Does not Play Vocalizations & does not Updates Properly
Perhaps because the last version seems to be at least three years old (it says 2021.11.29).
Good content, suboptimal execution
Lots of good information as it is based on an authoritative original source. Translating that content into a truly useful app, however, is somewhat of a mixed bag. Some aspects that I find frustrating include:
-descriptions and illustrations are not both visible at once in the same page view so I’m constantly swiping back and forth to match features with their description;
-portrait only view (fine for phone but can’t use it easily with my iPad’s external keyboard);
-the life list feature seems pretty useless because there doesn’t appear to be any way to see only the species you’ve included on your life list and scrolling through 1661 species to find the ones you’ve checked off is a non-starter. (This isn’t a huge deal since I keep my life list in eBird anyways but I had hoped to use the feature to create a small group of birds to study at a time by comparison.)
Good features include filtering by location (region) to show most likely species and multistep help with identifying unknown birds (similar to Merlin app).
One feature that I would love to see added would be a quiz mode where you could select the species or group of species that you wanted to review and you could take a test to identify species by illustration or sound.
Overall, still a useful app but it could be really great with some improvements. Leaves me a little disappointed considering the price.
-descriptions and illustrations are not both visible at once in the same page view so I’m constantly swiping back and forth to match features with their description;
-portrait only view (fine for phone but can’t use it easily with my iPad’s external keyboard);
-the life list feature seems pretty useless because there doesn’t appear to be any way to see only the species you’ve included on your life list and scrolling through 1661 species to find the ones you’ve checked off is a non-starter. (This isn’t a huge deal since I keep my life list in eBird anyways but I had hoped to use the feature to create a small group of birds to study at a time by comparison.)
Good features include filtering by location (region) to show most likely species and multistep help with identifying unknown birds (similar to Merlin app).
One feature that I would love to see added would be a quiz mode where you could select the species or group of species that you wanted to review and you could take a test to identify species by illustration or sound.
Overall, still a useful app but it could be really great with some improvements. Leaves me a little disappointed considering the price.
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Buggy / not really functional
I have an up to date iOS install on an iPhone 13. The app has gray icons that haven’t loaded (variable but the back arrow is always buggy). Most of the time screen presses don’t register and the buttons don’t map to the screen correctly. Sounds don’t play. Disappointed.
Where did the sound go?
Great app, except the sounds don’t work! Would be a cool feature if I could figure that out.
This is the one to get
This is THE field guide for Ecuador! It is continuously updated with new distribution data, has the best descriptions, and the authors have been Ecuador birding gurus for almost 50 years. This is the one to buy!
