BirdNET Reviews

by LisaN08

I’m using an iPhone X and I get an error every single time that says “Sorry we were not able to confidently identify any bird species” with an option to view “wild guess.” The wild guess is always a Western Tanager. My husband has a Google Pixel and records at the same time and he receives instant results of a completely different bird, not a Western Tanager. No wild guess. What’s up with that?

by Hannah's Ipod(:

App worked amazingly for quite a while, until it didn’t. It would crash every time I tried to open my observations! No updates were available, so I thought maybe I would delete and redownload BirdNET hoping that would help. I naively assumed all my observations would still be there. Wrong. I can surely open my observations list now but it is empty now and everything I ever recorded is gone. Wish there was a way to make an account or something. Really just a way to ensure your recordings are automatically linked to you and retrievable somehow would be nice. I had no way to even save them manually before doing it since it would crash every time! Very upsetting and frustrating :( Loved it otherwise.

by Lesfstl

I’ve been using it for a few days and it seems to work pretty well. I only gave it three stars because it needs some features added. The most important feature would be the ability to submit feedback when it offers more than one possibility, in the likely event that we can identify the bird. The second feature would be the ability to import from our own library. I found that if you are in a remote location with spotty cell coverage BirdNET is useless because it cannot connect to their servers. At the least we should have the option to record and select the part to be analyzed and then the ability to save it to be analyzed later.

by Rhenish

First of all, this is a fantastic tool! You need to learn how to use it, but once you do it’s quite useful. Keep in mind, it’s far from perfect as a bird ID tool, as it often misidentifies with high certainty. You need to use it with other information if using it to ID. I wish it would use location and date information as Merlin Bird ID does to filter possibilities. For example, it was highly certain this morning’s yellow-green vireo was a red-eyed vireo; there’s no way it could be the red-eyed at my location this time of year. Duh!

There is one annoyingly missing feature: the ability to bulk delete observations. Or at least to swipe-delete observations. Right now it’s a 3-click process. Multiply that times tens or hundreds…

by Seattleguitarman

Loving this. Hoped song sleuth would do what BirdNET does. Can you add the feature request to keep observation but delete audio file so we don't use up limited phone storage? Thanks

by Majburns

I really enjoy BirdNET. My only issue is that it takes so long to open that half the time the bird has flown off before I can record it.

by Fetch8

Can’t believe this is a free resource!! Thank you to all that are making BirdNET possible. Love the simplicity of the recording, selection portions of song, the “liklihood rating” (uncertain is still super accurate!), and the easy links to hear the other songs from a species.

by Macboy222222333

Wow! What a joy BirdNET is. It actually displays the pitches for the bird song tones, and I was able to quickly and easily identify the song of a beautiful new bird in my area. Thank you, Cornell!

by RevDottie

I’ve tried numerous bird song identifying apps, but have now deleted them because BirdNET is by far superior. It’s very easy to use and it really narrows down your selections to actual legit possibilities. Awesome app!

by Arrexeight

BirdNET is simple, yet elegant. I have not only learned more about the bird calls and songs I hear every day, but I’ve found myself appreciating them and noticing them more, even when I’m not using BirdNET . It’s simplicity and accuracy are amazing

by CA Birder

this app hears birds I no longer can. I can then search for the birds it “hears”. All new exciting way to experience my life long hobby. Thank you.
I have added my MKE 600 Sennheiser mic and headphones to my iPhone XR. Is there a way to monitor what my mic is recording while it is recording using this app? Love to have that capability.

by The Hen 123

Recently, I have been very interested in bird calls and was looking for an app that would help me memorize them. I’m only a kid and I love it! It has made birding ten times easier. thank you this app!

by Melllie

I never review apps, but this one is so great, it deserves 5 stars. I live in a highly forested area and we have tons of birds we never see. BirdNET has been great for figuring out who our bird friends are. I love that once you find out what the bird is you can research it right in BirdNET . Really well done.

by Elise81

This is a great app! The analysis is surprisingly accurate, and I love that it pulls from/links to multiple sources of information. It keeps an editable list of observations and now “the birds you’ve seen” - makes a fun game of growing your collection of observed species. As an amateur backyard birdwatcher, this has been a great companion. I’m starting to understand why birdwatching is a “thing.” :)

by SteveinKosovo

I rarely go birding in the country. I’m a city-dweller. A couple weeks ago I headed out to the Virginia countryside in search of a Rough-legged Hawk. No luck with that, but I did hear a bird song that I did not recognize. BirdNET identified it as a Grasshopper Sparrow, which eBird identified as either rare or uncommon for this time of year. So I was skeptical. But sure enough, upon reviewing my photos from the morning there was indeed a Grasshopper Sparrow. I am very impressed.

by U.s.wmarine

As a bird lover with shaky hands, binoculars are out of the question. BirdNET has really helped me to solve the mystery of birds singing that I can’t see. However I cannot submit accurate feedback unless I see it as well. I think the spectrogram part is really cool 😎, seems pretty sensitive & it’s interesting to capture other non bird sounds out there. There’s a bat in the neighborhood sometimes, so I recorded it but BirdNET couldn’t give an answer, oh well no biggie. Easy to use. Thanks.

by Fr345df

This is BirdNET I have been waiting for!!!!! It lets me record and view a bird sound sonograph in real time and select a portion to submit for identification and get a quick response. It also saves the WAV file excerpts with the id so I can share and study them later. (The sound selection mechanism lets you select along the time axis only. I don’t think you can select along the frequency axis. This is the only feature I can think of that would make BirdNET even better. )

by Ravensaraha

This is an absolute game changer! I’ve been able to look for birds I had no idea about after being clued in by their song. I’m in birding heaven. Thank you to the researchers & developers of BirdNET!

That said, I do have a few feature requests/suggestions, in case they help:

• It would be more efficient if the ‘record’ and ‘pause’ button were one and the same. As it is, I keep finding myself attempting to re-press the recording button to pause. One-button functionality is more common these days (see the iPhone voice memo app, for example), and is much easier when in the field.

• When multiple bird results are given, I don’t see an option to submit feedback. This would be a nice addition, given how often multiple birds are singing at once.

• It would be great to be able to upload pre-recorded audio for those times we record with another app.

by Yogibirder

BirdNET is amazing. As an experienced birder I still puzzle over the trills of several species. BirdNET provides virtually instant identification that has helped to reinforce (or correct!) my personal ID. And when I hear an unusual version of a song or only a partial song it has been quite reliable.
It’s also great that it records for later analysis if I’m out of cell range.
I’m not sure if this can be addressed, but it is sometimes difficult to get a good result when there are several birds vocalizing at the same time. My ear recognizes the separate songs while this app seems “confused.” Any suggestions?

by Richfl126

Turn this on instead of reading social media or news and enjoy being present in nature. Reminds me of real life Pokémon where you can even get a cool education reading Wikipedia about each species you find.

The geolocation and noise feature on history is great.

I mainly capture Florida birds

by Codrinb

I find BirdNET really great, the recognition capabilities are really impressive. One important capability I see missing and I hope will be implemented is the ability to store / sync the observations with a cloud. Even better, it would be amazing if it would have the option to submit the observation(s) to sites like iNaturalist or at least the ability to share the sound with the iNaturalist app. I hope these features are planned and will be implemented. Nonetheless, I highly recommend it!