Western Palearctic Birding Checklist (full version).
(Includes the UK)
This is one of a series of Birding Checklist applications for Android mobile phones and tablets. There are demo and full versions of each checklist application, those currently available are:
Western Palearctic (includes UK) – 924 species and 1188 subspecies
US – 1040 species and 15 subspecies (does not include Mexico or Central America)
Australia – 892 species and 431 subspecies
NZ – 377 species and 63 subspecies
Norfolk Is (155 sp, 5 subsp) and Lord Howe Is (164 sp, 3 subsp)
These applications include basic bird identification information, but are NOT intended to replace a field guide. It is expected that users will have good familiarity with the birds they are seeing, and will use this application for:
a. Logging bird sightings (with GPS co-ordinates if your phone has a GPS)
b. Optionally uploading your sightings to eBird
c. Maintaining your Lifelist
The list of features varies slightly between checklists, and the demo versions are less functional. The demo versions have the following capability:
- complete listing of all bird species for the area
- searching and filtering the bird list
- statistics recording your personal lifelist
- current tick list (for birds you have seen today or during a field trip)
- display of bird photos and bird calls on the SD card linked to the application (these must be manually downloaded separately)
- logging facilities including GPS location (if your phone has a GPS) and optional fields for Heard, Photographed, Video'd, Taped and numbers of Male, Female, Juvenile or Dead birds found
- export log file in eBird Import format for rapid loading of your sightings to eBird
- help information for most screens
The full version has the following additional capabilities:
- faster operation
- more complete bird listing including subspecies
- better display of data from log files
- filtering of birds by region (for WP the regions are UK, Europe, Scandinavia, Balkans, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Iceland, North Africa, Cape Verde, Azores, Madeira, Canaries)
- Google map showing location of bird from GPS co-ordinates
- optional Rangemaps and extended bird description information (these must be downloaded manually and installed on the SD card, as for the photos and bird calls)
- play mp4 videos of birds stored in the photos folder on the SD card
- screen layouts for 1280 x 800 tablets
- plot GPS co-ordinates (eg of a bird location) on Google Maps
- Quick lists - create, save and restore customised filters for the main bird listing
In short, the demo version is for you to verify that the checklist will meet your needs. Future enhancements will only apply to the full version.
For the bird photos and sound files (and optional descriptions, rangemaps and video samples) you must download the files to your PC, unzip, and copy them to the SD card or internal memory of your phone. For the WP checklist these files can be found here (includes a readme file with more detailed instructions):
https://drivehq.com/folder/p8404317.aspx
You are free to add your own resources files – the application places no restriction on this but very large numbers of photos (ie many thousands) will start slowing the application down.
Please contact me if you have any comments or suggestions, or corrections to the bird information. Please also get in contact if you are interested in helping create a new birding checklist application for birds in your area.
