Point your phone at a mystery song and, within seconds, meet the bird behind it. Here's the magic under the hood, and the straight talk on what happens to the sounds you record.
The moment you record or upload a call, we run it through Perch, the research-grade acoustic model from Google Research (open-sourced under Apache-2.0). It reads the shape of the sound, the very cues a seasoned birder's ear latches onto, and matches it against nearly 15,000 species the world over, in seconds.
When a call is ambiguous, we tell you honestly and show the runners-up, and you can record a second clip to confirm, rather than us guessing at one answer.
Every result comes with a confidence level and a match score, and we show you the runners-up too. When a couple of birds sound alike, we say so plainly and invite you to hear each call and record a clearer clip rather than guessing.
We won't quietly drop a shaky guess into your journal. A bird only becomes a collectible card once we're genuinely confident, so your collection stays something you can trust.
Your audio is used to identify the bird, and that's it. You can replay your own clip and, on Pro, save it alongside the find. Location is always optional, always approximate, and only used to place your finds on your personal Passport map of where you've been birding.
We never sell your personal information, and you can delete any sighting, recording, or your whole account whenever you like. The full details live in our Privacy Policy.
Birdsong is a brilliant field companion, not the final word. Identifications are a best guess, so for anything that really matters, a rare sighting, a research note, a conservation decision, give the calls a listen and confirm with a local expert or a trusted guide.
We'd rather earn your trust than dazzle you with false certainty. If something ever looks off, tell us with the thumbs-up or thumbs-down on a result, every bit of feedback makes the next identification a little sharper for everyone.
And because the birds matter more than we do, we donate a portion of our profits to the American Bird Conservancy, so the songs you're learning to name have a wilder future.
One tap, one song, and you'll have a name, a story, and a keepsake. Go find it.