Birds of Northern Europe
By BirdGuides Ltd.
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Description
A high-quality digital field guide, with bird names in 15 languages, covering 352 species of birds regularly seen in Northern Europe. This list covers all except rarer vagrants and includes every bird likely to be seen by the vast majority of birdwatchers in the region throughout the year. Countries covered include Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Holland (The Netherlands), Belgium, Germany, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Luxembourg and Northern France. Comprehensive information is provided including: multiple annotated illustrations by leading artists showing the full range of plumages including rarer races and variations, beautiful still photographs for many species; songs and calls, maps showing distribution in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East and the full detailed text accounts from the Concise edition of Birds of the Western Palearctic (THE standard reference work originally published by Oxford University Press). Perfect for more experienced birders who will appreciate the comprehensive and professional ornithological content in this App.
FEATURES
• fully compatible with iPad using the full resolution of its larger screen
• species names translated into 13 languages plus International English and US English
• includes audio recordings of both songs and calls (which can be played on iPhone and iPod touch built-in speakers)
• annotated illustrations by top bird artists including Ian Lewington, Alan Harris, Mike Langman and DIM Wallace
• superb portrait photographs for many species
• definitive text accounts from the Concise edition of Birds of the Western Palearctic
• information on typical behaviour, identification and plumage variations
• many images showing nests, eggs and flight shots
• detailed distribution maps both for the whole Western Palearctic region
• quick search by species name or part of name
• organise bird names alphabetically or by family, with collapsible headings
• intuitive navigation uses gestures and flip-to-horizontal mode
• pinch zooming for visual assets
NAMES IN 15 LANGUAGES
Species and family names can be in any of the following languages, and changed at any time: Català, Dansk, Deutsch, English, English (International), English (US), Español, Français, Italiano, Nederlands, Norsk, Português, Suomi, Svenska, русский язык (Russian). Note that the species text accounts, assets captions and illustration annotations are in English only.
ABOUT US
Produced and published by BirdGuides Ltd, the UK's leading developer of natural history software. Please visit www.birdguides.com to see the wide range of birding services and products that we offer. BirdGuides has been established for more than 15 years and is staffed entirely by people who are birders themselves. We publish reference guides for every level, from beginners to professional ornithologists. The content and design of this app for Northern European birds draws on this wealth of expertise. Please see our other apps in the iTunes store.
NOTE:
• To hear the songs, calls and commentaries, make sure your iPhone isn't switched to silent, and that the volume is turned up sufficiently.
• Early model iPod touch will require earphones or speakers.
What's New in Version 1.0.2
Improved scrolling, various bug fixes
Customer Reviews
Bird names easy to fix
To address the issue raised by ColinWH on the names being a bit odd: that is because you have the language set to "English (International)". If you change it (by clicking on the i symbol in the top right of the screen, then settings, then language) to the one that is just called "English" you will get the British English names of the birds, ie Common Gull, Curlew, Redstart instead of Mew Gull, Eurasian Curlew, Common Redstart. It confused me at first but is easily fixed.
I've enjoyed using this so far - not a perfect substitute for a field guide but a useful thing to have on you day to day, and the ability to play back calls in the field is invaluable. It has also already been very useful on birding trips to Germany, as you can change the langage very easily so that you can tell your companions what bird you've just seen in their langauge!
Great app, use it all the time
I love having all this information plus bird calls with me all the time.
It's good to know you can change the bird names back to their more familiar versions, and I was pleased to find that the latest version supports multitasking properly as well, so that it remembers what you were last looking at when you reopen the app.
Good information, low-resolution images, poor interface
This application is a mixed bag and my initial enthusiasm quickly turned to disappointment as I started to navigate the application. Having kept it for a while, I would still probably rather have my money back, given the choice.
It provides a good level of detail on each bird but it's presented in a fairly basic and non-interactive way and some of the visual content is of very poor quality. It feels like someone simply uploaded a database of bird information into a simple display container, without any real thought regarding presentation and interaction.
There is so much useful data locked into the text that could be useful points of interaction. The maps aren't interactive, just simple static low-resolution images that go very blurry when zooming (even the map key is virtually unreadable) and, in fact, all the application contains is a series of low-resolution images, a sound file and a text file with sub-headings for each bird, which you navigate through like a slideshow.
I'd like to see a nicely presented overview page for each bird, which provides a summary of key details plus access to the more in-depth information, full-screen images, etc. as required. Even improving the presentation of the text pages, perhaps breaking it up into separate sections would be a big win. It would be nice if the application had real geographic data allowing the guide to highlight likely birds for your location and time of year or to show breeding pairs and related info for a particular country when you click on a map. Additionally a bird's main page could have links to related birds rather than having to back out to the top menu to find the next bird.
All in all, it seems like old (low-resolution) content re-purposed without much thought and sold at a high price.
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- £14.99
- Category: Reference
- Updated: 07 December 2010
- Version: 1.0.2
- Size: 297 MB
- Language: English
- Developer: BirdGuides Ltd.
- © 2010 BirdGuides
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.Requires iOS 3.1 or later.
