thing and never imagined that I could bird without it.
And then comes the iPhone with all its wonderful apps. Smart phones and listing-keeping applications seem to be made for each other. It’s very convenient to keep your list on a device that you always have handy. Although I still use my trusty voice recorder from time to time, I’ve pretty much fully switch over. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, I highly recommend using one of these apps. But which one? I’ll briefly describe and compare the iPhone listing apps that I’ve used. (Note, some of these are also available on Android phones, but I haven’t used those versions.)
First, all of these apps will obviously let you record which birds, and how many, you see. They will also email lists, export them in a format acceptable to eBird, and keep a rudimentary life list.
BirdsEye BirdLog North America
$9.99
Website
Worldwide version ($19.99)
The Good
- Submits directly to eBird
- Very fast to enter data in the field, unless you want to note male/female, etc (see below)
- Records your location with GPS, or you can use eBird hotspots
The Bad
- Not as fully featured as some other apps. For example, it uses GPS to note your location, but you cannot tag the location of individual birds.
- Besides the count, you can only enter text notes for sightings. There isn’t any way to easily keep track of male/female, age, heard-only, etc. You can enter that as a note, but it takes longer and is more cumbersome than it should be
- Expensive, especially for the worldwide version
- Requires the use of eBird (but aren’t you doing that anyway?)
Birdlog is very easy to use (especially after figuring out some shortcuts). I thought the disappointing support for noting details about a sighting would be a deal-breaker for me. But although I hope it will eventually be added, it hasn’t been a very big deal. The speed with which you can enter sightings in the field and the convenience of direct uploads to eBird more than make up for the app’s shortcomings.
Birdlog does not include any life list features within the app. However, once you get your sightings into eBird, you can manage your lists there. This app also does not support any export options other than eBird. But again, you can do that from eBird. This is why I mentioned that Birdlog requires the use of eBird in the Bad list above. As I see it, this isn’t really a knock on Birdlog – the app was designed to be a mobile interface to submit sightings to eBird. So this is more of something to be aware of rather than a flaw in the app.
Birdwatcher’s Diary
$12.99
Website
The Good
- The most powerful and fully featured list-keeping app
- Can submit directly to eBird
- Usable worldwide
- Flexible and extensible – can import lists for anywhere and of anything, not just birds (i.e. mammals)
- Keeps track of time and can record GPS location
- Export lists as Google Earth KML
- Uses iTunes for backup, or can upload to ftp sites
- Life list functionality relatively robust
The Bad
- Price
- Complicated
- Runs through battery quickly if GPS is being used
- Cumbersome to separately count by gender, age, and plumage
Birdwatcher’s Diary is the most powerful listing app I’ve used. By downloading and installing lists, it can be used anywhere and for just about anything. The filtering capabilities seem especially well-suited to bird surveys and big days. The life list feature has options, unlike most other apps, so you can have it tell you what birds you’ve seen in a given location, time period, etc. You can count different “types” of the same bird individually (male/female, subspecies, etc), but it takes much more effort than in birdcountr.
However, this is not the most intuitive app. I had to actually read the manual to figure out how to use it. But the good news is that the manual is a fairly good and easy-to-follow tutorial that walks you through the myriad features.
Lifebirds Journal
$6.99
Website
The Good
- Easy to use
- Worldwide coverage
- Can record GPS coordinates
- Can keep track of age, sex, subspecies, and even add voice memos – just about everything
- Species search is very quick and easy
The Bad
- Takes more button pressing (and thus time) to record sightings
- You have to manually enter subspecies and location information
I’ve found Lifebirds Journal to be very easy to use. You can start it up and begin logging sightings immediately without reading any documentation whatsoever (although I’d still recommend going through the help and tutorial available on their website). I like to keep track of “identifiable forms” within species. That is, I keep a separate count for male/female, immature, subspecies, etc. Lifebirds can do that for you.
This app offers a lot of options, but there is a big problem: entering a sighting requires way too much button tapping. To record the most simple sighting – a single bird, without GPS coordinates – requires five taps. And if you’re recording multiple birds, especially of different ages or sex, it can easily require twice as many taps. I find that to be too much time and effort in the field.
