Limosa: Birding & Bird ID
Sightings, sounds & life lists
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Limosa is a birding app for recording, identifying and sharing bird sightings. Whether you occasionally watch birds in the garden, keep a year list or go birding regularly, Limosa helps you keep your observations organized.
You can quickly enter species, record locations, add photos, videos and sound recordings, and view your sightings on the map. You can also follow other birders, comment on observations and keep track of group sightings together with friends.
What you can do with Limosa
• Log sightings with species, location, photos and notes
• Identify bird sounds with your phone
• View sightings on an interactive map
• Add photos, videos and sound recordings
• Play videos with adaptive quality
• Add co-observers to group sightings
• Comment on observations from others
• Scroll through recent sightings in a feed
• Use species lists based on region and season
• Keep track of your year list and life list
• Follow your progress with the Limosa Score
• Share sightings with friends or keep them private
• Use the app in multiple languages
• Export your data whenever you want
Identifying bird sounds
With Limosa, you can identify bird sounds using your phone. This can be useful when you hear a singing bird but are not completely sure which species it is. The identification feature helps you learn bird songs and confirm species in the field.
Sharing sightings
You can follow other birders, like their sightings and comment on them. For group sightings, you can add co-observers so the same observation also appears on their list.
For sensitive observations, such as breeding birds or vulnerable species, you can decide how visible each sighting should be.
Built for the field
Limosa is designed for use outdoors. The app has a calm, clear interface and is built to help you record a sighting quickly, without too many steps. Photos, videos and audio can be added to observations and stored.
For different kinds of birders
• Beginners: discover species and learn to identify them
• Listers: keep track of your year list, life list and other lists
• Photographers and videographers: add media to your sightings
• Active birders: organize, search and export your observations
Privacy and data
You decide the visibility of your sightings: public, friends only or private. You can export your observation data, and Limosa does not sell your data.
About Limosa
Limosa is made by birders and is still actively being developed. We regularly add new features and are always happy to receive feedback from users.
Download Limosa and start recording your bird sightings.
Questions or feedback? info@limosa.online
Privacy Policy: http://limosa.online/privacy
Terms and Conditions: https://limosa.online/terms
more New:
• Your lifers, year and month lists on Home
• A calmer home screen
• Mark a nest or breeding when you add a sighting
• Small improvements and fixes
2026.43.05 3d ago
New:
• Use Limosa without an account
• Free route library
• A welcome for new accounts
• Small improvements and fixes
2026.43.04 4d ago
This update makes sharing clearer and locations more reliable.
• When you share a sighting that isn't public, the share screen now tells you others can't open it. Tap "Make public" to fix that right away
• A photo with an unusable location in its data now uses your own location instead of a wrong place
• Signing in is more reliable
2026.42.05 Oct 15
This update is about sharing your videos.
Sharing video
• Story, Share and Save now all give you the same video, with the Limosa card built in
• Save stores just that one video, without extra images next to it
• Portrait videos are upright again in your Instagram story
• Works for 4:5 and 1:1 posts too
• Want the clip without the card? Pick "Original clip"
Fixed
• Dates and times on share cards now use your own time zone and language
• For sightings with a recording, the sonogram was sometimes used as the main photo
• Saving no longer overwrites your clipboard; copy the link with one tap instead
2026.42.01 Oct 13
This update is about video, sound and keeping your list up to date.
Video and sound
• "Identify with AI" on a video now also listens to the sound, with the same sound model as live, and tells you when it heard each species
• Even if you hid your video's sound from others, you can still have it analysed yourself
• Videos over 50 MB are shrunk on your phone instead of refused
• After live sound detection, videos play at normal volume again
• Recordings play right from the edit screen; sonogram and sound are separate attachments
Uploading
• You see the progress on the sighting itself, also during a route recording
• Uploads and edits no longer disappear silently when the network drops
Your list
• Fill in your list: tick off species you saw before
• "Add under" for a sighting without a location
• Your target species on Home, also for lists without scores
• Switches for target-species notifications and scheduled pushes, in your own language
Fixed
• The keyboard covered the search results
• The checklist for your location reloaded on every GPS update
• "This photo has no GPS" also showed without a photo
• The month curve on the species page had turned into separate blocks
2026.41.08 Oct 12
This update is about the checklist, the species page and subspecies.
