BirdTrack

British Trust for Ornithology

About this app

Want an easy way to record the birds you see, and keep track of what you have seen? The BirdTrack app makes recording your sightings easy and your birdwatching more rewarding; plus your sightings support research and conservation at the local, national and global scale. Whether you want to record single sightings of those special birds or make a list of all the birds you see whilst birdwatching on a local patch you can do both from the palm of your hand. This free app links directly to your BirdTrack account on the web and acts as your digital notebook, enabling you to quickly and easily record the information you want for the birds (and some other wildlife groups) you see.

With our app, you can:
• Select the species you saw from an illustrated checklist of the most likely species based on BirdTrack data for your location and the time of year.
• Offline mapping and observation recording, enabling use in places with no data connection.
• Keep records of birds seen anywhere in the world.
• See suggestions of local birdwatching places; add records for these popular places to help monitor their bird populations.
• Add sightings for some other taxa groups, including amphibians, butterflies, dragonflies, mammals, orchids, and reptiles. (UK only).
• View and edit previous sightings directly on your device.
• View a map of recent sightings made by the BirdTrack community.
• Keep track of your year and life lists, plus see lists of ‘target’ species seen by other BirdTrack users.
• Option to share your sightings via social media.
• Add optional information to your sightings, including breeding evidence, plumage details, and sensitive record settings to control the visibility of your records.
• Sightings are seamlessly synchronised with your BirdTrack account, so you can see all your observations whether you are viewing via your device or via the website.

Developed by the British Trust for Ornithology, on behalf of the BirdTrack partnership.

Ratings and reviews

Really useful to have this app on my phone to replace the 'pocket notepad' and keep a complete list of birds seen on a walk, or to log occasional sightings. I created an account on the website FIRST and registered to use Birdtrack, I also used the main website to create my 'Places'. The app is only a subset of the full functionality of the website. I'm glad I was not put off by the poor reviews below.

The new version of the app (released autumn 2022) is fantastic - quick, intuitive, nicely presented. Older reviews are about a totally different app, so you should disregard these. This version is slick and lovely to use. Anything thinking 'why BirdTrack?' (rather than eBird) should be aware that BirdTrack is optimised for the UK recorder network and monitoring, whereas eBird is from the USA and not so well integrated. Support the UK and use BirdTrack!

The updated app (autumn 2022) is superb. Very straightforward to set up sites, add and delete data, and I especially like the map-based way of seeing what other people have seen in recent days/weeks. A big advance is being able to edit lists within the app and resubmit. And since the bird clubs in the areas I most frequent can access the records, I know that they are available for conservation and bird-recording by others.

What's new

You can now tap on species in your species list and see more detailed stats - including when you recorded the species, and the places you saw it at.

Other changes include:
• A fix for some users experiencing a crash when loading certain maps, for example when starting a new list.
• Bug fixes and other improvements.