Test BirdScribe

Thanks for volunteering to test BirdScribe. Sign up below so I can send you an invite for your phone, then read the quick guide.

Tell me which phone you use and I'll send you an invite: TestFlight for iPhone now, Google Play as soon as the Android test opens.

You'll get a BirdScribe invite by email through TestFlight shortly.
Install the free TestFlight app from the App Store (Apple's official beta-testing app).
Tap the invite to install BirdScribe.
Use it in the field, then tell me how it went. See how to send feedback below.

Quick Start (2 minutes)

Voice-first bird logging. Eyes up, birds in.

BirdScribe lets you log bird sightings by voice, so your eyes stay on the bird and your hands stay on the binoculars.

The basic loop

Open BirdScribe and tap the green RECORD button.
Speak your sighting naturally: "Three rainbow lorikeets feeding."
Stop talking. After a short pause it commits automatically, with a confirmation beep.
A card appears suggesting the species and count, with your recording attached. Confirm it with a tap; nothing exports without you.
Repeat for the next bird. At the end, tap End Session to review and export an eBird checklist.

That's it. Everything below is detail for when you want it.

Three things worth knowing on day one

It works offline. No signal needed. Clearly-named birds match instantly; anything it can't resolve is saved with your voice recording and sorted out when you reconnect.
It always keeps your voice. Every observation stores what you actually said. Tap play on any card to hear yourself back.
Say the name clearly. "Sulphur-crested cockatoo" matches instantly. Vague descriptions get saved as your recording for you to confirm later.

New in this build (Build 21: bird song capture)

New: record a bird's song

While recording, say "sound bite" and nothing else. The app stops listening for narration and starts recording the bird. Stop it by tapping the record button, by saying "all done", or leave it and it stops itself at 45 seconds.

You will hear a tone when the recording starts and another when it closes.

If you already know the bird, say its name straight after the trigger:

"sound bite, rufous fantail"

That saves the recording and logs a heard only observation, which exports to eBird as normal. Say a number and it is honoured: "sound bite, two rufous fantails" logs two.

Saying "sound bite" on its own saves the recording with no observation.

Ordinary narration is unchanged. "I can hear a whipbird" is a sentence, not a trigger, and will never start a recording.

Your recordings

Tap the music note in the Trips header. Recordings are listed there with a total storage figure.

These clips live on the phone. They are not backed up to iCloud, they are not deleted automatically, and they leave the phone only to run song identification. Find them in Files.app under On My iPhone, BirdScribe, recordings. Drag them out from there if you want a copy.

Deleting a trip does not delete its recordings.

You can remove a clip from an observation card without deleting the observation itself.

Song ID is live

Captured clips are analysed and BirdScribe suggests the species, with candidates matched to your region by GPS. The suggestion sits on the card until you confirm it; nothing reaches the checklist without you.

Use the phone's microphone

Do not record bird song through AirPods or wired earphones. iOS routes the microphone to the headset and drops the audio quality, which loses exactly the high frequencies a bird call lives in. Keep the earphones for listening. Recording through the phone is what we need for now.

Also fixed

Heard only observations now honour a stated count. "Three kookaburras calling" exports as 3. If you do not say a number it stays as X, which is eBird's way of saying present, count not determined.

Previous build (Build 17)

Pocket Mode: hands-free field recording

Tap the padlock in the header to arm it. While armed:

The screen stays awake (no auto-lock mid-session). Lower your brightness for long sessions to save battery.
Taps on Record do nothing. Start and stop with your AirPods/headset button, or swipe up on the record zone. This stops pocket bumps triggering recordings.
Notes are disabled while armed. Everything else (confirm, delete, correct) works as normal.
Pocket Mode turns off when you end the session, and survives a force-quit if the session is recovered.

Please test

Arm it, phone in pocket 10+ minutes: no phantom recordings.
Full loop pocketed: AirPods press, speak, silence auto-commits, press again for the next bird.
Screen never auto-locks while armed; locks normally after disarm or session end.
Lock the phone manually mid-session, then try the headset button: does a press start a recording from idle? Does it stop one already running? Report both.
Force-quit mid-armed-session, reopen, resume: Pocket Mode still armed, screen stays awake.
Take a phone call mid-recording: words so far should be saved, no crash.
Disarm: tap-to-record works exactly as before.

Also in this build: header buttons are now icons only (Trips, Pocket, Notes, Region).