Checklist
• The list is now a grid, with four ways to reach it, search on the tab, and a keyboard that opens right away
• Subspecies sit under their species and open from the grid
• Sort by what is most your target species, and see per species where its months come from
Species page
• The rarity ladder shows how common or rare a species is in your region
• "How is this species doing" now reads sources that count birds rather than reports. For the Netherlands those are the Red List and the official reporting
• The world distribution map is now in the app too
Subspecies
• 21 subspecies have a name of their own and 22 have their own icon
• While logging you can see when there is something to determine, through a chooser sheet instead of a long list
Target species
• A list of the species you are still looking for, and a sighting remembers that it was your target at the time
Also
• Sharing gives you the same card on your phone as in the browser, ready for Instagram
• Searching the species list now works without a connection, and identifications you make offline still come through
• The app starts faster, because the splash no longer waits for the species list
Fixed
• Your own list sometimes showed other people's public sightings as well
• The splash could hang when Firebase was slow to start
• The distribution map was too pale because it divided by the busiest cell
• The like count was missing in the gallery and on the sighting detail
• One failed upload stalled the whole queue
2026.37.01 Sep 10
What's new in this update:
• Tap a photo in your timeline and you see it large, in a carousel you close again on exactly the spot you left
• The Media Studio has become a proper library: big tiles at your photos' own aspect ratio, at full resolution instead of small squares
• Pick how big the tiles are, and filter by everything, photos, videos or audio, and by what isn't attached to a sighting or outing yet
• Tap an item and you get the picture full screen, with identify and link within reach instead of a screen full of controls
• Select a stack of photos, name the bird once with AI or by searching, and file them all onto the right sighting in one go
• Share a video as an Instagram Story with the Limosa card inside the video itself, instead of a separate card that lands askew on your screen
• Choose per video whether its sound goes out. It's reversible, and your original file is left untouched
• Subspecies now have a page of their own and go by their own name everywhere
• Filter your checklist and your gallery by year
• On the website you can now share or download a sighting's video as an actual video
• Fixed: a link to a new sighting sometimes opened a grey screen
• Fixed: the tip about device information on your media kept coming back after you had dealt with it
2026.33.03 Aug 14
What's new in this update:
• An outing shows your photos first, then the map, then any recordings — a walk you mostly listened to now opens on the map instead of a row of sonograms
• Recordings play on the website too, both on an outing and on a sighting
• Media Studio: select several items and delete them in one go
• Species search finds what you're looking for again, including vagrants on the website
• Your badges stay correct when you delete a sighting and post it again
• Species icons sit above your route on the map, and the map keeps its layers
• Sharing: a dark overlay for the card layouts
2026.32.04 Aug 5
What's new in this update:
• One screen for sharing — format, layout, content and style in one place, with your walked route on an outing's card
• Identify a recording you already saved, right on your own device
• Species ID runs entirely on our own model — your photos never leave Limosa
• Several routes per outing, and route recording that keeps going in the background and survives a restart
• Merge routes, split them where the track breaks, and export one as GPX with your sightings as waypoints
• The map opens on your own day, with that day's routes on a toggle
• Photo sightings keep their location — a fair guess where there is one, marked as a guess, and fixable everywhere, including sightings saved earlier
• The + button opens your checklist, with camera and gallery in its bar
• Reply to a comment, and add a whole group as co-observers in one tap
• The country picker leads with the countries you actually bird in
• Supporter in Dutch and German, active right after purchase
2026.32.01 Aug 4
What's new in this update:
Limosa Supporter is here. A small monthly or yearly contribution keeps Limosa independent and growing — and gives you a Supporter badge, the Supporters group chat, custom profile accent colours, and early access to new features. Cancel any time.
Plus reliability fixes and polish.
2026.30.13 Jul 25
What's new in this update:
Sharper bird ID. Photo and video identification now run on our own model, so results are more consistent — and match what your phone recognises offline.
Identify without a connection. Download the model once over WiFi (Settings, Media), then identify offline on both iPhone and Android.
See how each bird was identified. Every AI suggestion now shows which model produced the result.
Plus a faster start and reliability improvements.
2026.30.12 Jul 24
What's new in this update:
Straight into the app
Signed in? You now go directly from the splash screen into Limosa — the sign-in screen no longer flashes by on startup. Your session is recognised instantly from your device, even without an internet connection.
A much faster start
Limosa now shows your feed, statistics and profile right away from local storage instead of waiting for the network. The app starts noticeably faster and works fully offline — signing in is verified quietly in the background.
More reliable
Fixed a crash that could occur while your sightings were loading, plus smaller fixes and improvements.
2026.29.01 Jul 15
What's new in this update:
Explore without an account
Look around Limosa before signing up — browse the discover feed and Reels, and open public profiles, sightings and species as a guest.
Sharper bird sound ID
Identifying birds by sound now uses a new on-device engine that recognises their calls and songs more accurately.
Bird sounds throughout the app
Recordings now appear in your discover feed and on profiles, with a dedicated audio tab in your checklist. Tap a sonogram to play it right there, share a sonogram as a card from the Share Studio, and listen to recordings as Reels — with an opt-in to include audio.
