Learn Bird Watching vs Birdathon
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Learn Bird Watching
Learn to identify birds by sound and sight with a game-based system. This app offers audio and visual courses created by experts to improve your birding skills, suitable for beginners and advanced enthusiasts alike.
- Game-based learning system
- Identify birds by sound
- Identify birds by sight
- Expert-created courses
- Suitable for all skill levels
- Master birding by ear
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BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA Learn birds the fun way! Learn to identify the birds that you're seeing and hearing. Take birding and birdwatching to a new level! Larkwire is a complete, game-based system for learning. Great for beginners and still challenging for advanced birders. Audio courses teach you to identify bird sounds and visual courses teach plumage. All courses are created by world class experts in field identification. This is the app used by professionals to master birding by ear. ***** "Best thing I’ve ever bought on the App Store." (Shopetastic review, 04/16/2020) ***** "Uniformly excellent" (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) ***** "A Rosetta Stone for birdsong." (Birding Magazine) ***** "This is a really cool tool!" (BirdChick) ***** "Really fun!" (Wildlife South) ********************************************** "Larkwire is already helping immensely with my ability to bird in the field. And my 7-year-old daughter is asking for 'that bird song game on the computer.'—I guess you have THREE of us hooked!" (Courtenay Schurman, Mountaineering Trainer) ********************************************** ********************************************** "It's like having a personal teacher who can pinpoint my weaknesses and make me work on them as I play. By far the best value for your money when you think about buying an avian audio guide." (Alain Clavette, aka @Acadian_Birder) ********************************************** ********************************************** "A fantastic tool for learning and reviewing birdsong. ... What I can vouch for, as a teacher, is the solid learning theory behind the software—this program is sure to improve the speed and accuracy with which you identify birds by ear." (David Pugh, Calgary Birder) ********************************************** SUPPORT For questions or support, email: support@larkwire.com EULA - Apple standard End User License Agreement: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Birdathon
This app helps birdwatchers create and organize detailed checklists of their observations. It automatically records time and location, allowing for easy editing and customization. Users can visualize their sightings on maps, add field notes, and export data for sharing or further analysis.
- Observation-centric checklists
- Automatic time and location recording
- Customizable maps with boundary overlays
- Field notes for additional observations
- Multiple checklist sorting options
- Data export to CSV and other formats
- Create checklist templates
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Birdathon is an observation-centric tool for creating birding checklists. It helps you organize your checklists and share them with others. Use Birdathon in the field to quickly record whether and where a bird is seen or heard and the number observed. The time and location of each observation is automatically recorded. You can adjust the location, time entries and the count of birds observed at any time to ensure your records are accurate. You can add breeding codes to your observations. Checklist maps display the locations of your observations. You can overlay county boundaries for every US state. You can add a range circle such as a 5MR (5-mile Radius) to your maps. You can import and overlay custom kml/kmz files onto your maps. An Overview feature lets you see your combined observations for any time period, and displays a map showing any boundaries you have selected, so you can utilize the map feature even when you are not actively checklisting. You can export Overview data into a csv text file or create a new checklist template from the Overview. Your checklists can be viewed in taxonomic order, alphabetically, by rarity or as a timeline of species. You can enrich your checklist with field notes and add observations such as mammals, butterflies, wildflowers, etc., to make it a more complete record of your experience. You can organize your checklists into categories such as Day List, Year List, County List, Life List, etc., and assign color themes to your lists. Bird species may be added and deleted from your lists at any time. You can create new checklist templates from your previous lists or import templates created by others. You can change which template is being used. You can import text files into Birdathon, making them into templates or new checklists. Different export options for your checklists allow you to import into eBird or another copy of Birdathon. The bird species source data and other resources used in this app come from the following sources: AviList, a unified global checklist of birds, is the core data set used for Birdathon. https://www.avilist.org. Some data has been integrated from the following sources: The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world (https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/), the American Ornithological Society's (AOS) Checklist of North and Middle American Birds (https://checklist.americanornithology.org), and the American Birding Association's (ABA) checklist of North American Birds (https://www.aba.org/listing-taxonomy/) Alpha codes come from The Institute for Bird Populations’ Standardized 4- and 6-letter Bird Species Codes. https://www.birdpop.org/pages/birdSpeciesCodes.php. County boundary data is from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) TIGER/Line 2019 Shapefiles found on the United States Census Bureau's website at https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.2019.html. Boundaries should be used as general guidelines and not be considered precise. Note especially where county boundaries follow creeks, rivers, ridge lines and other natural features, and so are of much finer resolution than can be shown on Birdathon’s maps. California breeding bird atlas blocks come from the California Bird Atlas, https://www.californiabirdatlas.org. California Bird Atlas logo and breeding code descriptions used with permission.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Learn Bird Watching at every 9 days against Birdathon's every 4 months. Learn Bird Watching also leads on ratings volume (1.3K vs 15). Birdathon's advantage is monetization model (free vs free with in-app purchases) and review sentiment (100% vs 91%). On price, rating, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Learn Bird Watching sells 10 in-app purchases, starting at $24.99 per year and Birdathon sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for Learn Bird Watching against 4.7 for Birdathon. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Learn Bird Watching has 1.3K ratings behind it against 15, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 91% of Learn Bird Watching's written reviews are positive against 100% of Birdathon's.
Learn Bird Watching ships an update every 9 days, Birdathon every 4 months. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and September 19, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Learn Bird Watching | Birdathon |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (1.3K ratings) — better | 4.7 (15 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 90.7% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 1.3K — better | 15 |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days — better | Every 4 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 — better | 16.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 66 MB | 192 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Larkwire | Barry Langdon-Lassagne |
Customer experience
Learn Bird Watching
Birdathon
Bugs and requests
Learn Bird Watching
Reported bugs
3 issues- Unable to download sample content
- Repeating the same bird songs in succession
- Inconsistent progress tracking
Requested features
4 requests- Add bird song playback when selecting bird images
- Implement voice recognition for answering questions
- Include spectrograms for better visual learning
- Expand coverage to birds in other regions
Birdathon
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Learn Bird Watching
- Single Course Annual7 Days trial$24.991 Year
- All Courses Annual7 Days trial$44.991 Year
- All Courses Annual (Family)7 Days trial$64.991 Year
- Bird Songs Core West (N. Am)$9.99
- Bird Songs Core East (N. Am)$9.99
- Waterbirds Core (N. Am)$9.99
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- Bird Songs Pro East (N. Am)$24.99
- Bird Songs Pro West (N. Am)$24.99
- Waterbirds songs/calls (N. Am)$24.99
- Breeding Plumage East (N.Am.)$24.99
Birdathon
- Good Tip$0.99
- Great Tip$1.99
- Amazing Tip$2.99
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- Incredible Tip$4.99





