Android App | Birder's Diary

Birder's Diary Mobile App for Android - FREE

It’s a new and better experience! From the trusted developers of Birder’s Diary since 1995!

Available on the Google Play Store

The Birder's Diary Mobile App EXPERIENCE!

You want to focus on seeing birds, finding birds, identifying birds (or any Thing) while you are in the field.
You need an App that helps you accomplish these main goals without getting in your way. That is the goal of this App’s Experience.
Checking off sightings with one hand; no reading glasses required; no typing required to enter a Sighting.
Supports Voice Recognition for checking off Sightings.
Automatic recording of lat/lng/alt/date-time for each click; nothing for you to have to remember about each sighting sometime later.
Tools to help you know if this bird is common or rare at this location and time of year (abundance chart for each Thing).
Quickly check to see if any sightings have been recorded with Cornell’s eBird database on any bird on your Checklist.
Quickly get extra info or range map for any bird on your Checklist.
Quick access to a huge library of sound recordings for any bird on your Checklist sorted by proximity to your current location.
Quickly imports into Birder’s Diary Desktop (since 1995) for extended analysis, reporting, graphing, editing, etc.
Visualize your Outing Track with each Sighting pin-pointed on a Google Map; tracking total distance of your Track also.
An App that does more than just Birds.

VOICE RECOGNITION for sightings entry. Data connection required.
Load any bird checklist from eBird; load any checklist for any part of the animal or plant kingdom from iNaturalist.
One handed use; left and right-handed configurations.
No typing required to record sightings.
Adjustable font size for easy reading in the field.
Record Latitude, Longitude, Altitude and Time of each click.
Imports quickly and easily into Birder’s Diary Desktop.
Birder’s Diary Desktop produces HTML reports to share on social media, with friends and family easily. The report contains an interactive GPS Google Map pin-pointing sightings, showing sightings details, and a photo gallery of any photos you attached to your sightings.
Record sightings for birds, butterflies, plants, reptiles, mammals, etc. all in the same outing at the same time, using the same app.
Up to date, date-specific bird checklist for any location in the World.
Clean and fast; simple and intuitive.

NO ADVERTISING in the App!

Upgrade your field recording to a better experience! It’s FREE!

Using Birder’s Diary Desktop with Birder’s Diary Mobile

Release Notes and Change History

V2.48 – 30-Aug-2026
- Fixed a bug where adding a name to a checklist while displaying scientific names did not scroll the list to the newly added name.
V2.47 – 29-Aug-2026
- When downloading iNaturalist checklists, some taxon do not have a common name. In the past, when exporting those from BD Mobile to BD Desktop it exports ‘-no common name-‘. If there is no common name, then we export scientific name.
V2.46 – 28-Jun-2026
- Voice Recognition now checks a spoken list of bird names separated by ‘and’, including individual counts (for example, ‘4 Blue Jays and 2 Canada Geese’).
- It recognizes additional plural forms such as ‘Boobies’, ‘Thrushes’ and ‘Geese’, and shows a complete summary when a spoken name cannot be found or matches more than one checklist name.
V2.45 – 4-Jun-2026
- Improved eBird location checklist downloads by detecting temporary eBird error pages and explaining that state/country downloads may need to be retried later. This is a problem on the eBird server side and was reported to eBird. This fix checks for the error and let’s the user know to retry. Retries often work after 2 to 4 attempts.
V2.44 – 24-May-2026
- Added new “Add Name” voice command. Press the mic button and say “Add name <any name>” and it will act as the “Add Name to Checklist” menu option; but via voice command. For example, press the mic button and say “add name blue bunting” and Blue Bunting will be added to your current checklist and it will be scrolled to.
V2.43 – 21-Apr-2026
- The Submit window now auto-adds current weather conditions to Outing Comments using your current location, including a place label and lat/lng when available.
V2.42 – 17-Mar-2026
- “Songs and Calls” on the Sighting Details screen (long-press on any name in checklist) was using Xeno-Canto V2 API. Xeno-Canto retired that version and only support v3 of their API now. Upgraded BD Mobile to support V3. Be sure to Update Reference Data from the main page menu on the upper right corner after this update. It takes a few seconds and makes sure that necessary data is up to date.
V2.41 – 15-Jan-2026
- Improved outing upload reliability and diagnostics on high-latency and restricted networks (e.g., cruise ship Wi-Fi) by correcting multipart POST formatting and adding appropriate timeouts. Upload failures now report accurate network vs. server errors (including server response details) instead of a misleading generic status code.