My Bird Observations
$2.99
Website
The Good
- Usable worldwide, with preloaded lists for states and countries
- Simple, fairly quick data entry
- Price
- Exports to Birdstack, and uploads to box.net for backup
The Bad
- No easy way to separately count by gender, age, and plumage
- Does not use GPS to record location
- Lack of smart scrolling bar makes it more inconvenient to scroll through a long list of families or species
Of these listing apps, My Bird Observations is the most basic. It will automatically note the start time for each trip, but if you want to record other details (duration, county, etc) you must enter them manually. It does not use GPS. But it is easy, quick, and intuitive to use. The only way to keep track of different types (male/female, etc) is to manually type notes for the species.
Recommendation
First, check out each of these apps’ website. Many of them offer demos and walk-throughs that, while not as good as hands-on experience, will still give you a feel for what the apps are like.
All of these apps will allow you to record the birds you see and create bird lists that can be uploaded to eBird. But ultimately, the one that is right for you depends on your needs. If you need a quick and easy way to count birds, without worrying about recording GPS or various “types”, then My Bird Observations or Lifebirds Journal should work fine. If you think you’ll take advantage of its advanced features, then Birdwatcher’s Diary may be the best choice. And if getting your sightings into eBird is your primary concern, then BirdLog is your app.
Update 8/4/2012: Birdwatcher’s Diary, as of the latest update, can now submit directly to eBird. As soon as I’m able to test it out, I’ll update this page again.
More Bird Apps
- Comparison of Bird Field Guide Apps for iPhone – a similar comparison I’ve done for the North American field guide apps available for the iPhone
- BirdsEye – a bird-finding app utilizing eBird
- birdJam HeadsUp Warblers and HeadsUp Sparrows – warbler and sparrow-specific apps
Disclosure: The apps reviewed here were complementary review copies provided by the developers.
Posted by Grant McCreary on March 9th, 2011.
Wow! Big news
I greatly appreciate the time and effort that Grant has taken to do the comparative review of listing apps. I would like to try to clarify and explain the amount of effort to enter a simple sighting in Lifebirds Journal since this was considered to be a big problem.
The five taps to enter a simple sighting can be done in 6 seconds or less, so the process is not as time consuming as perhaps implied. Here is a breakdown:
1. Tap on species name to open an edit/view existing or create new sighting screen.
2. Tap on the prominent “New Sighting” button to open the screen to enter detailed information. The only detail that must be added is location. Time, date, and count are prefilled.
3. Tap the location button to open the location selection screen. The last used location is at the top of the screen with a use button next to it.
4. Tap the Use button returning you to the main sightings screen.
5. Tap the SAVE button to save the sighting.
Again, this takes about a second per tap, but also gives you the opportunity to do more on each screen than just enter simple information.
Taps 3 and 4 could have been eliminated by prefilling location which would have reduced the total taps to three. However after years of experience in designing and implementing electronic medical record systems, I found that users often just hit save without noticing that the prefilled information needs to be changed. So after much debate, we decided to go with reducing errors on selecting location rather than cutting out a second or so of data entry time.
Lifebirds Journal was specifically designed to let you enter as detailed and as complete a set of information as desired and then easily retrieve and export lists by any possible combination of dates, location, and family. Please note that the listing function was not specifically noted in the review but could be considered as one of the strengths of the app. I encourage those who are interested to look at the website and tutorial for a fuller review of what the app can do and how to use it efficiently.
Jim is right – we’re not talking a lot of time, strictly speaking, to enter a sighting in Lifebirds Journal. But, personally, I’m very sensitive to the amount of time it takes to enter sightings, since that is time not spent looking around for birds. As I mentioned above, I previously used a voice recorder that allowed me to record sightings without ever looking away. I think that spoiled me
So it is quite possible that other users may not be bothered by the time/steps required. However, I still have to qualify this as a negative in relation to some other apps. For instance, you can record a sighting in Birdlog with just a single tap.
