Birdathon
A birding checklist app
Free · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Birdathon is an observation-centric tool for creating birding checklists. It helps you organize your checklists and share them with others. Use Birdathon in the field to quickly record whether and where a bird is seen or heard and the number observed. The time and location of each observation is automatically recorded. You can adjust the location, time entries and the count of birds observed at any time to ensure your records are accurate. You can add breeding codes to your observations.
Checklist maps display the locations of your observations. You can overlay county boundaries for every US state. You can add a range circle such as a 5MR (5-mile Radius) to your maps. You can import and overlay custom kml/kmz files onto your maps.
An Overview feature lets you see your combined observations for any time period, and displays a map showing any boundaries you have selected, so you can utilize the map feature even when you are not actively checklisting. You can export Overview data into a csv text file or create a new checklist template from the Overview.
Your checklists can be viewed in taxonomic order, alphabetically, by rarity or as a timeline of species. You can enrich your checklist with field notes and add observations such as mammals, butterflies, wildflowers, etc., to make it a more complete record of your experience. You can organize your checklists into categories such as Day List, Year List, County List, Life List, etc., and assign color themes to your lists.
Bird species may be added and deleted from your lists at any time. You can create new checklist templates from your previous lists or import templates created by others. You can change which template is being used. You can import text files into Birdathon, making them into templates or new checklists.
Different export options for your checklists allow you to import into eBird or another copy of Birdathon.
The bird species source data and other resources used in this app come from the following sources:
AviList, a unified global checklist of birds, is the core data set used for Birdathon. https://www.avilist.org. Some data has been integrated from the following sources: The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world (https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/), the American Ornithological Society's (AOS) Checklist of North and Middle American Birds (https://checklist.americanornithology.org), and the American Birding Association's (ABA) checklist of North American Birds (https://www.aba.org/listing-taxonomy/)
Alpha codes come from The Institute for Bird Populations’ Standardized 4- and 6-letter Bird Species Codes. https://www.birdpop.org/pages/birdSpeciesCodes.php.
County boundary data is from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) TIGER/Line 2019 Shapefiles found on the United States Census Bureau's website at https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.2019.html. Boundaries should be used as general guidelines and not be considered precise. Note especially where county boundaries follow creeks, rivers, ridge lines and other natural features, and so are of much finer resolution than can be shown on Birdathon’s maps.
California breeding bird atlas blocks come from the California Bird Atlas, https://www.californiabirdatlas.org. California Bird Atlas logo and breeding code descriptions used with permission.
more We love this app and use it to log as we go the birds we see in our yard and on many of our outing. We also Like the the location marking and have shared lists with birding friends from time to time. We use in combo with ebird when we need help to narrow down a species to our location. We have made some suggestions to improve the text searching by ignoring spaces or hyphens which the author is hoping to implement. Thanks for a great app.Downloaded and used the recent update. Love the improved search capabilities. Thanks for including this feature in your update.
Developer Response Take a look at version 1.5, which just dropped today! Among other changes, it incorporates your excellent suggestions: searches in a checklist now work even if you don't type the hyphens or apostrophes and extra spaces are ignored. Let me know how it works for you!
We love this app and use it to log as we go the birds we see in our yard and on many of our outing. We also Like the the location marking and have shared lists with birding friends from time to time. We use in combo with ebird when we need help to narrow down a species to our location. We have made some suggestions to improve the text searching by ignoring spaces or hyphens which the author is hoping to implement. Thanks for a great app.Downloaded and used the recent update. Love the improved search capabilities. Thanks for including this feature in your update.
Take a look at version 1.5, which just dropped today! Among other changes, it incorporates your excellent suggestions: searches in a checklist now work even if you don't type the hyphens or apostrophes and extra spaces are ignored. Let me know how it works for you!
There is so much to love about this app! I have used it daily for over two years. County list, location list, day list. You can name any list you want. I have site lists. I have challenge lists. In the field it provides accurate sighting information associated with a real time map. You can pinpoint nest sites. You can pinpoint hawk’s hunting fields. And you can do this while moving. At the end of a long day, your app will still leave the battery functioning. Can’t do that with ebird. You can generate first sighting records. Last sighting records. Week by week. Monthly. If I could ‘fix’ a site for printing summary reports the app would rival the legendary Avisys. Thanks so much for the wonderful app. And good birding.
