A birder holding a phone up towards a hedgerow under a bright summer sky, recording a bird call with ChirpOMatic

Image 01 · Hero field shot Birder at a hedgerow under a bright summer sky, phone raised, ChirpOMatic recording on screen. Composition leaves the left half open for the headline.

For the bird sounds other apps miss.

ChirpOMatic is a bird sound ID app for curious birders. Its analyser is capable of identifying over 7,000 bird sounds, including many native and endemic species, and can suggest likely matches for faint, brief, distant or unusual recordings.

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

4.7 ★ · 6,300 ratings · Featured by Apple Europe · North America · Caribbean · Australia

7,000+Bird sounds in the analyser

4Regional editions, tuned to local species

Native & endemicSpecies missing from some datasets

Likely matchesA shortlist, not a single confident guess

A second opinion

Most apps are good with a clean recording.

The hard ones are the rest: a bird half a field away, a two-second call at the edge of the wind, or a species that is missing from some datasets. ChirpOMatic is built for those harder cases. When another app goes quiet - or you simply want a second opinion - try the recording in ChirpOMatic and compare.

In a real-world test of difficult recordings, ChirpOMatic correctly identified 86.5% of 126 sounds taken from online bird-identification forums. Each recording came from a post where Merlin had returned no result, but the sound was later identified by experienced birders.

“Top of the pile of bird song recognition apps.” Bird Watching magazine

Recording · spectrogram view

Spectrogram of a Hawfinch call recorded in ChirpOMatic: a run of short, sharp ticks against low background noise

Spectrogram of a Hawfinch call, recorded in southern England.

Difficult recordings

Weak sound is not the same as no sound.

There are four reasons a recording can be difficult. Even a difficult recording may contain useful clues: rhythm, pitch, tone, and the shape of the call. ChirpOMatic can suggest possible matches for recordings that are faint, brief, distant or unusual.

Faint

Barely above the noise

A call recorded through wind, traffic or rain, sitting only a little above the noise floor.

Brief

Gone in half a second

A short contact note or flight call, captured only briefly.

Distant

Across the valley

Distance softens the detail, but the shape of the call may still remain.

Unusual

Not the obvious song

Sub-song, juvenile calls, alarm calls, mimicry - and native or endemic species other datasets may not include.

A birder on a boardwalk through a sunlit reedbed, holding up a phone that shows a bearded tit on screen

Image · Reserve panel Birder on a reedbed boardwalk under a bright summer sky, holding up a phone with a bearded tit on screen, binoculars on her shoulder. Left half open water and reeds for the copy.

Bird-safe

Designed for responsible birding in the field.

Playing a call back in the open is not a neutral act. It pulls birds off territory, and in the breeding season it pulls them off nests. ChirpOMatic lets you compare sounds privately through earphones, without broadcasting calls into the open.

Bird-safe mode

Bird-safe mode uses the phone's distance sensor, playing sounds only when the phone is held close. Available on iOS.
Focused on the birds around you

Each regional edition carries a local species list, so suggestions come from birds you could actually be hearing.
Privacy-conscious by design

ChirpOMatic does not require an account. Saved recordings stay in your own app library, and you choose whether to export or share them. If online analysis is used, the recording is sent only for identification.

Most sound-ID apps ask you to play the bird back to itself. On a reserve in May, that is the difference between a tool a warden tolerates and one they ask you to put away.

How it works

Record it, and read the evidence yourself.

STEP 01

Record

Tap once. Capture the call on your phone, or on an Apple Watch if the phone is in your bag. Analyse it on the spot, or later at home.

STEP 02

Analyse

The analyser compares the recording against 7,000+ sounds, narrowed to the birds in your region.

STEP 03

Compare

You get a shortlist of likely matches, each with a confidence label, a photo, a reference recording and a written description of the sound.

STEP 04

Confirm

Listen side by side and make the call yourself. With Pro, keep the recording - with date and place - in your archive.

Regional editions

Tuned to the birds where you actually are.

Each edition carries its own species list, including native and endemic birds. A smaller, local dataset means fewer wrong answers from the other side of the world.

Common Nightingale perched in a hedgerow

Europe

UK · Ireland · Continental

Common Nightingale · Warrieboy · CC BY-SA 4.0

American Yellow Warbler among spring foliage

North America

United States

Yellow Warbler · Rhododendrites · CC BY-SA 4.0

Cuban Tody, an endemic of Cuba, perched on a branch

Caribbean

Endemic-rich islands

Cuban Tody · Charles J. Sharp · CC BY-SA 4.0

Australia

Mainland · Tasmania

Superb Lyrebird · John Manger, CSIRO · CC BY 3.0

Image 02 · App screens Three phone screens, overlapping: a species reference page, the saved-recordings library, the quiz.

ChirpOMatic Pro

Keep the recording, not just the answer.

Everything you need to identify a bird is free - the analyser, the shortlist, spectrograms and bird-safe mode, with no account. Pro is for the birders who want to keep and organise what they record.

Free

The free identifier

Everything you need to record a bird and get an answer.

Record from your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch
Automatic analysis with a High, Moderate or Low confidence label
A shortlist of likely matches when a recording is faint, brief or distant
Bird-safe mode - compare calls without broadcasting them into the open (available on iOS)
Waveform feedback and a spectrogram of every recording
No account required - saved recordings stay in your own app library

ChirpOMatic Pro

The Pro toolkit

A simple annual subscription.

Everything from The free identifier, plus:

Full reference library - photos, reference sounds and written descriptions of songs and calls
Save your recordings with date and location, then rename, organise and export them - on iOS they can be stored automatically in iCloud, so they are safe even if you lose your phone
The quiz - pick specific birds, or work through the built-in levels (available on iOS)
Import a sound file and analyse it in ChirpOMatic - useful for difficult clips you want to check again (available on iOS)

Pro is a simple annual subscription - cancel whenever you like. Prices are shown in the App Store and Google Play. Bought ChirpOMatic before it moved to a subscription? Your access carries over.

Download

Put a second opinion in your pocket.

Free to download in four regional editions, for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Android. Also available in Dutch, French, German, Norwegian and Swedish.

On the App Store

On Google Play