What a fantastic piece of software for the birder or perhaps even more so for the bird photographer. Just to be clear, I am not a birder, but I am a bird photographer. I also firmly believe that you cannot be a really good wildlife photographer without knowing your subject. So I am always reading and observing in order to improve my chances of making a really great photograph. Now along comes iBird!
iBird is the first software that I purchased for my iPhone and I have had my phone for almost a year! It has everything that I need to know to identify birds while in the field. Great descriptions, great illustrations, great photographs (yes, some are mine) and even calls are included in this application.
Why is a correct ID so important? First, if you ever hope to see your images published they must be correctly identified and iBird will ensure that you get even tricky IDs correct. They are part of the ID centric What Bird website and so are experts at providing the details that you need to sort out what bird (sorry) you just photographed.
One of the terrific features is the bird calls. I can’t tell you how many times I have been able to take a picture of a bird because I heard the call and could then locate the bird or even better anticipate a behavior based on the call that was being made. This bird knowledge has really helped me take better photographs and I expect iBird will advance those skills even further.
One note about birds calls. In some cases and with some bird species playing their call will cause a reaction. While this can be a boon for the photographer it can be seriously bad for the birds. Please use this feature under the American Birding Associations code of ethics.
You can buy the app at the iTunes store for a paltry $19.99. That is about $80 less than another application that I was looking a that had nowhere close to the features of iBird Explorer.
Visit the iBird Explorer website for all of the juicy details.
