The Science of Birds - Traditional Field Guides vs. Mobile Apps: A Birder's Dilemma

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

In this episode—which is number 113—host Ivan Phillipsen explores the fascinating crossroads of tradition and technology in the world of birding. With a mix of personal anecdotes and professional insights, he dives into the enduring charm of printed bird field guides and the meteoric rise of mobile birding apps. Whether you’re a seasoned birder with a weathered Sibley guide or a tech-savvy explorer armed with Merlin, this episode will resonate with your bird-loving heart.Ivan takes listeners on a thoughtful tour of how both tools have evolved over time—from the early days of illustrated field books to the AI-powered, globe-spanning apps of today. Each format is examined through multiple lenses: usability, identification features, natural history information, and emotional value.As the episode unfolds, listeners are invited to weigh in on this modern dilemma: pages or pixels? The conversation raises important questions about the future of birdwatching tools and what they mean for the next generation of birders.~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Support the show

I have this vivid memory of a day when I was seven years old. I lived in Palmdale, California back then, in the Mojave Desert. It was a warm, sunny day, and I was sitting in a chair in my front yard. In my little hands was a book. It was the Audubon Society field guide to North American reptiles and amphibians. It had a grass-green vinyl cover with a bumpy texture, not unlike the skin of the creatures depicted inside. like a tortoise or a toad.

That book enthralled me. I flipped slowly through the pages for what seemed like ours. I scrutinized the hundreds of photos of frogs, salamanders, snakes, and lizards. Animals I really hoped to see in the wild someday. The field guide also included some background info, some natural history for each of the species. I really enjoyed reading that, too. I ended up carrying that book around for years.

In fact, I still have it. I pull it off my shelf and I've got it right here. Part of the green vinyl spine is missing because maybe 35 years ago my little dog decided to gnaw on it like a bone. Needless to say, the dog got quite a scolding that day. This book, this field guide to North American reptiles and amphibians, is one of my most precious possessions. It means a lot to me. It's been 40-plus years since that happy day in the sun when I was seven. Since then, I've come to love books of all kinds. And once my obsession with birds kicked into full swing,

and especially after I started working as a professional birding guide, I amassed quite a collection of books about birds. One important subset of my collection is field guides. I have a bunch of old, outdated birding field guides. They're just cool, and they have a lot of character and aesthetic value. They evoke some great retro vibes and all those groovy, fuzzy feelings. I pulled a few out as examples. Here's a field guide to the birds of Texas by Roger Tori Peterson, published in 1960.

And here's a field guide to the birds of Southeast Asia, published in 1975, and written by Martin W. Woodcock. and I've got Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands by Herbert A. Raphael. That one is from 1989. I also have a bunch of field guides that were published more recently. These newer ones are far more practical for actual use in the field when I'm out birding. My go-to book for birding in my part of the world is the Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America, otherwise known as Sibley Birds West. My copy here, of the second edition is well-worn, and it's got some stains on it. Probably from mud and coffee, and tears. So many tears. Tears of joy, tears of sorrow, tears of rage. My copy of Sibley has

some colorful tabs I added as well, so I can quickly access particular groups of birds. Like I've got one tab for ducks, another one for shorebirds, and so on. But I have to admit, my Sibley guide has been collecting a bit of dust in the last few years. As much as I love it, I take it out into the field with me less and less often. Because it turns out, my birding toolkit has changed significantly. Hello and welcome. This is the science of birds. I am your host. host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This episode, which is number 113, is all about the pros and cons of

using traditional birding field guides versus modern mobile apps. Or at least what I think the pros and cons are. I was inspired to make this episode after I posted a video for my supporters on Patreon, where I shared some thoughts on this topic. That video post ended up getting more than the usual amount of engagement and commenting. My patrons shared their own thoughts and feelings about this books versus apps question. So I thought I'd make a full-blown podcast episode about it, and here we are. As a middle-aged Gen X dude, I grew up without most of the modern digital tools. No internet, no smartphones, no social media, no apps, no AI. If I went out into nature as a teenager, I carried only good old analog gear, binoculars, a field guide printed on paper and a paper

notebook. And a pocket knife. You always got to carry a knife, man, because you never know what might happen out there. But then I grew up. As digital and mobile technologies appeared along the way, I've generally embraced them. I think I'm reasonably tech-savvy. When a new digital tool comes along, rather than feel intimidated or frustrated by it, I usually approach it with some curiosity and hopefulness. The point is, I'm generally cool with technology.

