App Watch: Birding in Central Park

Apr 25
2010

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There’s more to birdlife in New York City than just pigeons, and a new National Audubon Society birding iPhone app aims to help people learn about it.

: The tufted titmouse in the Audubon Birds of Central Park app.

The app, a guide to birds of Central Park, lists about 200 birds that can be found regularly at different times of year, plus 85 birds that are extremely rare.

“Central Park has a long and storied tradition of bird-watching,” said Chalie Rattigan, the creative director at Green Mountain Digital, the company that created the app. “Its’ an oasis in this large metropolitan area. Migrating birds flying over the city see this green space and come down in the spring or fall.”

Birds that can be easily seen now in the park include woodpeckers, ducks and the adorable tufted titmouse. The iPhone app provides photos of the birds as well as several recordings of songs for each. The app also lists similar birds, so users can more easily tell the difference between, say, a ring-billed gull and a herring gull. (Hint: The ring-billed gull has, well, a ring on its bill.)

The app allows users to search by shape of bird and color as well as month, because the bird population can vary widely depending on the season. It also has a Google map with birding hot spots and a checklist for people keeping track of their sightings.

Birds of Central Park joins 18 other Audubon nature-related applications in Apple’s App Store, including a field guide to all North American birds and guides to trees, mammals and insects. At $6.99, the Central Park birding app is more expensive than the average app in the store, and the app for birds of North America is $19.99. But Mr. Rattigan points out that the books on which the North America app is based have a list price of about $40 together and don’t include searchability and sound, or as many photos.

The Central Park app took about 90 days to produce, Mr. Rattigan said. Green Mountain, which pays royalty fees to the National Audubon Society, began developing its Audubon apps in June of 2009 and released its first app in October. The nine-person, Vermont-based firm aims to have 11 more apps by the end of June and plans to update its apps with a function that allows users to share their sightings via Facebook and, appropriately, Twitter.

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