Audubon Birds: A Field Guide to North American Birds

by NatureShare

Product Details

• ASIN: B004R49A4W
• Original Release Date: March 15, 2011
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 15, 2011
Rated: All Ages This app may include dynamic content. What's this?

All Ages

Based on information provided by the developer, the content of this application is appropriate for all users and contains no objectionable content or advertisements.




Guidance Suggested

Based on information provided by the developer, the content of this application is appropriate for most users. The app may include account creation, location detection, user generated content, advertisements, infrequent or mild references to violence, profanity, or crude themes, or other content not suitable for all ages.







Mature

Based on information provided by the developer, the content of this application is only appropriate for mature users. The app may include account creation, location detection, user generated content, advertisements, explicit references to or images of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, graphic violence, profanity, or crude humor, mild sexual and suggestive themes, nudity within medical, informational, or artistic contexts, simulated gambling, or other content only suitable for mature audiences.







Adult

Based on information provided by the developer, the content of this application is only appropriate for adults. The app may include account creation, location detection, user generated content, advertisements, explicit references to or images of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, graphic violence, profanity, or crude humor, sexual and suggestive themes, nudity, simulated gambling, or other content only suitable for adult audiences.



This application contains content that is downloading real-time, based on inputs from the user or developer. The maturity rating associated with this application pertains only to the static elements of the application and does not cover any dynamic information (e.g. websites, friend postings, tweets). Dynamic content is defined as any content that may change within the application. Content can include animations, video or audio.
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (423 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #285 Paid in Appstore for Android (See Top 100 Paid in Appstore for Android)
  • #6 in Appstore for Android > Education

Product Features

• Incorporates eBird technology to locate birds in real time, with quick access to recent sightings, locations of notable and rare birds, and maps and directions to all the birding hotspots across North America.
• Associates Field Marks for over 650 images to help with field identification
• Includes Thousands of high definition images detail each species with extraordinary clarity. Includes multiple images of each species in their natural habitat by gender, age, and seasonal plumage variations
• Contains over eight hours of audio from the best audio field naturalists in North America
• Useful 'Journal' feature allows you to track and annotate your personal sightings by location, and share with friends by email or Facebook.

Technical Details

• Size: 21.6MB
• Version: 2.7.0.1
• Developed By: NatureShare
• Application Permissions: (Help me understand what permissions mean)
  • Read only access to phone state
  • Required to be able to access the camera device
  • LOCATION
  • Open network sockets
  • Write to external storage
  • Change Wi-Fi connectivity state
  • Access fine (e.g., GPS) location
  • Access information about Wi-Fi networks
  • Access the vibration feature
  • Access information about networks
  • PowerManager WakeLocks to keep processor from sleeping or screen from dimming
  • One or more permissions that have no effect because they are no longer supported in Android.
• Minimum Operating System: Android 2.1
• Approximate Download Time: Less than 3 minutes

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

166 of 171 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great portable field guide for Kindle Fire January 1, 2012

By D. Earls

Amazon Verified Purchase

I purchased this app when it went on sale in the Amazon App Store for $5 for my HTC T-Mobile G2. I downloaded the database (525MB) so the entire guide is contained in my mobile device. Before it was released for Kindle Fire, I sideloaded it to that device as well, and it works perfectly there. The app is now available through Amazon App Store for Kindle Fire.

This app solves two of the problems I've had with most field guides. First, it uses photographs rather than watercolor renderings of the birds. There may be as many as eight or nine shots of a single species, and anybody who's starting out in birding knows that the one you're looking at in the field doesn't look like the one in the book - but it almost looks like three or four of the ones in the book. Photography makes precise identification a lot easier. You will find shots of males and females in dimorphic species, and there may be shots of juveniles when they vary much from adults.

Second, the other big problem with guides like Sibley, for example, is that they have all 1200 birds in North America, and when you're in the field, you don't usually have time to flip through the whole book. With the Audubon app, you can establish parameters like Midwestern Plains Forest birds, and when you page through, you only have the ones most likely to be where you are to choose from. You can also select by state and month of the year. So you get them all but you also get only the ones that are where you are at the time.