But I started off this episode telling you about my positive memories and feelings about books printed on paper. So, if there's one camp that celebrates analog birding technology, and another camp that prefers digital, I suppose I have one foot in both of those camps. But this isn't all about feelings. Practicality is super important, too. One way I make a living, besides serving as your humble podcast host, is by working as a birding guide. So the tools I use in this role need to be practical.

What works best? Which tools are the most efficient in the field? Such questions strongly influence my thinking about books in comparison with mobile apps. In this episode, I'll first talk a bit about the histories of traditional birding field guides and of modern mobile apps. Then we'll do a head-to-head comparison of these technologies, these tools. We shall see which of them emerges victorious from this bloody deathmatch. And finally, I'll offer some of my predictions about the future of bird books

and bird apps. All right, let's get into it. First off, let's be clear about what we mean when we say traditional bird field guide. Because there are all kinds of books about birds out there, but only some of them qualify as field guides. A true field guide has illustrations. and or photos of all the birds found in a specific geographic area. That area could be a political unit, like a province, state, or country.

Or it could be regional, like, say, New England or Southern Europe. Or the geographic scope of a field guide could be more ecologically meaningful, like the continent of North America, the Amazon Basin, or the Carpathian Mountains in Europe. along with images of the bird species, a field guide usually has at least a little bit of text info for each species, like the physical dimensions of the bird, some salient field marks, and maybe a few words about the bird's habitat, behavior, and voice. Oh, and there's often a little range map for the species. And since these books are meant to be toaded around and consulted in the field, they should be relatively small and light. Ideally, a field guide

needs to fit in your coat pocket, or at least in your shoulder bag. It shouldn't be a burden. I mean, one of my favorite books ever is All the Birds of the World, published by Link's editions. It has beautiful illustrations of about 11,500 species. Its geographic scope is Earth. Theoretically, I could use it as a field guide anywhere I go birding, right? The title could just as easily be a field guide to the birds of planet Earth. You buy just that one book, then you're done. But this thing is massive, man. It's like, I don't know, two by three feet, and it weighs as much as a well-fed German shepherd. I'd have to push it around in a wheelbarrow if I wanted to use it when I'm out looking for birds. So it is definitely not a field guide.

Because a field guide is meant to be carried around easily. And no, that doesn't always work out in practice. For example, some of the guides I have, like the birds of China and the birds of Mexico, are beefy enough that I don't really want to lug them around. But maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm a delicate weakling. In any case, the bird species in a field guide are usually presented in taxonomic order. You've got more ancient lineages like waterfowl in the beginning and the progression is to more recently evolved lineages like passerines at the end. Many field guides include an introduction section that includes helpful info, like overview maps and habitat descriptions for the region.

But the more of that kind of info is included, and the more info per species, the bigger and heavier the book becomes. So there's a trade-off between packing more information into the book and the book's size. Right. Now, how about we look back on history? Where and when do we see the first bird field guides being made? You'd think that the ancient Egyptians would have produced some scrolls of papyrus with bird illustrations and some ID tips. You know, so that all those ancient Egyptian birders could identify their local species like spur-winged lapwing, Nile Valley Sunbird, and eastern olivacious warbler. And when the printing press was invented in Germany, in 1440, by imagine there was a heated debate about which book they should print first.

These guys were standing around after they built the first printing press. One of them says, I think we can all agree that the first book we print should be the Bible. But another guy in the room, who happened to be a birder, said, Whoa, slow down there, chief. Sure, we could print the Bible. But what about, now, and hear me out, just hear me out. What if, the first book we print is,

A Field Guide to the Birds of Europe? I mean, we should give the people what they want, right? I bet it would sell like hotcakes. Or, since we're Germans, I guess I should say, Zyvodensik, the Wama, Zemen. But alas, we all know how that debate ended up. No, in reality, the first true field guides for birds didn't appear until the late 1800s.

