Collins Bird Guide

No where is it mentioned that all the location features are for Europe only. I'll give it a go living in the US, but not ideal. Seems pretty powerful. The drawings are super detailed and clear with a lot of supporting information. Not sure how conclusive my findings will be, but excited to try it out. Nice introductory guide to get started and the intuitiveness of the app takes it from there. Fun to track/record bird sightings within the app.

In North America I use the mobile app from Sibley, iBird Pro, and Audubon. My recent trip to Europe was not a birding; bird watching was incidental. Nevertheless, I needed a guide for those times when I encountered birds. In a brand new place and with new birds, the most fulfilling is to be able to ID on my own. The Collins Guide was excellent. The home page has groups or families of birds which makes it very easy to navigate to a groups, e.g. waders or finches, and then to scroll through the group and compare different, but similar species. I found this format far superior to any NA bird app. Species info could be expanded some, but I can’t imagine any other app format which makes it easier to find and identify new birds - the European birds were all new to me.

Thanx and thanx again to all the folks who made this app and keep all the improvements. No other try within this field could dare to compete. I wish you luck, dudes, keep on keeping on. Translate your app to as much languages as you can and add more and more features. Voices! Add more misc calls, voices, alarm calls, etc. As well as complete translations to all the languages you’ve covered for all the species names. If one day you’ll be ready for put all the texts localized — that’ll be definitely my day. Till then I just want to thank you at least for all the work you’ve done. Waiting for often updates.

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I think the good reviews were seeded here when the app was first released. This is a pretty app, but the interface is sparse (as in it doesn't have many features) and the search engine is useless--you can choose a variety of criteria but it's not clear that what then appears is a subset or just an entire section (e.g. "Raptors") repeated without other criteria applied. The descriptions are thorough and the drawings are nice. But there is no indication of names other than the English bird book one and the Latin name. No hope for those of us in non-English-speaking countries who want to use a bird book in English, but need to search based on what locals call a bird. Look at the version history. I'd hoped, unreasonably, that it had been such a great app when it came out that it hadn't needed an update. Wrong. It needs attention and hasn't gotten it. Compare the version history to iBird Pro (North America) and you'll see what a living app's history should look like. I really wish I could get my money back. Within 5 minutes of not being able to figure out how I'd use it productively (i.e. as a field guide, not to memorize birds), I knew I'd wasted my money. And I still need a Swiss or Europe field guide app!

Purchased the Collins Bird Guide based on the reputation of the Collins book. I am traveling to Europe and wanted an easy but thorough guide for my bird observations. This app is intuitive and engrossing. The birds are displayed in visual diagrams with the ability to drill down to the bird you are observing. When the user identifies the bird, distribution maps, diagrams, sound recordings and similar birds are displayed. Very easy to use. There is a comparison section I'm finding useful before traveling as it allows me to study differences in similar species before heading overseas. I have not used this in the field yet but am enjoying playing with the format and learning a bit about the birds.