There is so much to love about this app! I have used it daily for over two years. County list, location list, day list. You can name any list you want. I have site lists. I have challenge lists. In the field it provides accurate sighting information associated with a real time map. You can pinpoint nest sites. You can pinpoint hawk’s hunting fields. And you can do this while moving. At the end of a long day, your app will still leave the battery functioning. Can’t do that with ebird. You can generate first sighting records. Last sighting records. Week by week. Monthly. If I could ‘fix’ a site for printing summary reports the app would rival the legendary Avisys. Thanks so much for the wonderful app. And good birding.
I keep my birding observations in ebird for the science value, but this app allows me to keep much more information for my own journal. I like to keep track of new plants, interesting insects and animals. Export to ebird is very easy, so I can still contribute my sighting data. And export to email is useful to copy the full report into my journal, which is backed up and available in my desktop. Highly recommended.UPDATE: Export to email is not completely polished. I hope to be able to copy the report to my journal soon. A direct share would be most useful.
I keep my birding observations in ebird for the science value, but this app allows me to keep much more information for my own journal. I like to keep track of new plants, interesting insects and animals. Export to ebird is very easy, so I can still contribute my sighting data. And export to email is useful to copy the full report into my journal, which is backed up and available in my desktop. Highly recommended.UPDATE: Export to email is not completely polished. I hope to be able to copy the report to my journal soon. A direct share would be most useful.
If you keep lists of birds and they are in books, journals, slips of paper, back of envelopes or anywhere else, this is the most incredible App to get them organized in one spot. And of course when you go on your next trip; just use this App to record your sitings. It automatically records your time and location as well. A couple of letters in the search box will find your bird for you with amazing speed. Wonderful! There is a spot to record other notes if you want to record, flowers, weather, mammals or other things seen on the day. The App is free; but you can leave a tip if you find it useful and want to thank the author. Don’t miss this App!
If you keep lists of birds and they are in books, journals, slips of paper, back of envelopes or anywhere else, this is the most incredible App to get them organized in one spot. And of course when you go on your next trip; just use this App to record your sitings. It automatically records your time and location as well. A couple of letters in the search box will find your bird for you with amazing speed. Wonderful! There is a spot to record other notes if you want to record, flowers, weather, mammals or other things seen on the day. The App is free; but you can leave a tip if you find it useful and want to thank the author. Don’t miss this App!
- Checklists now have the ability to record breeding codes for each observation. The Breeding Code view includes a text description of each code. When saving an eBird report to import into eBird, codes will be included
- A button on the Home Screen leads you to a new California Bird Atlas view, specifically designed as a resource in the field to support this five-year breeding bird survey. Three tabs show (1) general information and links, (2) an annotated list of Breeding Bird codes, and (3) a map with CA county boundaries and Atlas blocks that you can display for any county
- When saving an eBird report to import into eBird, you now have the option to include GPS coordinates (latitude & longitude) for each observation. Use with caution to avoid endangering sensitive species or nest locations
- Also for eBird reports, if a bird was only marked as heard, Birdathon will add "Heard only" to the details field for that species in the eBird checklist
- This release also includes several layout improvements, especially for smaller screens, and fixes bugs
Additional changes include:
- Changed the sort style button to show icons instead of text
- Made the species/item count button be much more compact
- Settings button now shows gear icon
- Added checkmarks to indicate the currently selected item in the sort style menus (both the main view and checklist views)
- Separated bottom and top buttons that were merged together due to lack of spacers
- Improved the Dark Theme app icon
- App now asks if you want to use location services at all appropriate points, such as when tapping the “current location” button on the map
- Tweaked the color themes and the color theme picker
- Checklist items now extend underneath the bottom buttons
- Fixed a bug where indeterminate birds (birds where "?" was tapped) sometimes lost their indeterminate status
- Made sure all fields are included when exporting checklists to JSON files
2.0.2 Mar 31
Bug fix update, see previous version's release notes for the recent feature changes.
