Bird Journal Blog

Due to changes in our systems, an update to the Bird Journal Windows app needs to be installed to ensure continued operation after 31st October 2024.

Version 5.2.57 or higher is required to avoid issues syncing changes and accessing the library. This can be checked in the app by going to Help > About Bird Journal.

If you use the Windows app regularly, you're probably already using this version. If not, you can download and install it from our website.

If you do not use Bird Journal on Windows then no action is needed. The Mac, Web, iOS and Android apps are not affected.

We made a lot of improvements to eBird & BirdTrack support in Bird Journal over the last year. Here are the highlights of what changed:

eBird

• Import of individual eBird checklists now supported
• Full set of observation types now supported
• Metric effort values now supported (by including unit e.g. 2.3 km)
• Export scientific name only for better matching when importing to eBird

BirdTrack

• IOC taxonomy instead of BOU, for worldwide observations
• Start/end time, grid references, circa & plus counts, complete list, comments & other fields now supported
• Avoid unsupported newlines and double quotes on export

General import/export

• Handle missing cells & empty rows in spreadsheets
• Ignore whitespace in field names
• Allow import of unambiguous dates using any type of separator

For more details see our guides on importing and exporting.

Please let us know of any areas that can be improved further.

New year, new checkout. If you upgrade to premium, buy a gift or update your card details you may notice things look a little different.

We've updated our checkout journeys to provide more features and be more future proofed. Google Pay & Apple Pay are now supported. Any authorisations needed by your bank can now be shown too.

Here's what it looks like. Let us know if you have any questions.

Over the years we've had some fantastic contributions from our users to the Bird Journal library. These really boost the appeal of Bird Journal, allowing to record all kinds of wildlife across the world and in your own language.

We recently had an amazing contribution, Reptiles of the World, from Brian Jones. This and the Mammals of the World taxonomy from Iian Denham, are a great opportunity to easily create country/regional checklists based on them. We've already seen a few of them and look forward to more being shared.

If you've created a taxonomy, checklist of synonym pack that you think will be of use to others as well, please do publish it in the library so that others can benefit from your efforts.

One of the challenges can be discovering all of the content available in the library. Bird Journal maintains IOC/Clements taxonomies and associated checklists for most countries of the world. Here's a list of the range of additional community resources available for everyone to use.

Taxonomies

• Amphibians of Belize - Brian Jones
• Amphibians of Europe - Jason Fisher
• Amphibians of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Amphibians of the West Indies - Brian Jones
• Ants of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Bees of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Blowflies & Woodlouse-flies of the United Kingdom - James Emerson
• Booklice & Barklice of the United Kingdom - James Emerson
• Butterflies of Australia - Mike Jarvis
• Butterflies of Europe - Jason Fisher
• Butterflies of the United Kingdom - David Spencer
• Caddisflies of the United Kingdom - James Emerson
• Centipedes & Millipedes of the United Kingdom - James Emerson
• Cetaceans & Sharks of the United Kingdom - Trevor Hughes
• Dragonflies & Damselflies of Europe - Jason Fisher
• Dragonflies of the United Kingdom - David Spencer
• Frogs and Toads of Delaware - Philip Thompson
• Frogs of Australia - Iian Denham
• Fungi of Europe - Simon Booton-Mander
• Grasshoppers & Allies of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Harvestmen of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Hoverflies of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Jellyfish & Allies of the United Kingdom - Stuart Goodwin
• Lacewings & Allies of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Ladybirds & Allies of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Land Snails of the United Kingdom - James Emerson
• Leafhoppers & Allies of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Longhorn Beetles of the United Kingdom - James Emerson
• Macro Moths of the United Kingdom - David Spencer
• Mammals of Australia - Mike Jarvis
• Mammals of China - Ian Silvester
• Mammals of the Western Palearctic - Sally Gordon
• Mammals of the World - Iian Denham
• Mayflies of the United Kingdom - James Emerson
• Micro Moths of Norfolk, United Kingdom - Ben Lewis
• Myriapods of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Orchids of Europe, North Africa & the Middle East - Sally Gordon
• Orchids of the United Kingdom - Toby Austin
• Plant Bugs & Allies of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Pseudoscorpions of the United Kingdom - Roger Eads
• Reptiles of Australia - Mike Jarvis
• Reptiles of Belize - Brian Jones
• Reptiles of Europe - Jason Fisher
• Reptiles of Texas - Michael Orgill
• Reptiles of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Reptiles of the West Indies - Brian Jones
• Reptiles of the World - Brian Jones
• Shark & Skate Eggcases of the United Kingdom - Stuart Goodwin
• Shieldbugs & Allies of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Slugs of the United Kingdom - James Emerson
• Soldier Beetles & Allies of the United Kingdom - James Emerson
• Soldierflies & Allies of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Spiders of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Wasps of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Water Bugs & Allies of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie
• Wild Flowers of the Mediterranean - John Paterson
• Wild Flowers of the UK & NW Europe - John Paterson
• Woodlice & Allies of the United Kingdom - Colin Brodie

