Audubon Bird Guide - Bird identification & tracking

The Audubon Bird Guide is a completely free and comprehensive field guide that features more than 800 species of birds found in North America, all accessible from your device. Designed for bird watchers of every skill level, it assists you in identifying nearby birds, tracking the birds you’ve spotted, and encourages you to explore new birding opportunities around you.

Having achieved over 2 million downloads, it stands out as one of the most reliable and revered guides available for North American avifauna.

NOTE:

We would like to express our gratitude to our users for their valuable feedback regarding the recent update. Many of your suggested features and corrections will be included in the upcoming updates. Your support means a lot to us.

In response to your input, we are currently addressing the following matters:

- Restoration of personalized sighting lists that have been successfully migrated with your account. An issue is currently hindering their visibility, but they will be restored soon in a forthcoming update, requiring no action from you.

- The addition of an option to sort species alphabetically by last name in the field guide.

- Enhanced performance features for searching and browsing through species lists, including a quick navigation option to jump to specific letters of the alphabet.

- Improvements in usability, specifically relating to photo and map displays for tablet users.

- Direct access to the field guide, local eBird sightings, and other app features not dependent on user-generated data without needing to create an account first.

- Various usability enhancements and stability fixes.

As always, if you require assistance with the app or wish to propose a new feature, feel free to reach out to us directly. Thank you!

KEY FEATURES:

ALL-NEW: BIRD ID

Identifying a bird you just observed has never been simpler. Simply input what you noticed—its color, size, and tail description—and Bird ID will provide you with a list of potential matches based on your location and the date in real time.

LEARN ABOUT THE BIRDS YOU LOVE

The field guide showcases over 3,000 photographs, more than eight hours of audio recordings featuring songs and calls, seasonal range maps, and detailed descriptions from renowned North American bird specialist Kenn Kaufman.

KEEP TRACK OF ALL THE BIRDS YOU SEE

With our newly redesigned Sightings feature, you can document every bird you encounter, whether you're hiking, relaxing on your porch, or catching a view from the window. We will maintain an updated life list for you as well.

EXPLORE THE BIRDS AROUND YOU

Discover the locations of birds near you through birding hotspots and live sightings sourced from eBird.

SHARE PHOTOS OF THE BIRDS YOU'VE SEEN

Upload your photos to the Photo Feed so fellow Audubon Bird Guide users can admire them.

GET INVOLVED WITH AUDUBON

Stay informed about the latest happenings related to birds, science, and conservation directly from your home screen. Locate an Audubon site nearby for bird watching or see where your advocacy is needed to help protect birds and their habitats, all from within the app.

FOR OUR EXISTING USERS:

When you log in using your NatureShare account, your sightings and images will seamlessly transfer into the new application. If anything appears amiss, rest assured that all your data remains intact, secure, and safe.

Please note that while we continue to migrate everyone’s data to the new platform, some community features have been temporarily disabled. In soon-to-come updates, we’ll be restoring and launching new features designed to enhance the experience of sharing and viewing photos taken by fellow Audubon Bird Guide users across the nation. Stay tuned!

About Audubon:

The National Audubon Society is dedicated to safeguarding birds and their essential habitats across the Americas today and in the future through science, advocacy, educational efforts, and direct conservation measures. With a formidable network of state programs, nature centers, chapters, and partnerships, Audubon reaches millions annually to educate, inspire, and unify diverse groups in conservation activities. Since its founding in 1905, Audubon envisions a world where both people and wildlife can flourish.

How to Use eBird

A powerful tool for tracking sightings can change the way you bird.

Since its launch in 2002, eBird has revolutionized the way birders worldwide report and share their observations. A joint project by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon, eBird is a free online program that allows birders to track their sightings, while other birders watch and search in real-time. Articles have been written about eBird with mind-bending titles like, “eBird Changed My Life” and “The Agony and Ecstasy of Surrendering to eBird.” In a front-page science headline in 2013, The New York Times called it “Crowdsourcing, for the Birds,” and concluded that eBird is “a revelation for scientists” and gives birders “a new sense of purpose.”

eBird now has more than 100,000 active users, and participation is growing at the dizzying rate of about 40 percent per year. The result is a rich database on bird abundance and distribution that is available to all.

Even with all this interest, many birders trying eBird for the first time don’t quite get it. Be warned: It takes a little effort to get into the eBirding habit. But for those who stick with it, eBird can become a gateway to a whole new world of birding.

To join the citizen science revolution, all you need is a username (it’s free and easy to create an account). There is no “profile”—you can’t upload a selfie or name your favorite pet, and you can’t even contact other users through the site. Once you’re in, eBird is all about one thing: uploading checklists of birds you’ve encountered in the field, with enough scientific precision that those observations can feed into one massive, searchable database.

The concept is simple. Anytime you go birding in a specific place (like your backyard, or a park, or a local hotspot), you keep track of the birds you see there—all of them, not just the unusual ones. You tally how many birds you saw of each species, remember how long you spent birding, and note how far you traveled. Back at home, you visit the eBird website, click on “Submit Observations,” indicate where you were, and type in your numbers. Once you get the hang of it, entering a checklist takes just a minute or two. With a smartphone app called BirdLog ($9.99), you can even submit sightings to eBird straight from the field.

The fun stuff happens when those checklists begin piling up. For starters, the site automatically keeps track of all your personal lists—a life list, a county year list, and almost any other list you can imagine—under “My eBird.” You can summarize your sightings in a nearly infinite number of ways. For instance, you can create a bar chart of the birds in your yard by season, or you can make a line graph showing how many American Robins you saw per hour for every week of the year.

Anyone can search the entire database on eBird’s website (no login necessary). There’s more than enough to explore: Which bird species were seen this week at a hotspot in Alabama? What is the all-time high count of Bald Eagles in Idaho? Who has observed the most bird species in Philadelphia? Merely click on “Explore Data,” and you’re off and running. If you haven’t already marveled at eBird’s “heat maps”—animated occurrence maps showing bird migration across the entire continent—check them out first. The maps are beautiful and endlessly fascinating.

People who regularly use eBird often say that it has changed the way they go birding. When every sighting counts on a checklist, the common species become more interesting. eBird focuses less on rarities (though it offers tools for reporting unusual sightings) than on the big picture, which is quite a satisfying way to look at birds.

There’s also the informal “eBird Challenge” to submit at least one checklist (in other words, go birding somewhere, for at least a few minutes) every day for a year. Take it, and I predict you’ll quickly become a serious addict. A friend once told me, “If it’s not on eBird, it doesn’t count.” He was joking, but he was also right.

The best place to start is the eBird Quick Start Guide. The Getting Started page answers most questions about how to use the site.

What are you waiting for? Go for it—and welcome to birding in the new millennium!