But even then, it wasn't until the 1930s that field guides finally came into their own. There was a book about Australia's birds called What Bird Is That? Written by Neville Cayley. And then, for North America, we had Roger Torrey Peterson's, a field guide to the birds, published in 1934. Peterson's book set a new standard for field guides, and it kicked off a revolution in the world of birding. Peterson's guide featured simple, clear illustrations, all painted by Peterson himself, which made bird identification more intuitive. He enhanced these illustrations with arrows pointing to key field marks, directing attention to the most important features needed for distinguishing similar species.

Instead of long, dense text like the older field guides often used, Peterson's guide used concise, non-technical descriptions. So it was much more accessible to begin. while still providing enough detail for more experienced birders. The next quantum leap in bird field guide evolution, at least for birds in the U.S., happened in the year 2000. That's when David Allen's Sibley published Sibley's Guide to Birds, which covered all the birds of the U.S. and Canada.

Sibley's book provided meticulously detailed illustrations, often depicting each species in multiple plumages, juvenile, breeding, non-breeding, and so on, while emphasizing key identification marks. His comparative approach placed similar species side by side, making distinctions clearer. And amazingly, he also included illustrations of every species in flight. Sibley's guide featured large, accurate range maps that depicted migration patterns more precisely than many of the earlier guides, making it even more useful for birders. In the last quarter of a century, since Sibley's book came out, there have been many other beautiful, useful field guides published. covering birds in regions around the world.

And meanwhile, in the last 25 years, digital technologies have come a long way. There's been a revolution in how people identify birds in the field, record their sightings, and contribute to citizen science. The launch of the iPhone in 2000. 2007, and Android phones in 2008, paved the way for the first mobile birding apps. The first of these included iBird and the Audubon Bird Guide. By 2011, the Sibley Birds app provided another great alternative. These three apps included only North American birds, however. Apps for other regions were also released, like Morecombe's Birds of Australia,

the Collins Bird Guide, which applies to Europe, and the China Bird Guide. By the mid-2000s, birding apps were getting a lot more sophisticated. They began integrating artificial intelligence and crowdsourced data and citizen science. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology introduced eBird Mobile in 2015, which allowed birders to log their sightings in real time and contribute to the world's largest citizen science database. To date, over one million contributors have submitted about 2 billion bird observations worldwide, and that provides global coverage with data from every continent. But the eBird mobile app isn't really an alternative to a traditional bird field guide.

Instead, it's more of a supercharged replacement for a paper notebook, where back in the day you'd write, on paper, all the bird species you saw at a certain place and time. And now that the eBird app has the explore function built in, it can show you the locations of nearby birding hotspots on a map, and it highlights the hotspots where other birders have recently reported their bird observations. So that aspect of the eBird app makes it more of an alternative to not a field guide for bird species ID, but another type of birding book. I'm talking about the books that give you details on where and how to find birds in a particular region.

They have trail maps and driving directions, lists of possible species you could see, and that sort of info. For example, on my shelf here, I've got books like The American Birding Association's A Birders Guide to Alaska and Where to Watch Birds in Northern and Eastern Spain. And here's Finding the Birds in Western Mexico. But many books like this have few, if any, bird illustrations or photos because they're not for bird ID,

they're for figuring out where to go to find birds. Anyway, we were talking about e-bird. The Merlin Bird ID app was launched around the same time as the eBird app in 2014. Merlin is also a product of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Unlike the earlier apps like iBird, Audubon, and Sibley, Merlin had the innovation of providing AI-assisted identification. It allowed users to identify birds based on an interactive series of questions, and eventually the app could identify birds using photos and sounds. So when Merlin came on the scene, it was a real game changer, and it's just gotten more and more powerful and more useful every year.

