A quick look inside
Short daily rounds teach you the birds where you live, by sight and by sound. Then pick anywhere in the world and learn those species too. Collect hand-drawn bird cards as you master each species, worldwide.
Free, no account needed. Coming soon to iPhone and Android.
Each card features hand-drawn illustrations from historic plates and information on range, seasonality, habitat, diet, conservation and more.
Choose where you are birding and every bird is ranked by how often it is actually seen there, so you start with the ones outside your window and work up to the rarities. All 10,927 species are available to learn and browse.
Train on real photographs and audio recordings. Then, recall each one from a single photo or call, the way real birding works.
Spaced repetition brings the tricky birds back at the right moments and convenient quick games allow for easy practice.
Our free Bird Guide covers 10,927 species with photos, calls, identification tips, lookalikes, range maps and the best months to see them. Filter by country, national park, time of year and conservation status. It works in any browser, right now.
Also free on the web: Birding guides, full country guides with regions, timing and where to stay · Daily Bird, a mystery bird to guess every day · Live cams from nests and waterholes worldwide · Community, clubs and counts near you
Set a destination and the month you travel, and the game pack holds the birds actually present then, so you prepare for the ones you will really find.
Choose a national park you are visiting and drill exactly the species you are most likely to see.
Download a game pack and it works offline, on the plane or in the park where you may not have signal.
235 countries and every month of the year, each ranked by the species common there, so the same rounds work for a garden in spring and a rainforest in November.
BeakBrain is built by Dr. Cat Black, a behavioural ecologist and conservation scientist who earned her PhD at the University of Oxford. She has studied house finches and swallow-tailed kites in the US, penguins in the Antarctic, and backyard biodiversity in Amsterdam, using bioacoustics, camera trapping, and traditional field methods.
She made BeakBrain to share the joy of birding and help people learn the birds they will meet wherever they travel.
10,927 species, which is close to every bird you can see in the wild anywhere on Earth. For any country you pick, the birds are ranked by how common each one actually is there, from the everyday garden birds right up to the rarities and endemics. Each species comes with real photos, a call where one exists, its family and lookalikes, and a plain-language identification tip. Seasonality is built in too, so a pack can show only the birds present in the month you travel.
You learn in short rounds. First you review lookalike groups side by side to train your eye, then you recall each bird from a single photo or call. Spaced repetition brings the birds you find hard back more often until they stick, and a daily streak keeps the habit going. This is the same approach that makes language apps work, applied to birds.
Yes. You can start with no account and no payment. Every quick game and a starter pack for every country are always free. A Pro upgrade opens the full country packs, season packs, national park packs, rarities and endemics, and offline use. You only pay if you want the full library.
Yes, and this is where it shines. Set your destination and the month you travel, and BeakBrain drills exactly the birds you will meet, down to individual national parks. You arrive already knowing the birds you are about to see and hear.
You can learn online right away with no setup. Offline use is part of Pro, so you can download your packs and keep learning on a plane or out in the field with no signal.
The beta is arriving on both. Until it lands you can play the full thing in any browser, on a phone or a laptop, with nothing to install.
Dark mode is on the way, and it sits high on the list. BeakBrain opens in one warm cream theme today, picked so that photographs and painted plates hold their true colour on any screen. Dawn and dusk are the best hours to be out with the birds, so a proper dark theme belongs here and it is coming.
Taxonomy comes from AviList, and distribution and seasonality from GBIF. Bird calls come from the Xeno-canto community, and photos from Wikimedia Commons and iNaturalist contributors, all under open licences. Every photo and recording shows the person who made it and its licence, so credit goes where it is due.
Play right now in your browser, free and with no account. Play today's Daily Bird, or open the full app.
Works in any browser today. No account, no email, nothing to sign up for.
On Android? Ask to join the Android test and you will get it before the Play Store does. It needs twelve of us staying in for fourteen days.