Collins Bird Guide app for iPhone and iPad
4.8 (
928 ratings )
Reference
Book
Developer:
NatureGuides Ltd.
14.99 USD
Current version:
2.0.6, last update: 6 months ago
First release : 14 Aug 2014
App size: 1005 Mb
‘It’s much more convenient than taking a big book with you...the Collins app is fantastic.’
– Chris Packham, Metro
‘The Collins Bird Guide app is destined to become a real triumph, the ultimate in field guide apps — and deservedly so.’
– BirdGuides
The Collins Bird Guide App combines world-class illustrations and comprehensive information with intuitive design to create the ultimate field guide for passionate birders and casual birdwatchers alike. The app is based on the landmark book by Lars Svensson, Killian Mullarney and Dan Zetterström, universally acknowledged as the standard European field guide. This definitive work has been reimagined for iPad and iPhone by birders for birders.
The Collins Bird Guide App provides everything you need to identify a species quickly and learn about it thoroughly. Immerse yourself in the exceptional illustrations, maps, calls and concise text. Use the powerful search filter and curated confusion lists to focus in on a species. The Collins Bird Guide App is an essential companion always to hand on your iPhone, and available to browse in full glory on your iPad.
Features include:
• 973 species covered - 843 illustrated
• 3700+ beautiful illustrations by Killian Mullarney and Dan Zetterström
• Detailed text covering habitat, range, identification and voice by Lars Svensson
• Record sightings, location and date with the listing tool
• Powerful search filter
• Intuitive design to quickly and easily swipe through species
• Curated lists of confusable species
• Over 1100 carefully selected songs and calls – many by Lars Svensson
• Select species names from 30 languages
• Expertly edited video clips for 811 species in the app (In-App Purchases)
• Available in English, Swedish, Norwegian, French and German
• Weighs nothing!
As well as the optional video library, the app incorporates British Trust for Ornithology/BirdWatch Ireland/Scottish Ornithologists Club Bird Atlas 2007–11 mapping data as an in-app purchase, providing the most comprehensive location mapping of any bird guide app.
Find out more about the app and its creators: collinsbirdguideapp.com
natureguides.com
twitter.com/nature_guides
harpercollins.co.uk
twitter.com/harperCollinsUK
facebook.com/harperCollinsUK
The Collins Bird Guide app requires iOS 15.5 or later.
If you like the Collins Bird Guide app, don’t forget to share the app, rate it and leave a review.
Pros and cons of Collins Bird Guide app for iPhone and iPad
Collins Bird Guide app good for
Just picked up this truly gorgeous app and Im beyond impressed. Takes good quality content from Collins print editions and applies really innovative graphic design and GUI. Focus on showing similar birds to compare. Audio, range maps and text all in easy reach.
There are in-app purchase options for three video libraries (common, less common, and rarities) as well as one to add the BTO breeding bird atlas maps for the UK. I added the common birds video on my iPad, while on my iPhone Ill omit that to save space.
Similar bird comparisons are curated meaning the app publishers maintain lists of which ones you should also compare. I thought the intro said I could make my own pairings as well, but if so I couldnt find this feature. All other functions are very well presented and easy to see where to tap or pinch to get them.
In all, a brilliant app and well worth the purchase price.
Excellent Search functionality making it easy to narrow the list of possible birds for ID. Embedded multimedia with sounds and video. Broadsheets of images to quickly scan and isolate bird ID. Easy navigation and comparison of birds. Clearly a lot of care went into planning this app.
This is an amazing app, intuitive and easy to use. The beautiful and accurate bird paintings of the book version of the fieldguide are accompanied by the bird songs and calls. It would be great if the information about habitat and behaviour was also translated into Polish, so my father who is a bird lover, could also enjoy the app. Thank you for creating this wonderful app from the best European bird fieldguide!
Some bad moments
Great to finally have Collins Bird Guide for iPhone but this app still needs some work.
Horizontal only works on some screens. Double tapping doesnt enlarge images like you would expect and you are forced to use two finger zoom. You can add species to life list but cant actually see this list anywhere! Also, would be great to be able to save species as favourites. Species comparison is very nice but not very intuitive.
So far the search field only works for features or habitat etc (i wonder who uses it this way!?) but not for species name! You are forced to find species by browsing which is frustraiting in the xxi century.. One kind of expects to type in the first 3 letters and see the species names that match. Please give this app a quick reworks!
No alphabetic lookup. A big waste of money. Grey letters in index difficult to read. Buy the book, not this app.
Like the title says, best Old World birding app Ive seen. Slick, good-looking, easy to use ans informative. Reasonably priced, too. If I could take off a half star it would be for slightly pale text that might be tough to read in the field. Hopefully an update will fix that. Otherwise, well done.
The new digital Collins is simply fantastic. As the Collins guide book set a new standard in that medium, so does this new app. As a US birder who travels to Europe as well as the far flung corners of America, this app gives me access to the best Euro bird guide right on my phone and with awesome new features that I hope other bird guide apps will adopt.
Especially cool is the way that this app has solved the common app drawback of not being to flip through pages quickly. There are several zoom levels that allow you to see, for example, entire families of birds at once.
Other great features were reviewed extensively in every birding magazine, so I wont go into all that here. Buy this app and you will be glad you did.
At last, the Collins on ipad. Not yet perfect, including the language versions and life lists (how to store those?), but we are getting there. Keep on working guys, competition is around the corner!