But all the AI bells and whistles aside, I tend to use Merlin most often as a digital field guide. Wherever I'm going, whether it's Arizona or Australia or Argentina, I make sure I've loaded into Merlin the appropriate data pack or bird pack that includes all the birds of that region. The analog equivalent of this would be buying and packing a traditional field guide before a birding trip. The free data packs for Merlin include, for each species, multiple photos, a small amount of descriptive text, a range map, and some recordings of the birds' songs and calls. In the field, you can filter the data, the list of species, so that the app shows you only the birds you can expect to find in your exact location on that exact day. And that feature is enormously helpful.

And it's based on a wealth of crowd-sourced, almost real-time data. Data from the world's largest citizen science database, Ebert. All right, it's time to do a head-to-head comparison. How do books stack up against mobile apps? The apps I'm talking about here are the ones designed to replace. traditional field guides. Merlin is at the top of the list. But apps like iBird, Audubon, Sibley, the Collins app, those are also in this category.

Merlin is the one I use, and I suspect it's one of the most popular apps of this kind. This comparison of books versus apps is not going to be very scientific. I'm just going to highlight some pros and cons, as I see them, for each tool across several categories. I'll try to be unbiased, but yeah, I'll try. Okay, are you ready for the battle? This is going to be like the Thunderdome or Mortal Kombat. Only one technology will survive. Round one, fight. All right, the first category is ease of use. With a book, you flip through the pages. If you're like me, that can be surprisingly awkward sometimes. It can take a lot of fuss to get to the page I want.

The species in a book are, as I mentioned, organized taxonomically, so that might help you navigate the sections to find what you're looking for. And there's a table of contents and an index. The real estate of a book page is typically larger than the screen of a phone. So it might be easier on the eyes to look at a book. You can take in more info at once when looking at a book. But this issue of limited surface area on a phone can be overcome if you use an app on a small tablet instead. In bright sunlight, images on a phone or tablet can be hard to see, with all the glare and whatnot.

Apps have the major advantage of being much easier to search and narrow down the list of birds you're interested in. The search bar on an app allows you to get to a species or group with just a few taps on the screen. You type S-A-N-D, and suddenly a list of all the sandpipers appears. Likewise, some apps allow you to tap an icon to jump immediately to a particular family or group of birds, such as cranes or raptors. So I'm going to say apps win in the category of ease of use. Apps win. Next we have identification features.

How well does the technology and question, allow the user to quickly and correctly ID birds in the field. One advantage of books is that most of them show multiple closely related species side by side and in the same posture. And with the book page being larger than a phone screen, it's really nice to be able to quickly scan a group of illustrations, all on one or two pages to narrow down the possibilities when you're trying to ID a bird.

And you've usually got a little range map for each species to make sure it's even possible that the possible bird species you've narrowed it down to could be in the area at that time of year. The best books, in my opinion, are the ones that have illustrations, rather than just photos. You'd think photos would be the best, hands down, since their images of real live birds. But I don't know, a good illustration can somehow capture the essence of a bird, as well as subtly accentuating its important field marks.

The Merlin app uses only photos, and that's a bit of a shortcoming, in my opinion. I'm not sure why illustrations aren't also included, because the makers of Merlin, the folks at the Cornell Lab, own the rights to the excellent bird illustrations on the website Birds of the World, which has every species. But many other apps like Sibley are based on bird illustrations. And some apps have a comparison feature where you can look at two or more bird species side by side on the same screen. In my experience, however, this feature is often a bit clunky. It could be better. Now, we're talking about the identification features here. With apps,

you have the addition of things like location and date filters and AI-powered sound and photo recognition. So these features allow apps to totally blow books out of the water when it comes to Bird ID. Apps Win. Our next category is natural history information. Which tool provides more helpful and interesting text to read for each species? Traditional field guides can and often do have more text and background for each species. A book might have several paragraphs of text or more, whereas many apps have just a few sentences. I know some apps are better about this.

