BirdUp 1.5.5 — Now on Android, your list offline, and private spots

It's been a busy few weeks since 1.2.0, and the headline writes itself: BirdUp is no longer iPhone-only. Alongside the Android launch, this update makes the app genuinely useful with no signal, gives you control over who sees your birding spots, and opens AI photo identification to everyone.

BirdUp is now on Android

• Get it on Google Play. BirdUp is live on the Play Store, with everything the iPhone app does — logging, streaks, the field guide, events, the lot.
• It looks the part, too. Proper BirdUp app icons (including the Android 13+ themed icon), and BirdUp links now open straight into the app instead of a browser tab.

Your life list works without signal

Half the point of birding is being somewhere your phone isn't welcome. The app now assumes that.

• Your life list opens instantly, online or not. Sightings live on your device first, so the list renders straight away, works fully offline, and no longer re-downloads your whole history every time you refresh. Log a bird in a dead zone and it's on your list before you've lowered the binoculars.
• Favourites too. Favourite and un-favourite species offline and it all syncs up when you're back in range.
• A proper first-run download. New installs now download the field guide up front, with a real progress bar — "237 of 800 species" — and a resume button if the connection drops. No more screen full of grey placeholders on day one.
• Species pages stay current. We found and fixed a bug that meant field-guide updates weren't reaching phones after install. Your app will quietly catch itself up, and from now on new species content just arrives.

Keep your spots to yourself

• A "keep location private" toggle when you log or edit a sighting. Private sightings still count towards your list, streaks, and stats — other birders just can't see where you were. You'll see a small lock on the sighting card and a "Private" pill on its map so you know it's working.
• Sensitive species are protected automatically. For species vulnerable to disturbance, exact locations are blurred to a broad region for everyone except the birder who logged them. You don't have to do anything — the app errs on the side of the bird.
• Anonymous analytics. We've moved our usage analytics to an anonymous-only service. We can see that a feature gets used; we can't see who used it.

AI photo ID, for everyone

• AI photo identification is now on for all birders, along with its reasoning — the app tells you why it thinks that honeyeater is a White-plumed, so you can check the call against the field marks rather than take its word for it.

What it eats, how it lives

• Species pages now break down diet properly — what a bird mainly eats, how it forages, and whether it lives on the ground, in the canopy, or on the water. Drawn from published ornithological datasets and reviewed by us before it appears.

Help keep BirdUp accurate

• Report a sighting. Spot something on the Explore map that shouldn't be there? Every sighting from another birder now has a report option with a quick reason picker.
• Report incorrect species info. If a species page has something wrong, there's now a "Report incorrect info" row at the bottom. Tell us what's off and we'll review it.
• You'll hear back. Either way, you get a notification when your report has been looked at.

Polish and fixes

• Favouriting a species now feels like something — a little fill, pop, and ring burst, with a matching haptic. (It respects Reduce Motion, and the button no longer gets stuck when your connection is misbehaving.)
• Sheets look right again. The translucent backdrop is back behind every sheet in the app, and all of them now share the same handle and corner treatment.
• Pull-to-refresh only spins when you pull. Background refreshes happen silently instead of flashing a spinner over content you're reading.
• Android bits and bobs: the likelihood filter chips on the Explore map now scroll properly, and a rare "database is locked" crash during sync is gone.

On the web

• A public field guide at birdup.com.au. Every one of our 850+ species now has a page on the website — searchable by common, scientific, or Indigenous name, with key facts, similar-species comparisons, and real sighting trends from the BirdUp community. No account needed; send one to the friend who keeps asking what that bird was.
• A new look. You might have noticed the new BirdUp logo across the app and site — the little bird-as-B is ours, and we're rather fond of it.

What's next

Events and social birding are getting attention next, along with richer habitat intelligence. If there's something you'd like us to prioritise, let us know.