eGuide to Birds of East Africa 4+

I waited and waited for this app and had no hesitation paying handsomely for it, but am disappointed to find that there are only two index facilities, neither of which are user friendly for someone with a passion for birding but limited knowledge of taxonomy or name. I use a bird book regularly while on safari, and find it much easier to identify birds from a page of images rather than a taxonomic list. This app would benefit hugely from that, and/or a dichotomous key like that of ibird pro. If such an improvement was made I would recommend this to many enthusiasts! As it is I will stick to the book.

The contents are great although many modern bird books (for other areas) are better with richer descriptions and focus on identification.

The app part however is a joke. If you choose between buying the physical book (similarly priced) or the app, buy the book!

You get an index of the birds by name (sorted either alphabetically or by taxonomy). From there you can click through to the bird page. You can search, but that is only on name or family. If you, for example, search for vulture you will not find the Lammergeier because it is in its own taxonomy (under vultures).

— correction. It does not search family, only the name of the bird. “Owl” generates a long list including “...fowl” but “owls” is an empty set. The more you look at this app the worse it gets. Selling a pdf version of the book would be nor useful!

You can swipe from bird to bird but it is finicky (at least on my iPhone). It will not consider your search when swiping. If you have made a search for, say eagle, it will show you harriers after the snake eagles (swiping right on the southern banded snake-eagle).

If you don’t know what family the bird you’re trying to identify you’ll probably throw your phone to the nearest baboon in disgust.

The right choice by the developers would be to team up with an app like iBird through some licensing deal. Marry the great content with iBirds versatile and useful search and filter functionality.

In the meantime, buy the book!!!

This is a digitized copy of the EA Helm Field Guide with audio clips - no more, no less. Helm is a good field guide, but I expect more from an interactive app. It’s next to useless when you’re trying to identify unfamiliar birds in the field. Unlike Sasol, which has a thumbnail image of each bird next to its name on the taxonomical and alphabetical listings, this has nothing. Sasol lets you tag and compare similar birds - not here. No geolocation features, basic sort functions, etc. the app is okay to maintain a basic list of birds seen and where, but even here its stunted due to lack of geolocation and time stamping capacity.

You can not rely on this app for much other than list maintenance when you’re in the field or trying to reconstruct a day in the evening.