Ibird, for example, not to be confused with eBird, has a fair amount of text for each species. Now remember those pages of introductory material in books I was talking about? Well, that stuff is worth its weight in gold as far as I'm concerned. Honestly, I sometimes buy a field guide just so I can have those pages in the introduction. I'll just rip them out of the book and toss the rest in the dumpster. Now wait, wait, before you call the cops on me, I'm just kidding. I would never do such a thing. I would shred the book first and then put it into the compost bin. Anyway, all of this natural history text and and maps and whatnot, that stuff can really help you get your head around the diversity of birds in a region, and understand the birds in the bigger picture of their ecology and geography. Apps, on the other hand, don't really have that kind of information. They lack in that regard. But here's the thing. There's no reason for that to be the case. There's virtually limitless space in an app to include tons of text for each species, and to include days and days of natural history background info. Even though books tend to include more text, it's books that are actually

far more limited in what they can include, because they're physical objects. Every word of text you add to a printed book adds weight. Not much, admittedly, but not zero. If you pack a field guide with too many words, suddenly it's about as portable as a sack of potatoes, and it ceases to be a field guide. For the moment, however, I concede that books win in the natural history category. But there's no reason for that to be true forever. Books win. Now we come to the category of portability and weight. Apps win. End of story. Apps win. Right? Because almost any traditional field guide is heavier than a phone. And you're most likely going to be carrying your phone anyway. So by using apps, you're not adding any weight to the items in your pockets or backpack.

Because how much does an app weigh with all those millions of ones and zeros of bird data? Absolutely nothing. And take a moment to think about that. Seriously, it's pretty amazing. I can have photos, sounds, range maps, and text for every bird species in the world in my pocket and it all adds up to zero pounds. Or for my friends who use the metric system, that's zero kent. kilograms. And just to drive this obvious point home, as soon as I'm traveling to more than one

country or region on the same trip, well now I'm going to need two or more bird ID books. Like I did my big Asian Odyssey trip a few months ago, where I went birding in five countries. Was I going to lug five heavy books around in my luggage? No way, Blue Jay. That would have been madness, I tell Now, let's consider the ways books and apps differ in how their information gets updated. One thing that changes pretty frequently is bird taxonomy. Ornithologists continue to tweak the scientific names and classifications of birds. These scientists do this, not because they take perverse pleasure and confusing and frustrating us birders, but because they're trying to align the names of bird species and the genera and families as closely as possible with what we understand

about the true evolutionary genetic relationships among birds. In other words, ornithologists are trying to align bird taxonomy with bird phylogeny. Taxonomy provides a structured naming system while phylogeny explains the evolutionary history behind that structure. So there are these regular updates and tweaks to taxonomy. One bird species is split into two or more. Two species are lumped into one. Scientific names change, common names change, birds get reclassified from one family into another family. Dozens of these changes might happen in a given year. When a traditional field guide is published, it reflects only a snapshot of whatever taxonomy was accepted at the time of its writing. For many of these books, their taxonomy is outdated as soon as they hit the

bookstore. It's a total bummer. The only option is to print future editions of the book with updated taxonomies. But then you have apps. Because apps are digital, they can, at least potentially, be updated much more easily and frequently. I imagine that at this point, the team over at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a streamlined workflow for updating Merlin and E-bird with the annual bird taxonomy updates. Another thing that can change over time is a bird's range, so range maps too sometimes need to be updated. And again, this is easier to do with apps. So I think you know who wins this round. Apps win. Our next category is audio and interactive elements. When it comes to the sounds of birds, the best a printed book can do is offer us some

phonetic descriptions of a bird's call. For example, I just opened my copy of Birds of Ecuador to a random page. Then here's a random bird. It's the Slady Bacard. Bacard's are neotropical birds in the genus Pachyramphus, in the family to Tyroddy, and there are 17 species. Some people say Beckard, others say Bacard. I like Bacard because it reminds me of Captain Picard from Star Trek, and he's a cool dude. Anyway, the Birds of Ecuador book describes the Slady Bacard's voice thusly. A fast accelerating whip-whip-wee-wee-d-D-D-D-R-R-Ree-E. Okay, cool. You got that? Whip, whip, we, we, D-D-D-D-Ree, re-Ree. Are you going to be able to ID the song of a Slady Picard based on that description? Look, I know I'm laughing, but I get it. The authors of Birds of

