Although I own three field guides to Australian birds, I was influenced by a colleague to take my birding “to the next level” and try the The Michael Morcombe and David Stewart eGuide to the Birds of Australia. I diligently bowed to peer pressure and downloaded the free, ‘lite’ version which gave full functionality for 59 species. Although the app had many limitations, I quickly realised how useful it would be in the field, so I happily shelled out $32 for the full version.

It’s quite obvious that this eGuide is far more portable than a hardcover copy of Cayley’s 832-page tome ‘What Bird is That?’, and it follows that the eGuide is probably as accurate (for better or worse) as Morcombe’s own paperback field guide. Consequently, this post focuses on just the usability of the iPhone app while often comparing it to (hard copy) field guides and other Aussie birding apps. (NB* All screenshots of the app were taken with an iPhone, and copyright lies with the app developers.)

Thumbnails

Pro

The app allows you to quickly scroll through hundreds of species, grouped alphabetically or taxonomically. Each species has a thumbnail image next to its name, making bird identification potentially much faster than using the table of contents or index in a field guide.

Con

The thumbnails on an iPhone are, of course, tiny, so it is difficult to tell the difference between a Yellow-plumed, Grey-fronted and Fuscous Honeyeater without having to tap to open each entry. This isn’t a problem if you know exactly what you are looking for or if you are an expert birder, but for quick comparisons, expect a few too many taps.

Suggestions for improvement

• Make the thumbnails a bit larger, or
• Use thumbnails of just the bird’s head (as is done for some of the prions and shearwaters).

Comparisons

Pro

The app allows comparisons of two species at a time – even totally unrelated ones – regardless of if they bear a passing resemblance or not. This is extremely useful in the field for those ‘little brown jobs’ as an alternative to flicking back and forth between pages in a field guide.

Con

A field guide shows many similar species on a single page, making identification of particular species, juveniles, females, and males (in breeding plumage) relatively straightforward. The Morcombe app, however, only allows 2 species to be compared at once, which becomes tedious when trying to identify “a brown-ish honeyeater with a bit of yellow on its face”. (I initially thought that field guide-like comparisons were impossible on an iPhone, yet (according to their promotional images) it appears that the ‘Pizzey and Knight app’ has successfully done it.)

Suggestion for improvement

• Allow comparisons of multiple birds and/or have pages with multiple related/similar species.

Record Keeping

Pro

The app allows you to quickly record sightings, including GPS coordinates and additional comments. You can sort data on your iPhone by species, location, and date, and your list can be exported via email as a CSV/Excel file.

Con

You will only be able to record GPS coordinates if your phone can get a mobile (cellular) signal. More importantly for avid record keepers, the app allows you to save just one master list. Although technically the app allows you to sort by date and location (thereby creating ‘day lists’ and ‘location lists’), it definitely doesn’t allow you to create trip lists (say for a week-long Great Ocean Road birding extravaganza) or year lists. Indeed, I had to export my 2013 list to my computer and delete the entire list from the app just so that I could start a 2014 year list. (According to promotional information, the ‘Pizzey and Knight app’ allows multiple lists to be saved, all of which report to a master ‘life list’.)

Suggestion for improvement

• Allow the creation of multiple lists, all reporting to a master ‘life list’.

Maps and integration

Pro

The distribution maps are quite accurate, and as mentioned earlier, the app allows you to record the GPS location of a sighting.

Con

The GPS coordinates of sightings are stored, but they are not plotted on a map. Also, the app does not have maps of birding hotspots, and lists are not integrated with any online bird databases.

Suggestions for improvement

• Integrate geolocation with Google Maps within the app;
• Include birding hotspots;
• Include option to allow lists to integrate with (or report to) birding databases such as eBird;
• Include option to share sightings with other app users.

Cost

Pro

The lite version of the app (with 59 species) is free, and the full version is a relatively cheap $32. When first released, the ‘Pizzey and Knight app’ was $70 on iTunes, but the price has since dropped to $50. Paperback field guides to Australian birds, for comparison, range from $20-$35 on Amazon.com.