V2.40 – 11-Sep-2025
- Fixed bug with iNaturalist checklist downloads. It was downloading unverified species. It now only downloads verified species.
V2.39 – 2-Sep-2025
- Fixed bug with iNaturalist checklist downloads on Android 9/10 devices.
- Fixed bug when changing the name display on a Checklist. Was not updating the thumbtab index.
- Fixed other minor intermittent bugs due to updates in Android and supporting older phones.
V2.38 – 11-Aug-2025
- Added menu option to remove all Submitted Outings from the Completed Outings list.
V2.36/37 – 19-Jul-2025
- Moved back to the Google Play Store.
- Per Google requirements, updated to support Android 15, SDK 36. This required some minor changes to functionality.
V2.32 – 18-Jun-2025
- Using voice recognition to enter comments on the last tapped sighting will auto-add a timestamp in front of the comment.
- On the Sighting Detail window, where you can manually add comments, a new button has been added to the upper right of the comment field. When tapped, it will add a timestamp to the end of the current comment text.
- On the Checklist Entry window, a new menu item has been added – ‘Add Checked Names to Clipboard‘. This will add all checked names (common and sci) to the clipboard for all Checklists in the current outing. This is convenient for quickly sharing your list with others via social media, texting apps or email.
V2.31 – 9-Jun-2025
- Added check on startup for new version of the App.
V2.26 – 30-May-2025
- Added a Back button to the thumb tab buttons at the bottom. It will take you to your last position in the checklist after the checklist is moved; via clicking a button in the thumb tab, etc.
V2.25 – 26-May-2025
- Corrected some minor issues with the new Thumb Tab functionality in 2.24.
V2.24 – 25-May-2025
- The Thumb Tab on the right of each Checklist is now sized to show all Letters – no more scrolling the Thumb Tab. It also includes a TOP button.
- The Thumb Tab will only search non-checked rows when in the new split view mode. It will no longer consider the checked rows at the top.
- Voice recognition has been enhanced and sped up. It will now match on a) exact name matches, b) exact name matches with plural, c) partial matches – any word(s) in the name; e.g. ‘Northern Swallow’ will match on ‘Northern Rough-winged Swallow’. If it only matches on one name, it wil be checked; else it will scroll to the first name that matches.
V2.23 – 20-May-2025
- Correct some minor functionality with the last update. Voice searches and row tapping in the new mode.
V2.22 – 15-May-2025
- The toggle button at bottom left of the Outing Checklist used to toggle between all names and only those checked. Instead of ‘only those checked’, it now shows all names, but those that are checked are at the top. In this new mode, the thumb-tab index will alternate between checked names and non-checked names.
- A check is made every time you start BD Mobile. If your database has more than 3 unsubmitted Outings, you will be notified in order not to possibly lose data.
  If you have more than 20 Outings still in your database, you will be notified. More than 20 outings can result in performance issues in some cases.
V2.21 – 2-May-2025
- Found issue with fetching eBird data from non-US Locales and fixed.
V2.20 – 20-Apr-2025
- Added timeout and error trapping when the App fetches data frmo Xeno-Canto or eBird APIs. It will report any issues to the user in a short on-screen message.
V2.19 – 7-Apr-2025
- Added new menu item to main start window: “Update Reference Data”. This app fetches the latest copy of the eBird taxonomy the first time it is used by a user after installation on their Android device. This data is used to fill-in missing info from the eBird API and as cross-reference data in the app. What I did not count on was how that data gets outdated year-after-year when changes are made to the eBird taxonomy. Currently, the only thing this update does is to refresh this data. It happens within a couple seconds. It should be done once per year.
V2.18 – 7-Apr-2025
- Fixed formatting of buttons on Submit activity.
V2.17
- Two null reference bugs checked and handled.
V2.16
- Hotspots dropdown for downloading will now show full hotspot names instead of truncating to one line.
V2.11
- Voice recognition will now recognize partial names in the checklist. E.g. ‘swallow’, and take you to the first match. If it is the only name in the checklist with that substring, it will auto-check it.
V2.10
- Updated species detail feature. Fixed problem with song playback when phone is rotated. Added feature for continuous playback.
V2.08
- Completed Outings list indicates if the Outing has been submitted.
V2.04
- New sorting algorithm for checklists. In addition to sorting alphabetically and taxonomically, you can now sort by Abundance – most to least.
V2.0
- Created Web API for uploading mobile sightings to the Cloud. V6.0 of BD Desktop can now retrieve all of your outings from the Cloud Web API.
v1.43
- Added breeding code dropdown to the Sighting Detail window. This is exported to BD Desktop automatically. See here for creating the UDF in BD Desktop to capture this data.
v1.41
- Ability to download checklists for any branch of the Tree of Life and any location in the World (e.g. Park, County, State/Province, Country, etc.). Download checklists for spiders, plants in your area, frogs, trees, etc. The choices are almost endless!
- Preceding a spoken name on the checklist with a number will add that number to the current count. This has been much improved over the first implementation. E.g. “12 Mallards”.
- Speaking “comment any text here” will auto-append the remaining text as a comment for the last edited row. E.g. if you last incremented or decremented the count for American Crow and then used speech recognition and said “comment 4 flying south”, then “4 flying south. ” will be appended to that rows’ comments.
- If the spoken words cannot be translated into a name or a comment, then an attempt is made to do a sub-string match (e.g. ‘warbler’) and if found, it will scroll to the first appearance of that substring in the current checklist. So, by just saying warbler, the list will be scrolled to the first name containing ‘warbler’ in your current checklist.
v1.36 – Play songs for all bird species from Xeno-Canto library. Sorted by distance from current location. Available from Sightings Comments window.
v1.35 – Notable Nearby Species feature. New Species Info/Range Map/Neary Sightings features on Sightings Comments window.
v1.32 – Newly downloaded bird checklists will now show abundance graphs for each species for the entire year on the Checklist.
v1.29 – 3-JUL-2021
- Interactive Google Map with improved GPS accuracy. Shows your track and pinpoints each sighting entered.