Ecuador were doing their best to use words to describe a complex sound, and that's not an easy task. Alternatively, here's a recording of the Slady Bacard's song that you can listen to in the Merlin app. Ah, yes indeed. Whip, whip, wee, D, D, D, D, D, D, Re, re, re, re, e. Ah. Yeah, so apps that include recordings of bird sounds are far more useful than books in this department. And you could argue that apps, in general, are more interactive. And they can even have social functions, where users can share information with each other,

they can contribute their bird observations, to citizen science, and so on. Apps win. Now, how about cost and accessibility? A new copy of a traditional bird field guide will set you back between $20 and $50 U.S. dollars. But you might need several of these books, maybe dozens if you travel a lot. The Merlin and eBird apps are free, and that's pretty amazing, actually. But some of the other birding apps do cost something, as much as $20 or $30 each. Merlin, at least, is accessible to more people around the world.

More than any book, and probably more than any app. Anyone with a smartphone can download it for free. There are bird data packs for just about everywhere on Earth. And the interface of the Merlin app is available in something like 23 languages. Even more, you can display the common names of birds in the app in 99 languages and regional dialects. So I think you know what's going to happen here. Apps win. Now it's time to sit in a comfy, high-backed armchair near the fireplace,

sip some hot chamomile tea, and get sentimental as we consider our next category of comparison. In the realm of aesthetics and emotional effect, which is better, a book or an app, Most people I've asked this question would choose a book. The heft of a book just feels good in the hand. Books have texture. They have warmth. The illustrations and the text can be inviting and engaging. Some people like to write notes in their field guide with a pen,

and that can turn a book into a personalized memento, like a journal. Like my 40-year-old copy of the Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians, flipping through the pages of a well-used book can give us a pleasant feeling of nostalgia. But I wonder if such feelings are stronger in people my age and older, those of us who grew up without smartphones. It's hard for me to imagine, though,

that anyone would have warm, fuzzy feelings or any kind of nostalgia for an app, a cold, weightless app that doesn't exist in the real world as something you can hold in your hand. So in this category of aesthetics, I would say there is a clear winner. Books win. The battle is over at last.

As the dust settles, we must declare a winner. On the one hand, books come out ahead for their aesthetics and for having large pages full of multiple related species, side by side. Books also tend to have more text, both background natural history for a region and maybe more text for each species. But apps defeat books in just about every other category of comparison. So whether you like it or not, apps win. Now, some of you listening might disagree. You might be the champions of traditional field guides. Maybe you're like, I'll give you my book when you pry it from my cold dead hands. And hey, that's cool. I totally understand that viewpoint. In the

And which of these tools suits you best probably depends on your pace and style of birding. If you feel you have lots of time and you like to bird at a leisurely pace, a good old analog book and a paper notebook might be just perfect. As long as you don't mind that your field guide probably isn't up to date with the latest bird taxonomy. On the other hand, if you are someone who covers a lot of ground while birding, and you're passionate about keeping lists of birds, or you go birding while traveling in distant lands, you might place more importance on efficiency and portability and on up-to-date taxonomy.

All that said, I do think apps have some clear, objective advantages over books. But the good news is we live in this transitional time in history, where we can enjoy the benefits of both books and apps. Ultimately, it's up to you whether you'd rather flip pages or tap screens in the field. What about the future? What predictions can we make

about the fates of traditional field guides and apps? Apps are so superior to books that I worry printed field guides might eventually go the way of the dodo. If they stop being profitable, publishers will probably stop making them. In my work as a birding guide, I've seen the shift away from people using physical books towards using apps.

More and more of the participants on my tours choose not to buy the bird field guide I recommend, opting instead for Merlin. And most of these people are 65 or older. I mean, if anyone should stubbornly cling to the old ways by lugging books around, it should be these people. And I imagine the preference among younger people would be even more skewed towards apps. It's hard to know what will really happen, but I think there's a real chance traditional field guides will all but disappear in the next 20 to 30 years. Who knows, though, there might continue to be a small niche market beyond that, sort of like records that you play on a turntable.