Con

There are at least 10 free apps on iTunes for birding aficionados. The free ‘Aust. Bird Guide app‘, for example, is a great addition to the ‘Morcombe app’, since it includes photos and information uploaded by users. However, the user-contributed content is as accurate as a Wikipedia page.

Depending on where you are visiting, the ‘Director of National Parks’ may have a free app. Be warned though: even for a birding hotspot like Kakadu, their app only covers 50 species. The free ‘Museum Victoria app‘ fares better with about 145 bird species plus scores of entries for mammals, reptiles, fishes, and amphibians.

So although the ‘Morcombe’ and ‘Pizzey and Knight’ apps may be quite comprehensive and accurate, a casual birder could theoretically get good coverage with a motley collection of free apps.

Suggestions for improvement

• Ensure that the app is better than the free apps by leaps and bounds through regular updates, an excellent user interface and a wide range of features;
• Include an extensive library of high-res photos of each species.

Searching

Pro

The app has a ‘Smart Search’ feature which allows users to search for a bird that, for example, looks like a honeyeater, with an upcurved bill, that was red in colour, was spotted on mudflats, was about 30cm long, and wasn’t a passerine. There aren’t any birds like that of course, but the app’s ‘Smart Search’ feature is a powerful tool for those fleeting glimpses, blurry ID photos, and novice birders.

Con

The standard search feature isn’t very smart: for example, if you searched for “yellow honeyeater”, the only result you would get is the ‘Yellow Honeyeater’ as compared to all the honeyeaters with the word “yellow” in their names. Indeed, you have to type the exact name (like yellow-tufted, yellow-faced etc) to get a result. This is in stark contrast to doing a Google search.

Suggestion for improvement

• Better search algorithms.

Updates vs. editions

Pro

To own a new, updated edition to a field guide, you have to purchase it. This means that you either shell out cash regularly for books with sometimes just minimal changes, or you remain contented with a field guide written when the Paradise Parrot was still extant. With an app, however, updates are pushed out as regularly as the developers choose to, and are free of charge for the life of the app.

Con

If you choose to change to a different phone with a different operating system and market place (e.g. moving from an IOS iPhone to an Android Samsung Galaxy, and from iTunes to Google Play) you will lose the app. Also, updates to improve functionality of the app are not very regular, with the last one being in March 2013. Indeed, a reference to the egg of a ‘White-throated Scrubwren’ – such a bird does not exist – in the entry for the Speckled Warbler has not been corrected, when a simple update would probably suffice.

Suggestion for improvement

• With the aid of registration/login credentials, allow users to re-download the app for free if they switch phones;
• Release regular updates that incorporate user feedback and improve the user experience.

Audio recordings

Pro

This is where a field guide is incomparable to the app: the latter gives you access to the calls of 650+ species. This powerful tool is useful in the field when trying to identify the call of a particular species, or when trying to attract a species with playback: armed with just an iPhone and the app, there is no need for additional audio equipment.

Con

Not a con per se, but with great power, comes great responsibility: there is the temptation to use the recordings excessively to attract birds. Many birders surmise that this is unethical, since it interrupts the birds’ normal behaviour (i.e. tending to young, feeding, looking for a mate, nest-building etc.), while other birders purport that playback helps in recording the presence of rare species for conservation purposes.

Verdict

The app developers seem to be approaching this app as they would the printed version. They probably view ‘updates’ as consisting of taxonomy changes/addition of information that only need to be released as regularly as new printed editions. However, anyone tech-savvy enough to purchase this eGuide, will already be accustomed to a world of free, regular app upgrades to improve functionality and the user interface. It is here that there is much room for improvement: the app developers should adopt an agile framework where user feedback is incorporated into regular updates with incremental changes, rather than release a massive, annual (?) overhaul.

The current version of this app (and indeed, any birding app) can never replace a tattered field guide – the latter transcending hardware/software obsolescence, while eliciting fond memories of past birding outings from every stain, tear, and hand-written record. However, you can’t go wrong with a $32 pocket-sized field guide with hundreds of bird call recordings. Don’t take my word for it though: download the free, lite version and judge for yourself.