Full Guide

Recording a bird

Tap the green RECORD button and speak naturally. You don't need rigid phrasing. Say it how you'd say it to a companion:

"Five rainbow lorikeets flew over"
"A spangled drongo calling"
"Wompoo fruit-dove, heard only"

When you've finished and stop talking, about two seconds of silence ends the recording and commits the observation automatically. You'll hear a start tick when the mic goes live, and a success or fail beep when it finishes, so you always know where you are without looking at the screen.

You can also stop manually by tapping the button again, and there's a hard cap so a recording never runs on forever.

Logging several birds

You can name several birds in one recording. Just keep talking: "Three rainbow lorikeets, a spangled drongo calling, two figbirds." Each species becomes its own card. You've got about six seconds per recording to get your birds out, and a short pause between them is fine. Once you stop talking, two seconds of silence commits the recording.

Or log them one at a time. You don't have to wait for the previous bird to finish processing: tap record, speak the next bird straight away, and the cards catch up on their own.

The rhythm: see bird → speak bird → move on. The app queues everything.

Hands-free with earphones

Plug in any earphones with a play/pause button: wired USB-C, Bluetooth, AirPods, anything. A single press starts recording; another press stops it. This is the cleanest field setup: phone in your pocket or on a harness, hands free, eyes up.

Wired earphones are the most reliable in the field: no battery, no pairing, no dropouts.

Pocket Mode

For phone-in-pocket sessions, tap the padlock in the header to arm Pocket Mode. The screen stays awake, taps on Record do nothing (so pocket bumps can't start or stop recordings), and your AirPods or headset button drives the whole loop: press, speak your observation, and silence saves it automatically. Swipe up on the record zone when you do want to use touch.

Notes are disabled while armed; everything else (confirm, delete, correct) works as normal. Pocket Mode turns off when you end the session.

Hands-free with Siri

Say: "Hey Siri, log a bird in BirdScribe"

The app opens and starts recording, so you just speak the bird.

Say the full phrase for the first day or two. Once Siri learns the shortcut, "Hey Siri, log a bird" works on its own.
From a locked phone, you'll need to unlock first (Face ID or passcode). That's an Apple rule for opening any app by voice, not something we can bypass.

Working offline

BirdScribe is built for the rainforest floor where there's no signal.

Clearly-named birds match instantly, no connection required. "Sulphur-crested cockatoo" resolves on the spot.
Anything it can't match offline is saved with your voice recording, GPS location, and time. You'll see a "No connection" card.
When you reconnect, tap the reprocess option to run those saved recordings through identification in one batch. Nothing is lost, and you never have to re-record.

Playing back your recordings

Every observation card has a play button. Tap it to hear exactly what you said. This is useful when:

You described a bird you couldn't name and want to revisit the details.
The transcription got a word wrong and you want to check what you actually said.
You just want to confirm a sighting later.

Fixing a species

If BirdScribe mis-hears or you want to change a species:

Type the name: tap the correction option on the card and type it. This matches directly against the eBird taxonomy, so it's always a valid name, and it works offline.
Re-record: record the observation again if you'd rather.

BirdScribe never forces a specific species on you. If it isn't sure, it saves a general entry (like "honeyeater sp.") that you confirm. It won't guess a bird you didn't see.

Field notes

Tap the NOTE button (or the notes icon) to jot a personal note by voice or text: "Met the landholder at Davies Creek, can access the back paddock."

Notes are personal and private: they're stored on your device only and are never sent to eBird or shared. Use them for anything: access reminders, site conditions, shopping lists.

Notes are disabled while Pocket Mode is armed.

Ending a session and exporting

Tap End Session to:

Review your observations and fix or delete any.
See all your sightings on a map. Tap a species to find its pin, or a pin to find its card.
Combine duplicate sightings of the same species if you want.
Export an eBird-compatible checklist ready to import into eBird.

What BirdScribe does with your data

Sightings and recordings are stored on your device.
No account, no signup, no personal identity stored.
Your field notes never leave your device.

Known limits in the current test build

Siri can't open the app from a locked screen without an unlock first (Apple's rule).
Siri works most reliably when BirdScribe is already the app you were last using.
Recording with the phone fully locked isn't available yet. Pocket Mode works around this by keeping the screen awake in your pocket.

How to send feedback

Your feedback is what makes BirdScribe better.

In TestFlight. Open the TestFlight app, tap BirdScribe, then "Send Beta Feedback". Write what happened, attach a screenshot if you have one. Your device, iOS version and app build come through automatically, so I know exactly what you were running.

Straight to David. For anything quick, a thought on the drive back, something that felt clunky, just text me on 0433 033 273 or email davidlyons3000@gmail.com. A one-line "the beep didn't fire when I stopped" is genuinely useful.

Don't save it up. The bug you catch in the field is one a birder won't hit later.