Those things are still around, even though multiple iterations of music technology have come and gone since the heyday of records. But dig this. I have a hopeful idea for a type of book that might replace field guides. guides, a type of book that would complement mobile apps rather than compete directly with them. What if authors, illustrators, and publishers, having abandoned all hope for making bird field guides, instead focus their energy on making kick-ass bird guides that are meant to be read and enjoyed at home? Let me explain. Let's say there's a book like this called Birds of the Southwestern Deserts. It covers all the species of this geographic region in North America. But importantly, it's not a field guide. So this book isn't constrained to be small and

compact for use outside. Instead, it's big enough to be read comfortably while sitting in a chair or on the couch. This hypothetical Birds of the Southwestern Deserts book has a wealth of general natural history info in this first section, with lots of colorful maps and diagrams. Then, for each species, there are rich, detailed illustrations showing different plumages and age classes, illustrations of birds in flight, of nests, eggs, and chicks. There might even be some photos, and each species has a fair amount of interesting text, describing the bird's habitat, behavior, and so on. There could even be a little QR code for each species, so you can scan that with your phone and you can access sound recordings and more photos or whatever.

Remember my enormous book, All the Birds of the World, the one I have to push around in a wheelbarrow? Well, that book has a QR code for each species. Scanning the code takes you to the e-bird page for that species, and I've actually found that quite useful. I can vividly imagine a book like this, Birds of the Southwestern Deserts, and I think it would be awesome. I would buy it for sure, and any others like it that cover other regions of the world. These could be beautiful reference books to enjoy at home. The funny thing is, though, I couldn't find one example of a book like this in my library, like my personal collection. The options are either a compact field guide with minimal natural history text, or a book that covers a particular family or taxonomic group

of birds. As an example of the latter, I have a book called Shrikes and Bush Shrikes, published by Helm. This book has gorgeous illustrations and quite a bit of info for each bird, and a ton of great info in the introduction. Never mind that Shrikes and Bush Shrikes are not at all closely related. They have no business being in the same book together, but this book was published 25 years ago, so yeah, outdated taxonomy, yada, yada. Shrikes and Bush Shrikes is organized around taxonomy, not geography. One name we use for books like this is monograph. I've got a bunch of these monographs.

Pigeons and doves, raptors of the world, parrots, owls of the world, and so on. But what if I want to be an armchair birder? What if I want nothing more than to sit down, sip some coffee, and look at illustrations and read about the birds of a country or region, the avifa fauna of a region. It sure would be awesome to have an accessible, beautiful, information-rich book like my imaginary birds of the southwestern deserts. I think there could be a market for books like this long into the future. And maybe some of them already exist.

I don't know. I just haven't come across one yet. But hey, if you know of any richly illustrated, excellent regional guides to birds that contain more info than a typical field guide, please let me know. And who knows? Maybe I'll write one of these things someday. Wouldn't that be cool? In any case, apps are probably here to stay. So what might the future of apps look like? Maybe someday we'll upload them directly into our brains, like in the Matrix. You could upload a pack of Merlin data into your brain and instantly become an expert birder in, say, Sri Lanka.

or Peru or Antarctica. Well, Antarctica has like three bird species, so anyone can be an expert down there. No need for any uploading. In any case, until the days of Merlin in your brain arrive, the birding apps on our phones will probably get more and more sophisticated. And I have some suggestions for how we can improve our apps. Some things I hope will happen eventually.

