Birds of Brazil

It’s shocking and disappointing how many errors are in this, making it nearly useless. Species accounts with blank pages instead of texts, mislabeled illustrations, notes on illustrations that directly contradict text, and wrong species names on illustrations. White-throated Piculet? That’s not even a typo. In general, habitat info is uselessly brief, no mention of bird habits makes it impossible to locate a bird you don’t already know. You can’t enlarge the illustrations but you can enlarge the maps, which is useless. Away from the Atlantic rainforest and Guianan shield you’re better off with an app from Ecuador or Peru, or better yet the Lynx books.

I’ve used this app on several trips to Brazil and have found it extremely helpful. When I am in Brazil I use this app every day. Love the enhancement of songs and photographs. Also the coverage of the entire country is great. Since I live in North America, many species that I see in different parts of Brazil are new to me, and this app in combination with printed field guides enables me to have a great chance of getting an identification of a new bird. I’ve used it on at least 5 visits to such varied locations as Belo Horizonte and the coastal range in Minas Gerais; Brasilia and the Capitol region; Cuiabá and Chapada dos Guimarães National Park; Rio and environs; Goiás state; and the Xingu region of Mato Grosso. Highly recommended.

Although comprehensive in its scope, this guide has several aspects that must be improved in future updates. The "drawings" are awful in most instances and the text descriptions are lacking any of the detail expected in a serious bird guide. The maps are sometimes hard to decipher also. From a functional point of view the search function does not have a back button meaning that one has to exit the app to reset the full list of species. A further annoyance is that the list itself is very hard to manage with high level groupings constantly opening when trying to scroll up or down. This app is a great start but I would consider it very much a beta version or less of something that could truly be a valuable tool in the field.