ChirpOMatic - Birdsong Europe 4+

Great app, especially for beginners

To my shame, I do not know too much about our native birds in the UK. But with this app I am beginning to learn more, and it is very enjoyable to do so. I hear a bird singing in my garden , on a walk, or wherever. And out comes my phone, tap on the app, tap on ‘record’ , wait a few seconds….. then, by way of identifying the bird, you are either (a) given the name of a single bird to consider as the actual provider of the sound you have heard and you can select yes or no (you do this by playing the app’s own recording of the suggested bird’s sound, then agreeing or disagreeing) OR (b) when the quality of your recording is less than perfect (background noise etc), you may be given a shortlist of candidates, and by the above process you may be able to whittle it down to one bird. Once you have identified the bird, the app provides a bit more information about the chirpy chappie. And you have the satisfactory feeling of knowing a little bit more about the natural environment you live in. And your recording gets added to your ‘library’.

So impressed!

Thank you so much for providing this incredible app.

Clearly it cannot produce 100% accurate results, but in my experience of using it over around 6 months, providing you give the app a fighting chance by trying to record the song in isolation (of course this is often tricky to do!) and without extraneous noises, I’m amazed at how frequently it gets the right results. Such fantastic technology always at hand! What a thrill to identify one of the less common birds! I could go on!

Problems with iPhone

Worked fine until the winter. As I hadn’t used the app for a while it disappeared into the cloud. Upon reinstalling it simply didn’t work - eventually I realised that the “recordings” were silent. The permissions had changed so there was no permission for the microphone, but the app never suggested that. Surely microphone access should be flagged? It went through the motions of “recording” and “checking”, and the troubleshooting just said I was holding the phone wrong or to switch to the bottom Mike.

UPDATE

Sorry developer - you are wrong - if you go to settings and turn off microphone permissions then try to use the app it will look as if there is nothing wrong, “record” a silent recording then tell you it is a lesser spotted woodpecker, skylark or lapwing. In my case the microphone permissions has disappeared without me doing it. There is nothing wrong with my microphone and I did try troubleshooting. The app needs to warn you if it cannot access the microphone. When you restore permissions it works fine, and I know now to check, but it shouldn’t be a possible scenario.

Developer Response ,

Hello EJanet, I'm sorry that the app isn't working correctly for you. The problem cannot be with permissions or you wouldn't get any recording at all, not even a silent one. The most likely cause of the problem is the microphone so I recommend that you try switching to the bottom microphone, as described in the Troubleshooting section. If that doesn't fix it, please email me so that I can help.