- Fixed alignment and color issues with the buttons on the main screen with older iOS versions
- Now supports down to iOS 16.1
- County lines now show up immediately on first display
- Range circle centers are more visible
- App Icon no longer clipped in the Settings view
2.0.1 Feb 15
This release changes Birdathon’s reference taxonomy from Clements to AviList. AviList is a unified global bird checklist that is the result of a collaboration between the major organizations responsible for classifying birds. More info at https://www.avilist.org. Because the eBird/Clements taxonomy is still in the process of aligning with AviList, Birdathon makes some accommodations to help smooth the transition. For example, the built-in sample checklists (e.g. “California 2026 Checklist”) still use the eBird/Clements naming, to ease export from Birdathon into eBird.
A new “Overview” feature shows not only your combined observations for any time period, but contains a map that can display county boundaries, range circles (e.g. “5 mile range”), and custom overlays simultaneously. As you travel, you can see your current location relative to these overlays, whether or not you are currently checklisting.
Support for a new initiative called the California Bird Atlas has been built in to this version, most especially the ability to display atlas blocks for any California county on the maps, and show your location within those blocks. You can also specify whether a checklist being exported for eBird import is part of the Atlas project.
US county boundaries, custom overlays, and range circles all work smoothly in the map views whether or not you have any network connectivity. Even if map tiles cannot load, due to lack of a cellular signal, boundaries, overlays, and range circles will still display on the map along with your current location.
Other changes and fixes include:
• Maps now show a dotted-arrow path connecting all the observations in a checklist. You can now tell the direction of travel and the order in which each observation was made. This can be turned off and on in the Checklist Info window for any checklist
• Dark Mode now has better and more consistent support
• Overview contains two tabs: Summary and Map. Birdathon remembers which tab you had open last and next time you go into Overview it will show that tab. The map in Overview remembers your position, zoom level, style, whether county lines are drawn, etc.
• Fixed an obscure bug in Summary where the year would display incorrectly, but only in years (such as 2025) where the last week of the year crosses over into the next year
• Saving Summary as Text now honors the current sort order in the Summary and suggests a filename indicating the sort style
• You can now email the Summary information. In the email, items are sorted the same as they appear in the Summary and include information about the date range, any geographic restrictions, and other optional settings
• Lists now remember the location and zoom level that you last set for their map. When switching lists, each list’s map will remember its location, zoom level, etc.
• You now have an option to sort lists by “Newest First”, basically the reverse of the Timeline order
• Better import of files exported from eBird. Birdathon now preserves the Location Name, the original observation date & time and Submission Comments
• Maps now show a button to take you to your current location
• Fixed several places where attempting to show a window on an iPad could cause a crash
• Many windows that appeared small on iPads now appear the same size as the main view. For example, Settings is now as big as the main window
• Rarity picker now shows colors when you are changing the custom rarity for a bird
• Observations on maps update more reliably and remember their color
• Improved support for larger font sizes, especially in the main and checklist views
• Birdathon is completely free: no ads, no subscriptions. Options for tipping the author have been removed. You can help the birding world by supporting your local Bird Alliance or Audubon Society!
• Many other bug fixes and user interface refinements throughout the app
2.0 Feb 14
Updated taxonomies: the Clements/eBird taxonomy v2023b from December 2023 is now the basis for all checklists. Information from the AOS Checklist 65th (July 2024) and ABA Checklist v8.16 (September 2024) are also incorporated into Birdathon. The Santa Clara County, California checklist, created by the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance, has been updated to the June 2024 edition.
Support for Dark Mode has been added, making Birdathon easier to use at night or in dim environments.
Birds whose names have changed or that have been lumped, now indicate this with "aka' ("also known as") in some views. For example "Pacific-slope Flycatcher" now shows "Pacific-slope Flycatcher aka Western Flycatcher" in the bird detail view.