Checklists

• Birds of Bali (IOC) - Mike Jarvis
• Butterflies of Corfu - Jason Fisher
• Birds of British Columbia (Clements) - Alan Cairns
• Birds of Australia (BARC IOC +ssp) - Charles Ling
• Birds of Palestine (IOC) - Mick Statham
• Mammals of Israel - Mick Statham
• Mammals of Southern Africa - Iian Denham
• Mammals of the United Kingdom and Ireland - Sally Gordon
• Birds of Sulawesi and Halmahera (IOC) - Rachel Warren
• Mammals of Belize - Brian Jones
• Bats of France - Linda Garratt

Synonym Packs

• Birds of the Netherlands (IOC), Dutch Names - Peter de Hoog
• Birds of Belize (IOC), 4-Letter Codes - Brian Jones
• Birds of the UK, BTO 2-Letter Codes - Jonathan Davidson
• Birds of the UK, BTO 5-letter Codes - Jonathan Davidson
• Birds of Norway (IOC), Norwegian Names - Sindre Solberg
• Birds of Sweden (IOC), Swedish names - Roger Karlsson
• Birds of Czech Republic (IOC), Bilingual Names - Marc St. Onge
• Birds of Czech Republic (IOC), Czech Names - Marc St. Onge
• Birds of France (IOC), French Names - Patrice Dubus
• Birds of Germany (IOC), German Names - Michael Grote

Over the years Bird Journal apps have been released for Windows, iOS, Android and Mac. Now, making Bird Journal even more accessible, Bird Journal is coming to the web!

The full desktop experience is available on Chromebooks, Linux, work computers, Amazon Fire devices, tablets, phones, TVs and more. Anywhere that has a web browser and an internet connection.

When we designed and built Bird Journal 5, primarily to add Mac support, we did so using web based technologies. This made it conceivable to someday make the same experience available over the web directly.

Over the last month we been very busy making this happen. It has been available to our beta testers for about two weeks, and with their help it's ready in public beta for you to use today.

Key points

• It’s essentially the full desktop app
  
• Free and premium features are available
• It syncs with your other devices
• It’s fully secure
• It’s globally distributed, so it should be responsive wherever you are
• When updates are available it will just refresh the browser and be using the latest version
• Data is saved to our systems, minimising space used on our device

The web app doesn't replace native apps. If you're using the desktop app on a Mac or PC for example, you already have the best Bird Journal experience. But it lets you run Bird Journal on a wider range of devices, and brings the full depth of the desktop apps to devices that could previously only use the mobile apps.

Get Started

You can sign in to the web app at https://app.birdjournal.com

Known issues

• The layout doesn't update on phones yet making it tricky to use on small screens
• It's a little slower than the desktop apps. We've plans to make it faster in some areas, however the native desktop/mobile apps will remain the fastest way to use Bird Journal.
• The taxonomic updates screen is particularly slow.

Next Steps

• Give it a try and let us know how you get on via email or the contact form on our feedback site
• We'll continue to fix any issues and improve the performance until it's fully ready

We're pleased to announce that IOC 10.2 is live in the library! This was officially released two days ago on the 25th and includes many taxonomic changes and a few splits and newly described species and subspeices. Checklists have been updated to match. Many thanks for the hard work of the IOC team.

Please refer to the IOC website for further details on the changes, including range data available in the master list. Also see our guide on taxonomic updates.

10.1 was made available on 26th June and we hope to demonstrate our ability to stay up-to-date going forward.

The Clements 2019 update will be coming soon as well. However something new will be releasing before this.. stay tuned!

We've made some good progress on an IOC 9.2 taxonomy update in the last weeks. Work is continuing and it will be released soon. This will include updates to all of the checklists that are based on IOC. Thanks for your patience here. Whilst we do this, we're making sure that future updates will be easier to deliver.

After IOC, our roadmap includes:

• Support for new European Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements
• BirdTrack export improvements
• iOS and Android app updates
• Clements 2019

For those attending Birdfair, we wish you a great weekend. Sadly, we'll not be exhibiting anymore. We're always keen to hear from you though, so please feel free to get in touch.

We've just released an update for the Clements taxonomy, bringing it right up-to-date!

You'll see a number badge on the Library button if you've updates to install.

Updates are automatic where possible, but there may be changes that you need to think about, for example when species are split or lumped. Head to Tools > Taxonomic Updates in the desktop app to see a list of issues and details of changes applied. You may wish to refer to our a guide on taxonomic updates.

We're aiming to issue future updates around the time they're released by Cornell, and have put processes in place to make this easier to achieve.

Let us know how you get on. Updates to the IOC taxonomy are next.

A few months back we got an email from the company that stores all of the synchronized data in Bird Journal, telling us we were running out of space.  A good problem to have some might say!  But a problem that needs solving none the less.

Luckily, the company we use offers space upgrades that can help.  But on reflection, this would quickly become expensive and be harder and harder to maintain.  So we paused and had a think about how we might do better.  We considered learnings from running Bird Journal as a service for the last few years.

The result is a very different approach to storing synchronized data.  It’s faster, highly scalable, easier to maintain, cheaper to run and of course, secure.  We’ve been running this in parallel for a while now, ensuring behaviour is identical.

And it’s live for all account today!

Good for this change is no noticeable difference.  Which is sadly, not terribly exciting.  But it is (we hope) at least comforting to know that this change will allow Bird Journal to continue running smoothly for a long time to come.