[...] that there are a few good choices that have been reviewed by Grant McCreary on his blog “The Birder’s Library.” I decided to try the BirdLog Worldwide, an iPhone app which is on sale now for [...]
I am 100% in agreement with Grant: the fewer steps to enter a bird, the better. Six seconds may not seem like a lot of time, but on a CBC for example, if I spent six seconds entering each sighting, I’d see far fewer birds. The real problem is the shift in focus, both optical and mental. You take both your eye and your mind off the birds when you stop to enter data, and this repreated interruption in concentration has (for me at least) a significant effect on my birding.
I’ve been trying to use BirdLog, and even that is too much for me. In large part this is because BirdLog won’t let me enter a custom checklist, and I live on the California coast, so I have to swipe through screensful of seabirds to find quail, etc.
One other thing to be aware of, is the apps designed for the iPhone may not work properly on the iPod, even if they claim to. Any app that uses the GPS will probably give you trouble on an iPod (which does not have a GPS). I’m using BirdLog on the iPod and it works, but there are several extra steps involved that make it more cumbersome.
Tim, I don’t know if you’ve tried Birdwatcher’s Diary, but let me review some of the features which make it IDEAL for a CBC (or any recording, but let me focus on CBC):
1) You can create custom checklists
2) There is minimal scrolling to find any species. We use a unique “Intelliscroll” technique in which you tap on “Q” to get to Quail (just one tap) and then just tap on Quail to record. A 1-letter key itself is not unique. But if you see a Gull, one tap on “G” to get to the “g’s,” then the system switches over to a 2-letter key showing all 2-letter combinations not only of “G”, but also of “F” and “H”, in case you missed the “G” (a common problem) so you just tap on “GU” to get to the gulls. With an iPhone pre-iPhone 5, 9 species are now shown (more on the iPhone 5 with its larger screen), so you might need AT MOST to scroll down one screen (say, for Western Gull). Of course if your custom list had fewer than 9 gull species, even that wouldn’t be true.
3) For most sightings (not including gulls and blackbirds), a few quick taps on the species records 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. individuals. For larger numbers, there is a calculator which you tap to view and then enter the number. Importantly, the calculator lets you ADD as well as just enter numbers. So for your first sighting of some species of gull, perhaps you enter 150. Now when you get to the next pond, and there are 135 more, you can use the ADD (+) button to add the new count to the existing count.
4) Most importantly of all for CBCs is the fact that you can quickly (with one tap of a button) switch between a list of all possible species (all of your custom list) or just the species ALREADY SEEN. This is key for speed because after an hour or two, MOST of what you see is something you’ve already seen. So instead of a list of several hundred species, the list might only be 30 or 50 long. Now your odds of getting to the right bird with just one tap rather than two or two plus scrolling are extremely high; indeed, for at least nine species, there is no tapping on the key or scrolling at all, just tap the species name one or more times to increment the count. And if you see a new species, just tap the “All species” button and then begin your search for the new species.
5) Finally, on the concentration question, you are certainly right to keep your eyes on the birds! Typically, CBCs involve more than one person, so that someone else should still be looking while you are recording. But if you’re alone, there’s no problem waiting a few seconds or minutes (or hours for that matter) until you’re at a lull to record your sightings. The price you pay, of course, is that you may forget something, either a species, or just a count. On the other hand, if you record too often, no matter how few seconds it takes, you may also miss a species or a count, so you have to judge at any given time the appropriate tradeoff. For SURE recording with BIrdwatcher’s Diary is WAY faster than recording on paper, which is what I see most people doing.
6) Last but not least, the software easily switches from sorting by Last (or First, as you prefer) name order and Taxonomic order. This makes it INCREDIBLY easy to transfer your sightings from the software to the count sheet you need to turn in. At some recent count dinners, I watched people take 10-15 minutes what I accomplished in under a minute.
On the GPS question, there is no problem using a device without GPS, Birdwatcher’s Diary only records precise GPS coordinates of sightings IF your device has GPS AND if you tell it to (by setting the appropriate setting). Otherwise it just records the location as the location you set up for the park or pond or other place you are birding at the time.