It's now much easier to change the name of a bird species in your checklists. For example, if you have a bird in a list with an older species name, such as 'Pacific-slope Flycatcher,' there's a new "Change" button that brings up Clements Birds of the World and lets you easily switch it to 'Western Flycatcher.'
Four-letter 'Alpha' codes can now be shown on your checklist's main screen (previously they were only visible in the detail view). This setting, "Show Alpha Codes," can be turned on in the Birdathon Settings window. Note that Alpha Codes (aka Banding Codes) are only available for birds in the AOS Checklist range (North America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean).
The detail view for birds in a checklist will show annotations from the AOS checklist, if any are available, near the bottom of the view. As an example, "Snow Goose" has an annotation "Formerly placed in the genus Chen."
Other bug fixes and tweaks to the text were made.
Happy birding!
1.5.3 09/26/2024
A few bug fixes for this release:
• The Clements Checklist of birds of the world was missing the following birds: Common Buzzard, Eastern Shrike-tit, Western Shrike-tit, Northern Shrike-tit, Olive-backed Forest Robin
• If you have a checklist with a bird whose common name changed in the latest Clements Checklist, Birdathon now does a better job of assigning those birds to the correct family. Previously most would show up as "Uncategorized" when sorting by Taxonomic order (Family). Some birds (such as species that were split) could not be categorized, so they may still appear as "Uncategorized." In those cases, you will need to determine the new common name
• You can now import bird lists that were saved from the Summary. The Summary only exports some of the information, so the new checklist created will only have that information
Happy birding!
1.5.2 05/30/2023
Updated to the latest Taxonomy: Clements/eBird from August 2022. American Ornithological Society (AOS) Checklist 63rd from July 2022, Pyle's standard Alphabetic ("alpha" or "banding") codes from August 2022 and the Santa Clara County, California checklist from January 2023. Some bug fixes as well.
1.5.1 01/13/2023
The latest taxonomy from Clements/eBird, AOS and ABA, smarter searches, more importing options and an "achievements" screen are the highlights of this update.
• New sort orders: You can now sort all your checklists by Species Count or by Theme (color) in addition to the previous List Type, Alphabetical, Created and Modified sort orders.
• Searches inside a checklist now ignore hyphens, apostrophes, and leading and trailing blank spaces, making it more resilient and easier to type. Thanks to a user who suggested this really useful feature!
• Achievements—when you tap on the checklist count at the top of the screen, you'll now see a few fun statistics, such as how many species and bird families you've seen. This feature was suggested by a user. Let me know how you like it and what statistics would be most interesting to track.
• Tapping the checkbox in a checklist now defaults to incrementing the observed count (you can disable this in Settings by turning off "Enable One Tap").
• New settings allow you to include/exclude family names and scientific names from searches within a checklist. This was also requested by a user.
• In the Settings screen, "About Birdathon" now shows the version, and is blue to make it clear it's a link to more information.
• When importing a straight text file of common names you can choose to create a list template or import as a filled-in checklist. The count will be 1 for each species and the date/time will be the time of the import. Files exported from Birdathon using "Export Summary to CSV" can also be imported as a template or a checklist.
• Downloaded eBird checklists can now be imported. Note that not all the data in an eBird checklist gets imported into Birdathon — most notably, the map location and the checklist comments are lost, as eBird doesn't export that information.
• Files on iCloud Drive that hadn't yet been synced with your device are now handled correctly.
• Switching templates in a checklist will now also update the custom rarity of already-observed birds if the new template contains custom rarities (e.g. the Santa Clara County 2021 Checklist). If the new template does not have a custom rarity for the bird, it's custom rarity will remain unchanged.
• The List Statistics (button at the bottom of a checklist) now shows you the list name and type. If you've overridden duration in the eBird Report window, the List Statistics will now also show you calculated vs reported duration.
• In the Summary view, the button for setting date ranges had stopped working. Thanks to a user for spotting this one!
• The Summary view now remembers the last date range you selected.
• Fixed a bug in Summary view where the date range calculations could incorrectly use non-bird observations or observations in checklists that had "Include in Summary" disabled.
