{"id":1565,"date":"2011-04-04T09:00:18","date_gmt":"2011-04-04T13:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vincentmistretta.com\/blog\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2011-04-03T17:59:52","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T21:59:52","slug":"monday-musings-check-out-birdseye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vincentmistretta.com\/blog\/monday-musings-check-out-birdseye\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Musings – Check Out BirdsEye"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
BirdsEye App<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I know some of you might have thought the title was referring to the frozen vegetable brand but I meant an app that I am currently using on my iPhone. The app is called BirdsEye<\/a><\/strong>. As an emerging birder, I found this app to be worth every penny (yes, I paid the $19.99 for the full version). One of the things that makes this app so cool is that it is powered by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology ebird<\/a><\/strong> system. According to the ebird website, they utilize over 1 million bird sightings a month in compiling their data.<\/p>\n

So you might be asking, how does BirdsEye help birders? Its pretty simple. BirdsEye makes this database available to us in an easy to navigate and use interface. There are 6 main features you can access thorough the main menu (In version 1.3, the current version). <\/p>\n

1) Find Nearby Birds
\n2) Notable and Rare Bird Sightings
\n3) Locate a Bird
\n4) View Birding Hotspots
\n5) Select Birding Location
\n6) Update Life List<\/p>\n

So far I have mostly used menu items 1, 2 and 4. The app uses the iPhones location detecting capabilities (if you turn them on) to pinpoint your location and find bird sightings collected through ebird in your vicinity. It does this all very quickly. I am actually shocked at how efficient the database access is on a 3G network.
\nI also love the ability to build a life list with all the species you have seen in person. What I haven’t decided is whether I will use the life list to be my portable photographic species list for birds.<\/p>\n

There are 2 recommendations I would make to better the apps performance. First, when you select the directions portion of the mapping section, you proceed out of BirdsEye completely without any ability to re-enter the app without hitting the iPhone home key and reselecting the BirdsEye App. I find this annoying.
\nSecond and most important to me, I would like the ability to see bird sightings closest to my location sorted by how recently they were seen. Lets face it, I see 2 basic ways to use this app, and one of them is to know the most recent sightings in and around your current location. The application does sort by species and then shows when the last time that species was seen so I assume the change I am requesting is not a big deal. The other way to use this app is to search for certain birds and have it show their sightings.<\/p>\n

All in all, this app in combination with iBird Pro, makes for a really powerful mobile birding reference tool. I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n

Note: Image courtesy of the BirdsEye website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know some of you might have thought the title was referring to the frozen vegetable brand but I meant an app that I am currently using on my iPhone. The app is called BirdsEye. As an emerging birder, I found this app to be worth every penny (yes, I paid the $19.99 for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-monday-musings"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t