National Geographic Birds: Field Guide to North America App Reviews

What a huge amount of work you guys have done! This is an amazing update. Love the redesigned interface. The lists and events ideas are great, especially the built-in NatGeo lists. And so much detail! Must have for all birders.

Worked all right until I tried to download update. Could not update, could not revert to original version, could not stop attempt to update until I deleted software. Now cannot reload, so have lost software, price of software and patience. Will avoid these apps in future.

Nice! excellent! iPhone 5 full screen finally! Super update. I lived with 8 bit images for so long with old version. Now its so good I give it 6 stars, ;-). Update is so AWESOME I cant write a proper review! Thank you coders and programmers !

A fantastic upgrade! The depth of information in the app is phenomenal. The illustration and sound quality definitely make this one of the best birding apps for birders. This upgrade places this app back at the front of the pack of bird field guides.

Easy to navigate and get bird information quickly.

Was very pleased to see the app made universal. Nice job! I would still like to see the ability to upload your own photos to a particular species, and allow you to swipe the text below the drawing down which would allow the drawing to expand to use more screen. The ability to pinch & zoom isnt the same thing when you are trying to show the drawing to people. Need the ability to see the entire drawing larger. All in all though, a great update to a nicely done app.

Thank you for universal update. This is the best field guide ever PERIOD. Intuitive navigation. Retina graphics makes it UNIQUE birding app ever. Thank you developers.

Goes to show that you cant judge an app by its icon…while the Nat Geo app has great potential there are too many things wrong to give it 5 stars. If they fixed half of my CONs Ill give it 5 stars. (Update for 3.1 - now that it works with iPad I have them another star.) CONS ■ My biggest complaint is the drawings and text descriptions are on a split page. This means when you zoom the images they stay inside the upper half of the iPhone screen. So you end up looking at them through a small window. ■ The descriptive text also shares the lower half of the screen with the drawing so it must be scrolled a lot and again you can only see it through a small window. ■ The search engine doesnt work right. When searching for yellow birds I get species that have no yellow anywhere like the American Coot, Barn Owl, Black Scoter. (Unless they are using the yellow beaks, eyes and feet for the filter but that is dumb since you would never call a bird yellow just cause its bill or feet is yellow.) ■ There is no way to step though each species with Next and Previous arrow buttons - instead you have to return to the scrolling list to select the next species to view. ■ The quizzes dont tell you what questions you answered wrong. Plus after I finished I wanted more. ■ They say the app has more species than any other but 128 are accidentals which have very little information including no sound and no map of where it was found. ■ Not as many songs as the big 3 (Sibley, iBird and Audubon). ■ No way to upload photos like Peterson and iBird offer. ■ Videos are nice but not enough and dont appear on the species pages (probably because there are so few) PROs ■ Very pretty design. ■ Easy to use because of the modern "slide from the left" menu system (like Facebook uses). ■ News is a cool feature no other birding app offers. ■ Videos are nice but not very many of them. ■ Automatically adds current weather to Journal sightings. ■ Drawings are great and have field marks. It has been a long time since National Geographic released this app and its great to see them finally spend the kind of time the subject of birding deserves. Especially when you consider they have the #2 best selling bird book after David Sibley (Nat Geo was number 1 for years and years). However I do feel the app is bloated with too many features. I would have preferred that many of the non-essential features (like quizzes, videos, etc) were in-app purchases so I could add them when I was interested. I continue to prefer to use Sibley and iBird. Still I give the Nat Geo team 3 stars in this review and look forward to the CONs I point out being fixed before I award them 5 stars.

I like the update, especially from where the app was, but the ability to email a complete list from the journal is a missing necessity. Currently, unless I am missing something, you are basically advertising for national geographic. The list only includes one bird and then proceeds to tell everyone how to get the app. This needs attention.

Love this app! You can identify, and keep track with this app. Anyone who has the book will like the the fact that this also has bird songs you can listen too.

We just started using this app. and have fallen in love with it. We cant wait to use it hiking and canoeing this spring and summer. It drives the dog and cat crazy with the bird calls. Love using it in the backyard with all of our bird friends. Keep up the fantastic work NG! We have a Ravens nest that we can see from our living room window. Yeah! We are so lucky!

Revision A developer who listens - is a good developer and Im glad to see that NG has improved there display to allow full screen images. Its certainly better but...Im not enamored with how They implemented it. Its kind of hard to explain but basically you have to tap it twice in order to see it full-screen. I still think there are better apps for birding out there in this one, but there are some reasons for owning it anyway. ---- I own all the current birding apps on the iPhone: Peterson, Sibley, iBird and now National Geographic. Ive been waiting for Nat Geo to update their app as version 1 was not up to the quality I expect of this company. Im glad to see this new update and it has some really neat ideas…quizzes, journal, clever interface, lots of species, etc. There are little things that bother me compared to other birding apps I own like the drawings only zoom inside the top half of the screen of the iPhone so you cant ever see them in full size, but I will give them a pass on that for now. But there is ONE MAJOR BUMMER about the Nat Geo bird app: it wont run on an iPad! Certainly they have the programming talent to make it a universal app. So I have my theory and maybe Im full of it but what kind of tells me Im right is you cant zoom the drawings to full screen on the iPhone. And why not? Could it be that they are all too low resolution? If they are not high res they wont look good on the iPad. Other apps have similar issues but it doesnt stop them from making a universal app. So come on Nat Geo lets see some great art at high resolution and a universal UI. Oh one other thing missing…no photos. So for now I will give them 3 stars and when they make it full screen iPad Ill give them 5.

I could love this apps if it didnt crash and lose my info every time I make a new list. I like the way the "list" choice works because it is simple, BUT the apps shuts down and all my info disappears. It has usually come back sooner or later but it is NOT reliable! It is a nice apps to have in the field for reference like a portable field guide but..... Be warned! Dont put lists you dont want to lose in it! Like your life list......This should be a fixable glitch, PLEASE NG! Fix it! If this glitch is fixed, I give it 5 stars.

Paid ten dollars want it to be perfect...Love cartoons with description but would love after that another slide of a real picture of it in nature....if doubting to buy it STOP THINKING GET IT

This is a great app, but it could be better. It would be nice to have flight patterns, real photographs of the species in their natural habitat, more videos, and possibly information on how to attract species, when applicable. Other than those minor additions, this is an awesome app for the price, and I use it almost everyday.

I see the other reviews of this app complaining that there are no photos of birds in the app, just colored drawings. Itd be impossible for every bird to be photographed to the point at which theyre good enough to showcase, so I wouldnt expect photos of even some birds in the app. The app is great and has just what I need to discover more about the birds I photograph. Great app from Nat Geo so its recommended!

Ive tried many apps and this one Judy works. The power is in the filters that actually help you find the bird you are looking for. This is the only bird app that lets you filter by state an time of year so that you only see the birds that are actually in your area. Buy it!! Much better than Peterson or Audibon.

Love the bird sounds feature! I also have the book and this is great for random sightings when I dont have my book.

Love this app if they added another filter for bird type like heron duck songbird crane hawk and vulture and it didnt crash when you made new events it would be 5 stars

Sitting on my back deck watching the birds I started to play with this App. As I looked up the American Goldfinch and played its song, 3 Goldfinches landed and sang along with the App! Not a big birdwatcher, but it is really awesome to play the sound bites and have the birds react to them. The drawings are GREAT, no picture is needed, they are clear and accurate. Only way it could be better is have the app listen and tell you the birds in the area (like Shazaam, for birds)