• Fixed a bug on the iPod touch (and possibly other small-screen iOS devices) where the "Start" button was disabled when attempting to create a new checklist.
• Improved compatibility with iOS 15. This mostly means fixes for drawing or graphical layout of user interface elements
• There are lots of other little bug fixes, performance improvements and adjustments to make things look and behave nicely
• I am always looking for ideas on how to make Birdathon better and more useful for your checklisting needs. Please send feedback to birdathon@voyageropen.com with your cool ideas, bug reports or just to say "hello" and let me know how Birdathon works for you.
1.5 11/12/2021
Updated checklists, improvements to eBird export, better searching and lots of small improvements. See full list below.
Fixes include:
• Updated to ABA Checklist 8.0.8 (March 2021) and Santa Clara County 2021 checklist
• Checklist templates now includes Clements of Birds of the World, so you can easily make checklists with all 10,722 world species
• Searches will now match common name, family name or alpha code (aka 4-letter banding code). An option in Settings also lets you include scientific name in searches. Searches formerly only matched common name and alpha code
• Searching Birds of the World will also show bird names that match common name, family name or alpha code (aka 4-letter banding code). An option in Settings also lets you include scientific name in this search
• eBird export now lets you choose a latitude & longitude for the checklist if it can't determine a location (for example, if you have disabled Location Services)
• Show Scientific Name in list when a bird is selected
• Fixed a few bugs where importing checklists and checklist templates sometimes failed
• Fixed a bug where you couldn't email a checklist or eBird export if iCloud Drive was disabled
• Birdathon now asks if you want to create a checklist template when importing a .csv file
• If the imported .csv file's first line is a header, that line is now skipped
• For eBird exports, the Location Name in the file now includes the date and time to make it unique. This helps work around a bug in eBird where two checklists with the same name will be placed at the same location no matter what latitude & longitude is included
• eBird export now remembers more of your settings (e.g. "Yes" vs "No" and your checklist location), and you can view and edit your Checklist Notes in the export view. Changes to the notes are saved to the checklist
• Fixed a bug in the Date Picker where it would forget the new date if you dragged the view down instead of tapping "Done"
• The detail view for birds in a checklist now shows the alpha code (4-letter code) near the top of the screen
• You can now clear a location for a bird observation
• You can now change the date and time for timeline notes
• Fixed a bug where Birdathon would sometimes fail to import Custom KML and KMZ overlay files
• For imported checklists, the import information now shows at the top of checklist info (was near the bottom before)
• Other bits of tuning, refinement, cleanup and minor bug fixes
1.4.2 03/23/2021
• Updated to the latest AOS (61st supplement, 2020) and ABA (v8.0.7, July 2020) checklists
• McCown's Longspur is now Thick-billed Longspur, as ruled by the AOS in August 2020
• Fixed a crashing bug when choosing Checklist Type on the eBird export screen on some devices
• Fixed a problem where you couldn't email a checklist if there was a "/" in its name
• In the Summary View, you can now choose a range of dates (including times) precisely to see a summary for that timeframe
• Fixed a bug where eBird exports contained distances in kilometers. EBird requires import files to use miles for distance
• In the eBird Report view, all settings are now remembered, and when you choose a checklist type (Traveling, Stationary or Incidental) your checklist is now set to be that type
• Export Checklist: You can now export a checklist summary as a .csv file for viewing in spreadsheets or importing into databases
• Export Checklist: You can now export Birdathon checklists and import into any copy of Birdathon. Export files are saved in .json format
• Enabled bulk exporting of all checklists under Settings. You can later import each checklist into any copy of Birdathon. Export files are saved in .json format
• Improved the user interface for adding notes to the timeline
• Fixed a bug where the bird detail said "No Locations" even when there were locations
• The French name will now show below the English name in the detail view for a bird, if available
1.4.1 10/13/2020
Birdathon 1.4 contains many improvements and bug fixes and has been updated to use the latest ABA (v8.0.6 December 2019), AOS (60th, 2019) and Clements (August 2019) checklists. Major changes include:
US county boundaries are much more accurate and based on USGS 2019 Shapefiles. County lines now extend offshore. US territories are now included. You can now tap on a county to highlight it and see its name.