Smoother and more reliable
Limosa starts faster and runs more smoothly. Opening an activity from a notification is more reliable, new profiles load faster, and the display now fits neatly on your screen. We also fixed a crash that could occur when opening your sightings while your profile was still loading.
2026.27.04 Jul 4
What's new in this update:
Explore without an account
Look around Limosa before signing up — browse the discover feed and Reels, and open public profiles, sightings and species as a guest.
Sharper bird sound ID
Identifying birds by sound now uses a new on-device engine that recognises their calls and songs more accurately.
Bird sounds throughout the app
Recordings now appear in your discover feed and on profiles, with a dedicated audio tab in your checklist. Tap a sonogram to play it right there, share a sonogram as a card from the Share Studio, and listen to recordings as Reels — with an opt-in to include audio.
Smoother and more reliable
Limosa starts faster and runs more smoothly. Opening an activity from a notification is more reliable, new profiles load faster, and the display now fits neatly on your screen.
2026.27.03 Jul 4
What's new in this update:
Explore without an account
You can now look around Limosa before signing up — browse the discover feed, watch Reels, and open public profiles, sightings and species as a guest.
Sharper bird sound ID
Identifying birds by sound now uses a new on-device engine that recognises their calls and songs more accurately.
2026.25.06 Jun 21
What's new in this update:
New server address
Limosa now connects through its new home at api.limosa.online. Update before June 23 to stay connected — older versions will stop working when the old address is retired.
Update check
Limosa can now let you know when your app version is too old to keep working, with a quick link to the store.
2026.24.04 Jun 12
What's new in this update:
Notification settings
Choose exactly which notifications Limosa sends you — all from a new settings screen.
Fix a sighting's species
Logged the wrong bird? Tap the species on any sighting to search for and set the right one.
"What's new" & announcements
Get a quick recap of new features after each update, plus the occasional in-app announcement so you don't miss important news.
Open checklists without signing in
View shared checklists straight away — no account needed.
2026.23.06 Jun 6
Fix: attached videos now actually upload.
A long-standing bug sent videos as the wrong MIME type, so the server rejected them silently — sightings saved fine but the video never appeared. The client now sends the right MIME for every photo, video, and audio file.
Any videos queued by the previous build will now sync automatically.
2026.22.07 May 31
Share your sightings, activities and reels — Strava-style.
• Turn any sighting, activity or reel into a shareable card — tap the share icon to try the new MapSplit, CardStack and Editorial templates
• Send straight to Instagram Stories, the system share sheet, or save to your camera roll
• Tap any photo on a profile to open it full-screen and swipe through that birder's whole gallery
Plus a smoother reels experience and the usual round of polish and bug fixes.
2026.21.11 May 25
Show off your Instagram on your Limosa profile.
• Add your Instagram handle in Settings → Account
• Other birders can tap the Instagram glyph on your profile to jump straight to your Instagram — opens in the Instagram app if you have it installed, otherwise the web
Plus a round of polish and bug fixes.
2026.21.03 May 19
Spring birding upgrades:
• Smooth video playback — sighting videos now stream with adaptive bitrate (HLS) so they load fast on any connection
• Tap to play videos inline in galleries and profiles, no full-screen needed
• Comment on any sighting and join the conversation
• See who joined a group activity with the new participants list
• Align liking sightings between reels, details and profile
• Smarter Reels ranking — more birds from near you, less noise
• Faster, more reliable static maps on profiles
• Plenty of polish and bug fixes
2026.21.02+202 May 18
• Large photos (10–15 MB) are now handled correctly, and you'll see a clear message if a photo fails to upload.
• Sighting times are now displayed correctly in your local timezone.
• Improved error handling when network issues occur during sign-in.
• Various stability and performance improvements.
2026.19.03+194 May 5
Improved location preferences
2026.18.05+191 May 3
What's new in 2026.18.04:
• New language: German is now fully supported across the app
• Smarter bird sound identification with improved accuracy on subtle calls
• Faster startup and lower memory use on iPhone
• Activity feed performance: smoother scrolling, fewer reloads
• Polished sighting editor: cleaner co-observer picker and visibility controls
• Map fixes: improved marker clustering and faster tile loading
• Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements
Loving Limosa? A quick App Store rating helps other birders find us. Got feedback or feature requests? Email info@limosa.online — we read every message.
2026.18.04+190 May 1
- Bird sound recognition
- Personalized target species, both lifer and month targets
- Species information and heatmaps
2026.12.15+159 Mar 22
New:
• Your lifers, year and month lists on Home
• A calmer home screen
• Mark a nest or breeding when you add a sighting
• Small improvements and fixes
more Version 2026.43.05 3d ago
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