Smart Bird ID (UK & Europe‪)‬ 4+

Who knew real life Pokémon were all around us just waiting to be tracked, listened to, marveled at and snapped! This app will help you scratch the itch that’s been welling up inside ever since 10 year you completed Pokémon red on game boy! In all seriousness though! Such a great amount of work has gone into building the field guide, quizzes, song and photo ID systems and while they’re not always 100% accurate they’re pretty darn good! Has it made me late to work on occasion because I’ve stopped to consciously take note that chirpy little sparrow or that twit-twoo I don’t recognise? Absolutely it has! Do I mind? Of course not! We could all benefit from slowing down once in a while and drinking it all in, so why not start with birds?! You won’t regret it, they’re absolutely fascinating and a joy to watch! Just today I spotted my first red kite tracing a figure eight in the sky for a good two minutes without a single beat of its wings!!!

I’m an occasional birdwatcher, not a twitcher! I used to have a great UK id/spotting app, simple and straightforward. As iPhones developed it became obsolete and now I find the apps overloaded and cumbersome. This is the closest I’ve got to my old favourite. If you have an idea of the bird it’s relatively easy to scroll though and find it and the search function works well. I like the links to Google videos and the ability to filter down to regional (UK) level. However, limited sounds/calls; there’s an option for one time add-on purchases but comes up as “not available”. I really don’t want (and in these time can’t justify) the full monthly subscription just to get the one extra feature I want. I assume the ID from recording a sample is also a paid ad-on as I can’t access it. One thing I’d like to see is more options for recording sightings - “heard/sound only”. We have curlew passing thru here on way to moorland breeding grounds but for last two years have heard them all summer and suspect they’re nesting - we hear them but never see them. As an endangered species it would be good to record that.

Can not believe I have only just found this app!

My 10 year old daughter Holly has become a keen little bird spotter and being that we live in a quiet and scenic welsh valley - wildlife is rife. She has recently put up a bird table in the garden that she asked for as a birthday present and has lots of little visitors. We have hedgehogs and foxes but the birdie visitors to the garden were leaving me stumped because by the time I found books to try and identify them - they had flown away! Thankfully I discovered this app and at the click of a button we can see and identify the birds in our garden. We have chaffinchs, house sparrows, Eurasian jackdaws, blackbirds, starlings, wood pigeons and have even seen several red kits soaring the skies above our house (we haven’t quite figured out how to feed them yet) but we are looking forward to sitting outside and using the microphone to identify the other birds later! Great app!