Maps can now display custom overlays in kml or kmz formats. Three custom overlays are included in Birdathon as examples. You can create new overlays in other applications, such as Google Earth, and import them into Birdathon. Maps can also now show traffic.
Exporting to eBird and creating email reports have been enhanced. For eBird export, you can now specify miles or kilometers for distance traveled, pick a list type (Traveling, Stationary, Incidental), set the location for the checklist, set the duration and preview the list of observations. For email, you have full control over what information is displayed: summary statistics, timeline, map, taxonomic list, etc., and have the option to export to a file instead of emailing.
The Checklist View now lets you add a number in the search field to easily bump the count of a species. For example, typing "10 blph" in the search field, then tapping on the seen button for Black Phoebe will increment the seen count by 10. Typing the number last, as in "blph 10," also works.
The species Detail View has been reorganized to highlight individual observations and allow you to add notes to each observation. Observation notes will be included alongside species notes in eBird and email reports. You can also easily switch an observation between seen & heard by tapping on the seen or heard icon. Setting the location of an observation by dragging a map pin is easier now and there is an option for typing in latitude & longitude.
Other changes:
• Main view now shows the total number of checklists at the top or the number of matching checklists during searches
• Can now switch templates after creating a checklist
• ABA Rarity and Custom Rarity now display when you tap on a bird name in the checklist
• Easier to add a bird from Clements Birds of the World
• Easier to add "spuhs," e.g. "blackbird sp."
• Easier to add an animal or other non-bird observation
• Tapping the list total at the bottom of the Checklist View now brings up statistics for your list (total species, total tally, time started, duration)
• Added a Setting to turn off section headers for Family (Taxonomic) and Alphabetic sorting
• Added a "One Tap" Setting that allows you to increment a bird by tapping the checkbox to the left of its name. Useful for quickly tallying birds in a checklist
• New icon
• Other bug fixes, performance and user interface improvements
1.4 06/14/2020
Fixed a bug that can cause a crash when viewing checklists.
1.3.2 03/01/2019
• Fixed the missing "Done" button when setting Rarity for a bird
• The search bar is now automatically shown when you create a checklist. You can change this in Settings
• For new users, the ABA Checklist is selected by default the first time a checklist is created (previously, no checklists were selected)
• Rearranged items in the New Checklist and Checklist Info views for easier list creation and modification
• County boundary lines are drawn slightly thicker, to better display in Satellite and Hybrid map views
• When uploading to eBird, the version of Birdathon is added to the comments
• Fixed a crashing bug that happens after searching all lists for a bird
• Fixed a problem where Uncategorized birds could cause a crash in the Summary view
• Improved error reporting for some types of errors
• Fixes to avoid potential crashes
• Other minor tweaks and changes
1.3.1 02/22/2019
Improvements in Birdathon 1.3:
• You can now show county lines for any US county or for all counties in any US state
• You can draw a circle of specific radius around any point on a map, making things like 5MR (5-mile Radius) and CBC (Christmas Bird Count) circles easy
• Maps now aggregate nearby observations, reducing clutter and making them easier to read
• iPad is now supported
• Updated the ABA Checklist to version 8.0.5 (December 2018)
• Rotation is now supported for many views. This is especially useful for maps, note fields and email reports
• Checklists now remember which tab (All, Observed, Starred) you have selected
• When viewing checklists by Observed or Starred, searches now encompass the entire list. This is settable in Settings
• Reorganized Settings for easier customization of Birdathon
• There's a new color picker for choosing color themes for your checklists and a theme name is now shown
• You can now adjust the creation date and time when creating a new checklist
• Non-bird observations now show a count on the map
• You can now view a full-screen map when editing individual observations, making it easier to adjust the pin location
• A new debug setting lets you see the GPS accuracy of the observations recorded. Green rings around map pins for high accuracy, yellow for moderate accuracy and red for low accuracy. You can turn this on under Settings
• The Summary view has improved logic for restricting the range (now uses a circular range rather than rectangular) and shows a restricted-range circle on the map
• A bug in the Summary view where non-bird observations were always displaying on the map has been fixed
• When importing a checklist template, it now shows up immediately in the New Checklist view
• Updated the Santa Clara County Checklist to November 2018
• Lots of user interface cleanup, tuning and bug fixing
1.3 12/31/2018
Bug fix release. Addresses the following issues:
• The summary view was blank when sorting alphabetically (if sorting last name first)
• Fixed incorrect species count for ABA v8.0.4 checklist template
• When the species count is > 999, show commas for the count at the bottom of the checklist
• Fixed a crash when deleting the only non-bird observation in a checklist
• Modified sort order of notes when viewing a checklist by Family or Alphabetically
1.2.2 09/03/2018
This release has been updated to include the new ABA v8.0.4 checklist which adds Black-backed Oriole.
