Morcombe & Stewart Guide 4+

Compact, easy to use, could be better

I’ve used this app extensively over several years. It is a reasonable basic guide with some extras. These make it somewhat better than a scanned book but it still falls well short of the potential of an app.

On the positive side it has a superb call function which separates vocalisations by subspecies and type with an easy to control player - birding apps elsewhere take note!

The regional restriction feature is useful but beware of situations where you see seabirds from a headland but can’t find them in the regional list. I would prefer an easier method of adding out of range species.

The illustrations, from the field guide, are excellent at capturing the giss of birds. I like the pre-digital pencil sketch feel of these illustrations although sometimes the shading of key features is unclear (f grey vs chestnut teal this morning). Each includes several illustrations showing features and variants of plumage along with nests and eggs, and point out diagnostic features. I often find features or developmental stages I’m looking at that are not covered or are unclear: can there ever be enough? Perhaps the best option for apps is to include a premium version with regularly updated photo libraries.

The maps are also pencil sketch type, with colors indicating subspecies and hybrid zones, and two densities of shading to indicate abundance. I like the format, which shows sophistication without relying on ugly digital cartography. However, these could be greatly improved. I would like to distinguish summer, winter and transit distributions of migrants; to show seabird breeding sites more clearly and to include more detail, perhaps with zooming in, and the latest information on distributional anomalies (which makes handdrawn pencil sketches hard to maintain).

The text is sparse and barely adequate for identification. This could be greatly improved. Many descriptions are inconsistent in features that they address which makes it difficult to compare similar species. These should be greatly expanded and given a more consistent format - a birding app must give more information on plumage and variation, and should also go well beyond the basics of ID.

The compare two species function is a bit clunky and particularly limited by the text.

The general indexing is basic and frustrating, such that you must type whole words in order to search out a species. For example, typing “duck” will exclude all ducks with other names such as Mallard, Gargany, Shovelers and Teals. A smarter indexing function would link groups, allow partial and imperfect matches.

The most disappointing feature is the MyList function which breaks many of the fundamentals of bird bookkeeping. It is easy enough to add a species to your list when you are on that species page but there is no indication whether you have already added this species to that list. The coordinates can be added but are off by default (why not on?). There is no mapping function.

Editing your list is a nightmare: in particular changing location names, adding and deleting species from locations, downloading or uploading are all time wasting, cumbersome and wrong, wrong, wrong. So much so that this function is barely worth using - I suspect that it will be difficult to port lists from this app to anything else. In it’s defence, this problem is far from unique. Most birding apps have a long way to go in handing easy control of lists to the user (compare this with a specialist listing app like BirdLasser).

I’ll keep using this app and hope that updates greatly improve the information, include photos and have user friendly listing.