Best Birding Apps for Apple and Android Review
Here are some of the latest and greatest 2024 birding apps for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Android.
Birda
Featured as 'App of the Day' by Apple in 148 countries, Birda is a breath of life in the birdwatching world.
With community assisted identification, automated life lists, gamified challenges and fun badges, among other cool features, if you are looking for a free birding app to amplify your birdwatching experience this is probably it.
Stand Out Features:
- Available on Apple and Android devices
- Free to use
- Join gamified challenges with prizes
- Choose your preferred taxonomy
- Localized species lists
- Social features - meet and share your birding experiences with other birders
- Discover birding locations near you, the birds that occur, including a list of the birds you have not yet seen
- Comprehensive world wide field guide that is constantly improving
- Set, track and monitor your birdwatching goals (E.g species seen per month, birding sessions)
- Import your sighting records from other apps e.g. eBird
- Automatically generated life lists, including home & patch lists
- Track healthy living metrics, like walks and time in nature
- Offline capabilities to use whenever you want to disconnect or are outside of your mobile service range
- Fine-grained privacy controls, including hiding sightings from your home address
Get the Birda App on Apple or Android here.
iBird Pro Birding App
- Interactive field guide for every species (924) found in North America, Canada, Hawaii, and all coasts and islands, even extinct birds!
- Audubon-quality full sized color illustrations, with perching and flight views
- Full color range maps for every species
- Search by song, conservation status, genus, species, shape, size, color, flight pattern, bill shape and length, wing shape and more
- Lifetime updates to bird species information
iBird Pro Guide Overview
Here's a great overview of iBird Pro features:
Sibley eGuide to the Birds of North America
Features of the Sibley eGuide to the Birds of
North America App:
- Over 6600 images
- Every species is shown perched and in flight
from above and below.
Shows every major seasonal, age, and sexual variation. - Detailed coverage of subspecies and regional variations.
- Detailed maps showing not just winter and summer range but also migration and rare occurrence.
- Detailed descriptions of songs and calls,
comparing similar species measurements of length, wingspan, and weight
for every species.
One-tap enlargement of images and rotating the device expands images further. - Over 2300 carefully-selected and edited sound
recordings. Nearly all species are represented with multiple examples
showing the range of vocalizations.
The ability to compare any two images, maps, or sounds, side by side on the screen. - The ability to filter by state/province, so that you see only the species likely to occur in your location, and to further reduce the possibilities to the most common birds in that area.
- The ability to search by distinguishing features such as size, prominent A basic personal species list that stores your sightings saved to the device
View Sibley eGuide to the Birds of North America
Audubon Birding App
Features of Audubon Birds Field Guide App:
- Detailed descriptions for 760+ birds
- 2,300+ bird songs
- 3,500+ high-quality color photos
- Unique search function for identifying bird by song type or pattern, wing shape, time of year, by state/province, locomotion and more
- Up-to-date range maps with wintering maps for 125+ migrating birds
Audubon Birds App for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad Walk-Through
For those of you who prefer photos of birds for identification over drawings (which we personally do not), you may like the Audubon app better than the Peterson, National Geographic or Sibley apps which do not have photos, but drawings.
The iBird Explorer Pro has both and would be our choice if you wanted photos.
View Audubon Birds App - A Field Guide to North American Birds
National Geographic's Birds
Features of the National Geographic Birding App:
- Sort by location, size and color through 867 birds of North America
- View more than 1600 bird images, listen to bird songs, 650 range maps, behavior and more
- Search for birds by name and the list updates and shortens as you type in the search box
This app would be a nice companion to the National Geographic's Field Guide to the Birds of North America, for those who prefer it over Peterson field guides, and/or instead of when you didn't have your guide book with you. It's also priced relatively cheap.
The search function seems to one of the highlights of this birding app, though we think Peterson's app is better at the same price because of added functionality and features.
National Geographic's Birds (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad)
BirdsEye App
Some Features of BirdsEye App:
- Powered by eBird, a joint project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon
- New observations are downloaded from eBird over the network
- Over one million bird observations each month reviewed by local birding experts.
- Map of 25,000 birding hotspots
- Can show you where any one of 847 North American species has been seen recently ??? and even give you directions
- Keeps a record of your life list
- For the 470 most observed North American birds (377 additional bird content can be purchased separately) there are photographs, songs and calls and Kenn Kaufman's notes about the species.
BirdsEye App Demo
We think this would be a good app to have in addition to one of the other birding apps on this page which are more for identification purposes. BirdsEye would be especially useful when you are traveling and want to see new species in locations you aren't as familiar as your home town.
Bird Codes App
Bird Codes is a simple birding app to help you
learn the four-letter bird codes, aka
alpha codes or banding codes.
Good when recording birds in the field and unsure of the proper code.
You'll also now know what other birders are talking about in forums, blogs, bird alerts, birding email lists, etc..
Some Features of Bird Codes App:
- Search by bird name or by code
- Contains alpha codes for all 2,078 AOU (American Ornithologists' Union) species
- Easy to use app, only 99 cents!
On a side note, for those banders or ringers out there, there is a free Band Codes app that in addition to the 4-letter banding codes also provides band size as a back-up, double-check.
It also gives notes when banding certain species. This one is free, but does not have all the AOU species as mentioned above.
So if you are a birder, not so much a bander, get the Bird Codes app.
Peterson's Birds of North America
Features of the Peterson Birds of North America Birding App:
- 800+ species, over 700+ bird songs, 500 bird nest & egg photographs
- Compare similar species (illustrations, range maps and songs) on one screen
- Create, save and share checklists
- Records sightings
- Zoom in to see fine detail
- Quickfind Index
- Browse illustrations just like a book
- Add your own photos to each species
Peterson Birds of North America Review
Those of you who are Peterson guide birders will especially enjoy this app.
Several reviewers have said they like it even better than having their field guide book, especially that you can instantly listen to songs in addition to viewing identification details.
It does not have photos of the birds, but has Peterson drawings instead which I think is always better for bird identification.
View Peterson's Birds of North America
Whether you are a beginner bird watcher or an expert ornithologist, any of these six birding apps for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad or Android device would be a great addition to your birding knowledgebase that is extremely portable.
All four, we believe, are bargain prices for the amount and quality of information you receive about birds for your mobile device.
All four have field guide related information, but if you want something more the BirdsEye app also allows users to see what birds have been recently sighted in specific locations and has an inventory of birding hotspots as well.
Choose the app that best suits your learning style and the kind of information you would prefer most. Happy Birding!
View all View all birding apps for android and iphone.
More Bird Identification Pages:
Bird Identification - Need help with Bird ID?
Wild Bird Identification - Tips for identifying birds by sight and song.
Best Bird Field Guides - Which are the best field guides?
Bird Song Identification - Learn to id birds by song alone.
Bird Watching Tips - More birding tips 'cause you can never have too many!
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