I have been using this app increasingly. It’s wonderful. Here are some elements for the developers that I think would continue to improve it. 1. Give users the option to make a track public. With every list at public hotspots, I include in the summary where I birded, so others can get a better sense of where to find habitat/birds. A public track would be a much more powerful way to share this. Make the default option be private track, so that folks don’t accidentally share their track unless they want to. 2. Make hotspots (and all locations) able to be nested. A general hotspot location should include under it the more specific sublocations. This way if folks birds an entire hotspot they can use general, but specific area hotspots will also accurately reflect the totals for the general location. 3. Give people the option to use direct messages. I understand eBird is first a data system, but it has a lot of potential to connect birders. With increased connection comes increased data. Similar to the track suggestion, make the default that folks can not DM you. 4. Make it easier to record sex/age/plumage in the app. This is valuable data, and I imagine many folks are like me and don’t bother to record this in the web browser after they’ve used their phone to submit a list. It would also be helpful to have a checkbox for how the bird was observed (heard only, seen only, or both). 5. Similar to #4, allow folks to submit media from the app. Thank you for the great app! Please consider these changes!

This app is really fun because you can track your sightings and also help science. It would be helpful if there was a photo of the bird next to each listing because you have to search outside the app. The worst part though is that so-called “experts” gatekeep your entries. There are a chosen few who can email you - and have access to your profile information like your name - and tell you that you are wrong and need to change your log. How these people are chosen, I have no idea. There also is no indication when signing up for the app that this is the case. I had an aggressive mansplainer interact with me in person today, and then email me several hours later telling me to change my log because I couldn’t possibly be right. It was very upsetting and made me feel unsafe. Clearly the bird I recorded couldn’t be right because they are “not found in that county in winter” (like birds have a map with county lines?). I am debating deleting the app and my account. As a birder who has been doing this with my grandparents since I was 5 years old, I am very disappointed. Women and minorities already have to deal with discrimination in person, and now you can live it virtually too…also there is no clear way how to report aggressive behavior. This app is enabling an unsafe and unwelcoming outdoor community. Also, as a scientist myself, potential anomalies are sometimes more important than everyday behavior - having these gatekeepers is actually possibly ruining science.

I got this app when I got Merlin to help me identify and keep track of the birds I see. I love how easily you can switch between Merlin to eBird to log a bird that was identified, and how you can download specific area packs instead of all birds in the country. It’s great to have a checklist like this in my pocket when out in the field! However, I have one bug that I’ve had trouble with, and a suggestion. First off, I can’t use the explore tab to look at local hotspots. When I pick a location, the app crashes every time. That’s a bummer, especially when I wanted to scout a location to see what was in the area. As for my suggestion, it would be nice to have more options when making a checklist. For example, if there were counters for male, female, and juvenile, I feel like that might make for more precise and organized data. Perhaps an ambiguous or unknown option as well for species that look identical regardless of sex. After bug fixes and further improvements in the future, I feel like this would be an even more useful tool.

This app is overall incredible. But some things don’t make any sense: why not let you search for a species within a particular radius from yourself etc. Biggest peeve is with the keyboard. When you want to manually enter a number of birds, so tap on the species and it opens into the full screen counter for that species, the keyboard that opens is alphabetical, not numerical, requiring yet another tap to get it entered. Also, it would be cool if the app would allow you to sort in the birds you already found to the top of the lists (it’s often the case that after seeing one group of Canada geese, I see another), but keep the yet unseen birds in the species or alphabetical lists below. This would offer faster access. When seeing a lot of birds at a time, one doesn’t want to have to scroll or input letter by letter to bring a species back up to add to. Underside shots of more birds would be really helpful, too. Also, ability to message with other birders by consent would also be cool cuz sometimes you don’t meet in the field but wish you could find out more. Many thanks!One more thing: you should make track location OFF as there default. Women and ppl of color are often afraid to post exactly where they regularly go or their homes, so also making it possible to offer the tracking details to you at Cornell but obscure them from the public by default would also be great.