BWP 4+

Good extension to Collins Bird Guide

I have often wanted to see the renowned BWP, and love the app version of Collins, so what better than an app version of BWP that can interact with Collins, each way. Initial use is promising although the linking doesn’t always seem to work, especially Collins to BWP direction after the first one or two species.

I would also like links removed where there is no reference in the other book, e.g. Ostrich of course isn’t in Collins, so there should be no link in BWP to the Collins app, and there may be some going the other way too. Edit: recent update seems to have solved this.

It would be nice to be able to scroll through the images once enlarged on screen.

It does look a nice expanding upgrade to Collins though, and I look forward to using it, especially with a few niggles ironed out and more images added for the newly added species.

Excellent app

Three weeks in and still very happy that I bought this app. Not sure why there are those complaints about the age of some of the stats, the developers have been totally upfront that this is based on the original work from that period with some tweaks. Not had any problems going between this and the Collins guide and they compliment one another very well. Is it perfect? No, of course not, there are some minor niggles such as the mode of scrolling through the illustrations rather than having them full screen as in the Collins guide, but such things aside I cannot recommend this app highly enough.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your review. You can now also swipe between full-screen assets :)

Great body of work, poor experience

I appreciate the enormous amount of work and knowledge that has been captured here. However, it’s translation to an iPad app is a poor user experience. A number of obvious features are missing: after selecting images it should be possible to swipe through all images for that species (these images are low resolution); more detailed explanation of indicator plumage should be given on images; it should be easy to navigate between family accounts and the corresponding species descriptions; distribution maps and annual cycle diagrams must have keys and explanations readily to hand, in fact there is no explanation anywhere in the text of the orange on maps (I assume this means resident). Overall the BWP feels like a very flat book and not an interactive app.

Developer Response ,

It's now possible to swipe between assets. Tapping the info icon on the maps brings up the key.