Other changes:
• You can now change the creation date for your checklists. This is useful if you are entering older checklists into Birdathon
• Added a few new color themes
• When sorting by List Type, added an index along the right edge for quick scrolling
• Some small bug fixes
1.2.1 08/30/2018
In this release we have greatly expanded the built-in list of birds to cover the entire planet! Birdathon now references over 10,500 species from the August 2018 Clements Birds of the World. Also included are the updated AOS Checklist (59th supplement, released July 2018) and the ABA checklist version 8.0.3 (August 2018) update. Four-letter Alpha codes were updated using the Institute for Bird Populations list updated July 24, 2018.
We now support ordering lists by rarity. The ABA rarity codes for North American birds are included, and any checklist you create will contain those codes. In addition, you can set custom rarity for birds in your checklists. The built-in Santa Clara County Bird list includes custom rarity codes specific to the county. Any checklist with custom rarity codes will allow sorting by Custom Rarity as well as ABA Rarity. When you create checklist templates from checklists with custom rarity codes, new checklists made from those templates will contain the custom codes.
Alphabetical sorting of birds now defaults to sorting by “last name.” For example, “Black Phoebe” is sorted under “P” for “Phoebe.” Only birds are sorted this way: notes and non-bird observations are sorted by the first word. You can change bird sorting to "first name" behavior via a setting in the About box. Look for the gear icon in the upper left-hand corner after tapping “About.”
When sorting by Rarity, birds default to family (taxonomic) order within each rarity code, but this can be changed to alphabetical order via a setting.
Other changes in this release:
• Improvements to behavior when searching a list for birds - search results are now remembered even when you change sort order, and smart-quotes, accents and other diacriticals are handled intelligently
• When sorting the main list of checklists by type, you the number of checklists of each type is shown
• When importing checklists from a csv (text) file, Birdathon now ignores blank lines and turns “smart” apostrophes into regular apostrophes
• eMail reports now show family names in the taxonomic listing at the end of the email
• Many other small bug fixes, performance enhancements and improvements to the user interface
Visit http://voyageropen.com/birdathon for more details.
1.2 08/25/2018
This release incorporates the new ABA 8.0.2 checklist (May 2018) with four new bird species added.
In the Map view, different colored pins now distinguish notes, non-bird items and indefinite birds from bird sightings.
In the Summary View, sorting by Family now organizes birds by observed count within each family.
Other changes:
• Fixed a bug in the Summary View where some birds can have a 0 or negative count when limiting geographic range
• Fixed a bug in the Summary View where indefinite birds show up in the map even when not shown in the summary
• Fixed a bug in the Summary View where old checklists sometimes displayed birds in the wrong family
• Summary View options text is no longer truncated on smaller iPhones
• Other small bug fixes and layout tuning
1.1.1 05/30/2018
Global Search
You can now search all checklists at once for a specific sighting, answering questions like "When did I last see a Purple Finch?" Pull down on the list on the Main view to reveal a search field and type in a bird name. The lists containing that bird will be displayed. You can tap into a list and it will show the matches for your search.
