eGuide to Birds of East Africa

I hope I didn’t pay three times for this because I had to keep going back to the site and going through the whole process three time orus41

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.

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 app made our bird identifications in Tanzania so much easier (also with our guide’s help). We ID’d 82 species in 10 days! Great graphics, sound, and comparisons.

This is a very handy electronic version of the excellent guide book. (And that's basically what it is--an ebook with some nice extras. It doesn't have a bunch of interactive functions that I normally associate with apps.) As with the book, you'll benefit from familiarizing yourself with the different groupings. You can't, of course, thumb through pages to find what you're looking for, but there's an option to browse alphabetically which is very helpful. For example, you can go straight to "H" and find all the herons--nice for those of us who don't use the book/app all the time. The list function makes logging your discoveries easy, though it may not have enough fields for serious birders. But it's fun for me, as I've only concerned myself with identification until now. I'd love to see more features in the future. Top of my wish list would be a way to browse birds by geographic region. Bottom line: There could be more here, but I'm very happy I bought the app. It's got nice extras the book doesn't have (I didn't even mention the calls or the compare function!), and it's there when I want it, not on the shelf at home. :)

Generally a good app for an initial edition. Good to have image, map, description on one screen. Improvements: thumbnail view of bird on menu screen as all other bird apps have; if possible, map showing resident, breeding, migrant, etc.; (see maps on Natl Geog North Am app); icon showing if bird is already on a list. On my ipad, I can't go from a bird on a list directly to the bird's image page the way I can from the list on my ipod. Update names to current listing. I recommend this app but also strongly recommend getting the book version.

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.

If you are a birder heading to East Africa, this is a must have app. It combines the most current field guide with an extensive set of recordings. This is the only set of recordings that I have found. I have many field guides on my iPad and prefer the my digital earth format over all others. The only negative is that the guide was not updated to the latest Clements / eBird 2012 taxonomy.