I'd like apps to easily display any number of bird illustrations in a side-by-side comparison view like you can select four birds or six birds and then see all of them in a single view and maybe the app could suggest groups of related or similar-looking birds for such comparisons this would probably work best with illustrations rather than photos so come on merlin how about using illustrations And hey, while I'm making demands of the Merlin app developers, if I'm lucky some of you are actually listening. And if you are, first of all, thank you. Merlin is rad and I love it. But can you please, please, pretty please include the family names and order names for the birds? There's already an

option in Merlin to toggle on and off the display of scientific names, the genus and species, and that's cool. But why is there no way to see what family a bird? is in. And I don't mean just the common family name, like hummingbirds. Merlin sort of does that already. I'm talking about the option to see the scientific words, like family trochility and order apodiformis. To me, that is such incredibly helpful information as I try to understand how each bird fits into the avian tree of life. So seriously, please, Merlin team, I'd love to see this feature added. another improvement to Merlin and most other birding apps would be the inclusion of more natural

history info for each species. Habitat, behavior, breeding, all that jazz. Now that might take a ton of work to add, I know, but a girl can dream, can't she? I suppose we might someday see bird apps that have augmented reality or virtual reality features. Like, you know, if we all start wearing those glasses that superimpose a bunch of glowing digital info onto the real world. I'm not sure if that stuff would qualify as an improvement, however. It feels kind of icky to me. Sure, I tend to embrace a lot of technology, but I don't know. I just want to look at birds, yo. Unobstructed, with nothing between me and them but air, or the lenses in my binoculars. Apps seem to have won the battle today, and they may ultimately.

win the war. They're just way more practical. And when I'm out there working as a birding guide, practicality wins. I rarely tote a traditional bird field guide around anymore. But I love books. My soft, squishy heart really wanted books to be the winners in this competition. And honestly, after making this episode, I'm kind of inspired to go on some birding outings where I purposely take just a traditional field guide and my paper journal. I could leave the digital world behind for at least a few hours and just be with the birds. So be it if my outdated field guide leads me to believe that the yellow-breasted chat I'm looking at is a wood warbler and the family Perulidae, when ornithologists have actually now placed this species in its own monotypic family

Icturidi. So be it. And hey, if I really want to kick it, it analog style, I'll wear only itchy wool clothing and get to the birding hot spots by riding a horse. I'll navigate using a map and compass and I'll carry a sword. Because, like I always say, you never know what might happen out there. Thank you so much for listening to the show today. I hope you found this topic interesting. I'm sure you could tell that it's something I'm interested in. But just like so many bird field guides, this episode will be outdated at some point. Technology is always evolving. So I might have to revisit this topic in a few years. Who knows? Thank you to all my amazing supporters on Patreon for making this podcast possible. I'm so

grateful for your generous support. The newest additions to my Patreon community are Cheryl Kincaid, T.D., Kiki, Gary McGurk, Devin Bradley, Adele Scolitz, Sidney Peck, Helen Pugh, Ravi, John and Diana, Amy, Rads, Sally, Jeer Falcon, Steve McKinness, Carol Edwards, and Beth Lucas. Thank you all so much and welcome. If you are interested in supporting this podcast, you can check out my Patreon page at patreon.com slash science of birds. There's also a support the show link in the show notes in your podcast app. If you do decide to offer your support, that's super awesome. But I humbly request that you do so through a web browser

or through the Patreon app on an Android device. Not the Patreon app on an iPhone. Because you'll end up paying more in the latter case. then those extra dollars go to Apple, not me. But it's okay if you previously signed up through the iPhone Patreon app in the past. This just applies to new members. Anyway, you can shoot me an email

if you have something you'd like to share with me. Perhaps you'd like to share your personal take on this whole Books versus Apps question. Or you want to tell me about some antiquated technology that you stubbornly cling to. Like maybe you look at birds using a spyglass instead of binoculars, like a pirate. In any case, my email address is Ivan at Scienceofbirds.com.

You could put that on a card in your rolodex, but sorry, I won't receive any message you send me using your fax machine. This is episode 113. You can check out the show notes for the episode on the Science of Birds website, Scienceofbirds.com. I'm Ivan Philipson, and true fact about me, long ago, I was in an alternative rock band with my friends. I was the lead singer and I played bass. We didn't play many shows, but we recorded a little demo CD and we had tons of fun making music for a few years. So there you go. Anyway, I hope you're having a glorious day. Peace.