A very practical app

Considering the usefulness of ‘Chirp! Bird Song USA +’ a price of $3.99 is reasonable. Produced by nature specialists, iSpiny, this app is accessible on apple products (iPhone, iPod, & iPad). General features include listening to bird calls/ songs, bird song quizzes, and a slideshow feature. ‘Chirp!’ gives easy access to over 300 bird songs and calls from throughout North America. Birdcalls are advertised to be up to 34 seconds long. This app has notable credibility considering that it gets its birdcalls from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

One of the major challenges I face when birding is hearing many birds but not recognizing their sounds. This app allows me to quickly search for birds’ calls and see if I can find a match with what I heard in nature.

While useful for all birders, Chirp! is more specifically designed for beginner birders helping them to learn to identify various bird songs and calls. Along with this ‘listen’ feature, the slideshow feature allows you to choose different birds for you to get familiar with and the quiz feature gives you a chance to see how well you’ve mastered different birdcalls. Another useful tool for beginner birders is being able to sort birds from most common to least common in the ‘listen’ feature.

Being more oriented towards beginner birders, this app offers limited information about each bird. Even so, the descriptions of the birdcall and general geographical information are still useful. More information on the birds is offered through hyperlinks to Cornell and Wiki pages. One limitation to this, though, is that this requires Wi-Fi and thus is not a feature that can be used while birding (for iPads & iPods)

Nevertheless, it can still be useful for more experienced birders as well as ornithologists. The various birdcalls in this app can be used for calling birds out in nature. I can personally attest that this works, especially with perching birds.

Looking at the quiz feature, birders can improve their competency by taking harder and harder quizzes. Thus, both beginners and the experienced can benefit from the three difficulty levels and custom option.

While all features are useful, I would say that the slideshow feature is my least used feature. The app description states that this feature can be used to choose birds and their bird songs, then let it play through each slide. While listening to these calls can be hands free, personally, I learn better seeing a picture of the bird when hearing the call.

As a testament to its practicality when birding and for its usefulness in improving my birdcall repertoire, I would recommend buying this app to any birder who struggles with identifying birds by sound.

turktwitcher48 about Chirp! Bird Songs & Calls USA