In a recent article in Birder's World about birding with the iPhone (“In the know, all the time,” October 2009), writer Laura Kammermeier reported on an app that was still in development that taps into the bird sightings on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's popular eBird site. The app, BirdsEye, allows users to locate birds, find nearby birding hotspots, and keep track of their life list.
Developers had expected to release the app in August but didn't. The reason? In one developer’s words, “We want this to be awesome.”
I’m happy to report that today, BirdsEye is available on the iTunes App Store, and in all sincerity, the app is awesome. It was worth the wait.
Contributing Editor Kenn Kaufman, author of our "ID Tips" column as well as Kaufman field guides to birds, butterflies, insects, and mammals, wrote all the text for BirdsEye: no less than 60,000 words. In an interview I had with him at the end of October, he told me why and how he got involved with the app and why it will be useful to birders at any skill level.
I was a beta tester for BirdsEye, so I’ve watched it grow over the last several months into a program that just about every birder will find useful. The app costs $19.99 and comes bundled with images, audio, and text for 470 of the most frequently observed birds in North America. Images, audio, and text for an additional 377 species can be purchased through the BirdsEye store for $20 or in groups such as warblers, alcids, or hawks for as little as $2 each. BirdsEye is for the iPhone or iPod Touch. Here is how it works.
On the home screen, start by tapping “Find Nearby Birds.” You’ll see a screen similar to the San Francisco example shown at left below. Let me walk you through it.
The "All" tab on the left of the screen indicates all of the species reported in the area to eBird in the last three years. The "Recent" tab in the middle shows you the birds in the local area seen in the last 30 days. The tab with a star at right shows you birds you can add to your life list. (The app remembers birds as you check them off.) The numbers in each tab will change depending on where you are, what hotspot you're researching, and the number of birds on your life list.
In this example, you can see the birds reported recently in the San Francisco area, scrolled to the owls. Tap on Barn Owl, and you'll get the screen on the right, a three-part profile of the bird: Kaufman's words about the bird’s habitat and behaviors, a photo that, when tapped, takes you to a larger version of the photo as well as other photos of the bird, and audio of the owl's calls.
The photos are from VIREO, the bird-photo collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences, and the audio is from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the world’s largest archive of natural sounds.
If you've already seen Barn Owl, tap the check box in the lower left to add it to your life list. Now let's see where Barn Owl has been reported recently in the Bay Area. Tap the icon that shows a bird perched on a pin, and you'll see the screen at left below: a map of all local publicly accessible hotspots with Barn Owl reports.
Each sighting is marked by a red pin, and your location is marked by the green pin. If you tap the pin for Point Reyes Bird Observatory as shown, you'll get a gray rectangle with the site name and, in smaller type, the day of the last Barn Owl report. Tap the white arrow circled in blue and you'll see the screen at right: a list of birds seen at Point Reyes in the last 30 days: Surf Scoter, California Quail, and so on. Then, to find directions to the hotspot from your location, tap the white arrow in the bottom left corner. It'll take you to the Maps application and provide driving directions to the site. How sweet is that?
Back on the home screen, tap on "Locate a Bird" to search through all the birds in the app. Tap “View Birding Hotspots” to see a map of nearby public hotspots from the eBird database, similar to the Barn Owl map above. Zoom in, click on a red pin, and you'll be on your way to seeing more birds.
From the home screen, you can also select the location where you bird, update your life list, order additional content for BirdsEye, and send feedback to the developers.
Todd Koym, one of the three developers, says he wanted to create an app that got people out birding. “BirdsEye makes eBird users’ knowledge of where the birds are available to everyone. It’s like having thousands of local birding experts in your pocket.”
He also knew that birders would want the ability to report their sightings to eBird via the app. That feature is coming in a future update. "It would be easy for us to make it work if it's complicated for the user," he says. "But it's hard to make something simple for the user. My feeling is that we're competing against pen and paper, which is pretty easy. We have to make sure that the handshake between BirdsEye and eBird works flawlessly."
Koym's other goal for a future release is to highlight notable rare-bird sightings throughout North America. So when an Ancient Murrelet shows up on Lake Michigan or a Yellow-throated Warbler visits a feeder in eastern Quebec, for example, BirdsEye users will know as soon as the report hits eBird. I can't wait. --M.M.
Read my interview with Kenn Kaufman about BirdsEye.
Read about the December 2009 issue of Birder's World magazine.
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