iBird Pro Guide to Birds Overview
What is iBird Pro Guide to Birds? iBird Pro is a birding app that turns your iPhone into a field guide to birds of North America, the Hawaiian Islands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Palau. It offers a search engine designed for identifying birds plus a neural-network feature for identifying birds from any photo. The app follows conventions of the 2019-20 American Ornithological Union (AOU) standard and offers functionality not found in books or most other birding apps.
Features
- Full-size, high-resolution, hand-drawn, field-marked illustrations for every species
- A growing library of over 4,000 photographs of bird species
- Detailed field mark layer that can be toggled on or off to highlight important identification characteristics
- Range Maps for every species that show where the bird spends its time throughout the year
- Over 4,000 birdsong and bird-call recordings
- Photo Sleuth feature that identifies any bird from any photograph using AI-based photo recognition techniques
- Patented, comprehensive Percevia™ nature-based search engine that comes with 35+ characteristics of birds that can be searched
- No Internet connection required to use iBird in the field
- Birds Around Me (BAM) feature that shows just those species within a radius surrounding your GPS location
- Time-of-Day feature that lets you search for birds by activity levels during day or night, dawn, dusk, etc.
- Owls of Mexico feature that includes illustrations with field marks, range maps, songs and calls for 16 remarkable Owl species
- Version 12.7 adds 5 new illustrations.
Official Screenshots
Product Details and Description of
iBird Pro is a self-contained, take-anywhere-no-Internet-required app that turns your iPhone into a field guide to birds of North America. iBird offers a search engine designed for identifying birds plus a neural-network feature for identifying birds from any photo. What birders say they love about iBird the most is its premium-quality encyclopedic reference to every avian species in the United States, Canada, the Hawaiian Islands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the unique island nation of Palau, which should be on every birder’s life-list. iBird follows conventions of the 2019-20 American Ornithological Union (AOU) standard. iBird inspired Apple to feature it in their famous "We have an app for that" videos. (go to: bit.ly/ibirdmovie). Why? Because, most notably, iBird offers functionality not found in books or most other birding apps. ILLUSTRATIONS. Accurate drawings are a must for the correct identification of any bird. Only iBird has full-size, high-resolution, hand-drawn, field-marked illustrations for every species. These composite illustrations contain images of the male, female, juvenile, bird-in-fight, and other variations in plumage based on age or location. PHOTOS. Unlike other bird apps, iBird contains a growing library of over 4,000 photographs, allowing you to see the species in multiple settings and real-life environments. No other birding app offers both illustrations and photographs. FIELD-MARKS. Another way iBird enhances your birding experience—a detailed field mark layer that exists for each illustration can be toggled on or off to highlight important identification characteristics. MAPS. iBird has Range Maps for every species that show where the bird spends its time throughout the year. SONGS. To enhance your ability to identify any species, iBird contains over 4,000 birdsong and bird-call recordings. These are super-useful to confirm an ID or when you can hear but not see the bird. PHOTO RECOGNITION. iBird's amazing Photo Sleuth feature takes advantage of modern AI-based photo recognition techniques to identify any bird from any photograph, even a poor-quality, fuzzy photo. See how Photo Sleuth works: bit.ly/ibirdphoto. SMART SEARCH. We’ve saved the best for last—iBird's patented, comprehensive Percevia™ nature-based search engine that will turn novices into bird ID experts. The search engine comes with 35+ characteristics of birds that can be searched (e.g., body-color, GPS location, habitat, bill shape, song type, etc.). Unlike most birding apps, no Internet connection is required to use iBird in the field—it has a self-contained database of all content. iBird Pro’s architecture is now “consolidated,” with four countries contained in its database: North America, United Kingdom, and Ireland, Hawaii, and Palau. More databases will be added to iBird in the future. In addition to all of the features we’ve mentioned, iBird Pro comes with these additional features: Birds Around Me (BAM)—shows just those species within a radius surrounding your GPS location, Percevia™ smart search—a patented feature that helps you identify birds just like the birding experts, Time-of-Day—lets you search for birds by activity levels during day or night, dawn, dusk, etc., Owls of Mexico—includes illustrations with field marks, range maps, songs and calls for 16 remarkable Owl species. Version 12.7 adds 5 new illustrations—to see these go to Search > Illustration Update > 12.7. More Details of iBird Pro Version 12.7: http://ibird.com/whats-new/whats-new.html EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Top Reviews
By Nalarider
Not having problems, plus an interesting story
We really like iBird Pro and have not had any problems with version 11.0 on iPhone 8 or iPad Air 2. The illustrations with field marks and photos help a lot with identifications. The bird sounds are also very helpful. My wife and I have enjoyed using it for several years, especially last spring when a Cooper's Hawk built a nest and raised a family in our neighbor's tree. A few months after the hawk family had moved on, my wife was in a nearby town doing some shopping. She came out of a store to find a large crowd gathered around her car. Thinking somebody had hit her car, she started walking toward the car until somebody warned her not to get too close. On top of the car was a Cooper's Hawk with a dead rabbit. Whenever anybody tried to 'shoo' it away the bird threatened them with loud calls and thrashing wings. My wife took out her phone, launched iBird Pro, turned the volume up loud and played the Cooper's Hawk alarm call. The hawk on the car looked surprised and puzzled, looked around for another bird, then took off carrying it's prey. Everybody was astonished and my wife was pleased and proud of her quick thinking. One of the women in the crowd asked loudly, "What app is that? I want to buy it!" You probably got several new iBird Pro customers as a result.
By Bombo Mama
Pop ups
I like the app a lot. But recently I have been getting frequent pop-ups that I have to click on, otherwise I cannot continue with the app. The pop ups sometimes occur about once a minute. I don’t know if these are virus portals or actual pop-ups by iBird. In any case, I have to delete the app and reinstall to get rid of the pop-ups. It is almost near impossible to submit a request through the contact form. It requires information at the end that a person would not have at their fingertips, so then you have to close down the contact form, get the information and re-open the contact form. I had to do this five times. I have a feeling they make the form so complex you cannot submit it. UPDATE: The pop-up issue has been resolved. The only glitch is that I cannot delete the last bird I searched for using the “X” in the search line. I have to backspace to remove it. Fortunately, I am now entering band codes. Is there a way to fix this? I don’t have this problem on other apps.
By Mainely birds
Best of all birding books
I own the other standard authoritative birding books: IBird is the best. It has great descriptions and pictures and photos to help identify distinguish birds. It’s similar birds option is extremely useful. It’s range map is perfect. It’s bird recordings are useful and accurate. The other information in the site, bird by bird, is invaluable. Additionally the photo and sound identity tools are great. I use this app especially in the field along with Merlin and eBird, also mandatory and those are free. Best birding book you can own especially if you can afford only one. It is the one and only.