The inclusion of bird calls makes this even better, because you hear them before you see them, and being able to identify them by calls/songs, you have a better idea of what's coming your way. I haven't tried playing calls to draw birds to my feeders - yet. But it's in my future, I'm sure.

Easily the best field guide yet, at least for Android -

107 of 113 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars More useful than my Audubon book June 21, 2011

By The Usual Suspect

Amazon Verified Purchase

This app covers birds in North America. I started my review with this because one of the reviewers on the Android Marketplace rated it one star because it didn't cover Europe.

There is an optional 500+ MB download of all the pictures and text after you install the app. The download took about 3 hours on my Wi-Fi connection. This increases the speed of searches and ensures you have the complete guide if you're birding where there is no data signal available. Updates can be downloaded as they're made available.

There are more pictures than my printed guidebook has. The number varies by species but I have seen up to 9 pictures. They are reasonably clear on my 4.3" screen. Obviously, there is a trade off between picture quality and the size of the download. I don't know the resolution used or how they would look on a tablet screen.

You can sign up for an account to record sightings and for your life list. I don't have a need for these features and I haven't tested them or checked if there is a fee to do this.

Some other useful features are:

- You can sort lists, including search results, by full descriptive name or by the major family. For example, when looking at the Hawks and Eagles category, you can sort them as (Bald Eagle; Broad-winged Hawk; Common Black-Hawk; etc.) OR (Black-Hawk, Common; Eagle, Bald; Eagle, Golden; Goshawk, Northern; etc.). You can also sort by scientific (Latin) name.

- When you are looking at a particular bird, there is a Similar button to show related birds.

- A reference section including useful short articles on birding, conservation, identification, as well as a glossary.

- Access to the camera from the menu.

One very useful feature is that there are sound clips for some of the species, sometimes several different clips identified by gender and intent of the call. The app solicits submission of sound clips for those species not represented.

Unlike the other reviewer, I have no trouble with the range maps on my Droid X (Gingerbread).

The built-in search feature isn't the most intuitive and could be improved (for example, by current GPS location or zip code instead of state). I'd mark it down to 4.5 stars for this and because I've seen a few FCs. However, the FC may be related to a utility app I installed the previous day. Overall, I'm very happy with the app.

96 of 109 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Informative but poorly implemented August 28, 2011

By Rich

While the textual information about each bird does not approach what is contained in an Audubon field guide it is nice to have a a large number of pictures and bird calls available in one application. Unfortunately the final implementation of this application is poor. This is probably because the application was originally written for the iPhone and then minimal rework was done to make it operational on Android. As of this review more Android phones are sold then iPhones, it's time for software developers to give Android owners what they deserve, either native implementations for Android or a web application that works on any phone platform.

What that means for Android owners is poorly resized out-of-focus graphics and spotty screen rotation support. I can only guess that the graphics were made for a different screen resolution and then simply resized for Android rather than being recreated at the correct size. The initial screen you see is a display of fuzzy-looking icons, not a good first impression. Many of the list screens will rotate with the phone, but the page that displays bird information does not. I can scroll through a list with the phone in landscape orientation, but as soon as I select a bird the information is sideways and I have to rotate the phone to portrait orientation.

The default photo size is small. Multi-touch zooming of photos is not supported, you must select the zoom button, then use the zoom in/out buttons below the picture. Photos do not change orientation when the phone is rotated, the phone must always be in the portrait (vertical) orientation. When zooming in on the photo higher resolution images are not used so the image just becomes "pixelated." In effect there is no reason to zoom in on a photo because there is no more detail to be seen. Also, I discovered that when I zoom in on a landscape image the photo becomes distorted and is stretched vertically. Portrait images are stretched horizontally when zoomed in.

Unfortunately this application fails to live up to the high standards set by the Audubon publications and it reflects badly on Audubon. The software can only be classified as amateur in its execution. I guess that Audubon reached an agreement with Green Mountain Digital to develop this software (and other digital field guides) because they did not have the same sort of in-house expertise in phone applications that they do in book publications and decided they would not acquire the necessary expertise. Audubon must demand that contracted, or "in-alliance" software with their name on it meet high-quality standards. Unfortuantely the more I use the application, the less I like it. I would like to replace my mammal and tree identification books with phone applications, this application has convinced me to skip those with the Audubon name and look elsewhere.