BirdHere

OFFLINE

Bird identification with no signal at all

BirdHere runs the acoustic model, the species taxonomy and your regional pack on the phone, so a twelve-second identification in a valley with no reception behaves exactly as it does at home.

How to do it

  1. Install your home region before you go. One regional pack is free. It downloads once and then works offline; additional regions download only when you ask for them.
  2. Record a short, clear passage. Point the bottom microphone generally toward the sound without covering it, and move away from speech, wind on the phone, traffic or running water where you can.
  3. Read the evidence, not just the name. The app shows competing candidates, the strength of the signal and the quality of the recording, so you can judge whether the suggestion deserves your confidence.
  4. Confirm or reject it yourself. Your decision is what gets written to the journal, not the model’s guess. A recording of wind, traffic or a human voice is logged honestly as that.

Why offline matters more than it sounds

  • Woodland valleys, reserves, uplands and coastal paths are where the birds are and where reception usually is not.
  • An identifier that uploads audio for processing simply stops working there, and it also means your recordings leave the phone.
  • BirdHere keeps the acoustic model, an 11,149-species worldwide guide and the installed region pack on the device. There is no sign-in and no server holding your recordings.
  • 40 downloadable regional packs cover travel; the acoustic catalogue intersects with 10,248 species, and actual coverage varies by the region you have installed.

Honest limits

BirdHere reports what it cannot tell you rather than filling the gap with a confident guess.

  • BirdHere can be wrong and is not a substitute for expert confirmation.
  • It may deliberately return no bird when the evidence is weak, which is safer than producing a confident-looking wrong name.
  • Coverage depends on the installed region pack. A species outside it may not be recognised.
  • A distant single call may simply not contain enough evidence to identify.

Questions

Does bird sound identification work without internet?

In BirdHere, yes. The model, the taxonomy and your installed regional pack run on the phone, so identification works with the device in airplane mode.

Is my audio uploaded?

No. Recognition happens on the device and there is no server holding your recordings.

How many species can it recognise?

The worldwide guide contains 11,149 species and the acoustic catalogue intersects with 10,248. Actual recognition depends on which regional pack you have installed.

What happens if it is not sure?

It says so, and shows why: the competing candidates, the strength of the signal and the recording quality. It does not invent a name to fill the gap.

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