Summary View
At the bottom of the Main view is a new icon for displaying a Summary of all your bird checklists. You can now answer questions like "What birds did I see in the past week, month, year, etc.?". The Summary view shows you all birds seen in a particular timeframe, which you can adjust for any length of time. Tapping on a bird shows you more detail such as dates observed, which lists contain observations of that bird and a map showing all locations where you've observed that species.
The Summary view also has options for including indefinite sightings (the ones where you tapped 'ID?') and non-bird sightings (e.g. butterflies, mammals, etc.) and a powerful feature for specifying the geographic range of the Summary. You can pick a location on a map and only show birds sighted within a specified distance (from 1/4 mile to 10 miles) from that location. This can be great not just for determining which species you've seen at a particular location, but for creating a checklist template for that location.
You can exclude a checklist from the Summary view by opening the checklist, going into Checklist Info and toggling the switch "Include List in Summary Views."
Export options let you save the Summary as a comma-separated-values (csv) text file and let you turn the Summary into a checklist. As an example, you could make a Summary of all the birds you've observed within a mile of a park, then create a template for that park so any time you visit in the future you can use your own custom checklist for that area.
Other
A new setting lets you automatically clear the search field after entering data for bird observations. This makes it faster to do a common search-enter-search-enter style of entering observations. The setting can be found by tapping About in the Main view and then tapping the settings button (a small gear icon) in the upper left.
Other changes:
• When you change the name of a list, the new name shows up immediately
• Searching for birds whose name contains an apostrophe (') now works correctly
• In the Main view, the "+" button has been renamed to "New List"
• ABA Checklist version in the About box is now correct
• Fixed a bug where the year may display incorrectly on December 31
• Lots of little bug fixes and small refinements to the interface
Happy birding!
1.1 04/09/2018
• Updated to the ABA Checklist v8.0.1 (added Chatham Albatross and fixed typos)
• "AOS" taxonomic ordering for lists is now called "Family"
• Ordering of species within families was incorrect in the AOS checklist; this has been fixed
• New checklists and imported checklists now inherit the correct ordering of species within families
1.0.2 11/28/2017
• Incorporated the new American Birding Association (ABA) checklist version 8.0, released November 21, 2017
• Removed the Hawaii 2016 checklist now that the ABA checklist includes Hawaii
• You can now rename an imported template in the New Checklist view by swiping left and tapping 'Rename'
• Refinements to the email report: layout is improved and individual sightings are now listed for each bird
• Fixed a bug in the count totals for birds in the email report
• Fixed a crash that could happen when searching and scrolling a checklist
1.0.1 11/22/2017
- Checklists now have the ability to record breeding codes for each observation. The Breeding Code view includes a text description of each code. When saving an eBird report to import into eBird, codes will be included
- A button on the Home Screen leads you to a new California Bird Atlas view, specifically designed as a resource in the field to support this five-year breeding bird survey. Three tabs show (1) general information and links, (2) an annotated list of Breeding Bird codes, and (3) a map with CA county boundaries and Atlas blocks that you can display for any county
- When saving an eBird report to import into eBird, you now have the option to include GPS coordinates (latitude & longitude) for each observation. Use with caution to avoid endangering sensitive species or nest locations
- Also for eBird reports, if a bird was only marked as heard, Birdathon will add "Heard only" to the details field for that species in the eBird checklist
- This release also includes several layout improvements, especially for smaller screens, and fixes bugs
Additional changes include:
- Changed the sort style button to show icons instead of text
- Made the species/item count button be much more compact
- Settings button now shows gear icon
- Added checkmarks to indicate the currently selected item in the sort style menus (both the main view and checklist views)
- Separated bottom and top buttons that were merged together due to lack of spacers
- Improved the Dark Theme app icon
- App now asks if you want to use location services at all appropriate points, such as when tapping the “current location” button on the map
- Tweaked the color themes and the color theme picker
- Checklist items now extend underneath the bottom buttons
- Fixed a bug where indeterminate birds (birds where "?" was tapped) sometimes lost their indeterminate status
- Made sure all fields are included when exporting checklists to JSON files
more Version 2.0.2 Mar 31
Data Not Collected The developer does not collect any data from this app.