Bird Journal

The website that this app is linked to has been great for me to record my birding observations. Unlike ebird, it does not require one to enter any data other than the bird names, which makes it quick and efficient for me in the field. It allows you to use different bird taxonomy lists (like IOC, Clements, and others rather than Clements alone which I find very conservative. It will soon add Avilist as well. The app used to lag in features compared to the website, but in the recently released version it now has almost all the features from the website and the search features are much improved. Some disadvantages are the significant lag of publishing updated taxonomies (up to a year!) and of course, that this app is not free.

Entering and viewing sightings is excellent on the website version of this tool. But the iOS app lacks so many features that it’s almost useless. Examples: 1) Cannot filter species by name or family. If you have a long list of species, you have to painfully scroll down. The filters are limited to date and location—if I knew those I wouldn’t need to look up species. 2) Species page doesn’t list sightings. It just shows first and last dates. 3) Entries list has no way to jump down to an early date. If you have lots of entries it’s tedious to scroll toward bottom. 4) New locations cannot be given a latitude/longitude. I might understand if you couldn’t select from a map like on the website, but you cannot even enter coordinates manually. I’ll stick with the website for most uses unless/until the app is improved.

This was the best of several apps I downloaded for keeping a birding life list. However, just when I was getting comfortable, I had to replace my phone, and when I restored my apps from my backup, this is the only app that wouldn’t reload. All my bird list was lost...nearly 300 species with sighting dates. So sad! Not sure if I should even start again, or find another service.