The Sibley eGuide App Reviews

I have been using this app on my Ipod Touch for a couple of years and find it very useful. I like to add trip birds as I go along, and previous versions showed my trip list in taxanomic order, but I could only export in the order I entered the sightings, which was a problem for my reporting what I had seen. The new version (1.9) has a new interface that I like better, but the trip list is now shown only in alphabetical order which makes it difficult to review the list to check if I have entered all of the birds seen on the trip. I see that a version 1.9.1 is out, but my Ipod Touch doent see it as an update.

I am a hobby birder and have been "collecting" for over 50 years. My Sibley book is the only "list" Ive kept for years, after transferring it from well-worn Peterson West and East volumes, and probably has 400+ in it, with locations and dates for all but the most common birds. I hope to put it all in the e-version. Your app is just as complete, authoritative and useful as the original, and Im looking forward to using it in the field. For that, I appreciate you made it all resident on the phone/pad so it can be used without a cell signal. As you look to add more features, I hope you will find a way to translate GPS coordinates into geographic place names, retaining both in the List. Also, and more importantly, please work out a way to synchronize the Lists between devices owned by one person, making it handy to use a phone in the field, then transfer entries to a "master List" on a tablet. Your app is a great start, now Im looking for just a bit more. Thank you. (The sync feature would be fine if it only worked over cell/wi-fi, once out of the field.)

Sibley has done it again! The best bird field guide in app form. Much like he did for paperback bird guides, the release of his Guide to Birds of North America for the iPhone has set a new bar for bird guides. Lots and lots of accurate illustrations (Red-tailed Hawk gets 39 illustrations and 7 silhouettes) plus a good selection of bird calls make this a winner. The ability to compare two species on the screen at once really sets it apart. No other app can give you the amount of illustrations (male/female/juvenile/western/eastern/dark/light). If you are looking to identify birds you are seeing, this is your app.

Downloaded this app because of the comparison feature. However, I cant get it to actually work. You can select the first bird but it wont let you select the second one. Is this a problem with iOS9. Frustrating that I paid $20 for a feature that doesnt work.( I booted my phone and it works just fine now!)

Where is the Brown-crested Flycatcher I keep seeing in my friends paper field guides???

I wish the app had been synchronized with the AOU and ABA taxonomic order. It does not make sense to me that the app should have to be parallel to the printed book. Apps can be updated in minutes while books take years. Both National Geographic and iBird have updated their taxonomy to match the AOU and ABA so why cant Sibley? Its not because they are worried that the app will sell better than the book, The ability to see the common names in Spanish and French is mostly useful to foreigners. I think it would have been much more substantial had he made the entire database in the language not just the names. But that would probably be very expensive. Im still not sure why Sibleys drawings do not have much detail in them. When I compare them to the Peterson drawings or the iBird drawings they look crude. Maybe thats just the way he paints? Its good that the app is now iPhone 5 compatible. However the actual interface is is getting old in the tooth. I would like to see Sibley overhaul the entire UI to make it more modern like National Geographic or iBird. I do like the way the Sibley search engine works. Its nowhere as comprehensive as Audubon or iBird but from a practical viewpoint it can work very well. And of course I wish he had photographs in his app. Right now it seems there is only one app that has both illustrations and photographs. Why is that?

Although not designated as a "Lite" version in the description, this is indeed a Lite version, missing many species. Black-capped chickadee, Nuttalls woodpecker, black-billed cuckoo, fish crow and northwestern crow, to name just a few. Im very disappointed in the "book" and in the publisher.

A good translation of the book to a mobile format, allowing smaller and portable lookups with the added benefit of songs. Lacks many features of a modern app such as sharing logs among devices and geolocating