Out now on iOS & Android · UK & Europe

Hear the bird. Catch the card.

Lifer turns birding into a daily collecting game. Identify birds by sound or camera, catch them as beautiful species cards, build your Aviary, grow your Life List, and turn every walk into a birding adventure.

Download on the App Store Get it on Google Play

Species the on-device model can hear: 14,795
Species in the UK & Europe field guides: 990+
Audio ID on your phone, no signal needed: 100%

The Lifer home screen in dark mode: level and rank, weekly activity ring, 62-day streak, week stats, and your collection by rarity

The Lifer home screen: level and rank, weekly activity ring, 62-day streak, week stats, and your collection by rarity

Field notes

From birdsong to card in seconds.

Hear it

Point your phone at any bird sound. Lifer listens offline, identifies likely species, and waits for you to say when.

Catch it

When Lifer is confident, tap to save it. How good the recording was shapes the card you get.

Keep it

Every sighting you save lives in your Aviary as a card, with the right species guide for where you are birding.

Detection

Two ways to catch. Sound needs no signal.

The Lifer Catch screen listening live over hand-drawn watercolour street artwork: a Eurasian Blackbird detected at 56% match, with a Catch button ready

Identify by sound

Tap the microphone. Lifer listens for birds nearby and matches them against its on-device audio model in real time, showing the match confidence climb as the bird keeps calling. Five seconds of clean audio is usually enough. The better the recording, the better the card.

Camera Catch

Use your camera to turn bird photos into catch cards with Lifer AI species ID and photo quality scoring. Camera Catch works online and is reviewed before it joins your collection.

Beta

Offline where it matters

Audio Catch runs locally on your phone, so you can still identify birds by sound when you are out with no signal. Camera Catch uses Lifer AI online for stronger photo identification when you are connected.

Audio offline

The card system

Four tiers. Most you'll find easily enough. Some will take years.

Rarity sets the base points and adjusts for the species region. Quality comes from your actual recording and multiplies it. A perfect record of a legendary bird is the best card Lifer can give you.

Common

Robin

Erithacus rubecula

10–20 pts

Uncommon

Kingfisher

Alcedo atthis

25–50 pts

Rare

Peregrine

Falco peregrinus

75–150 pts

Legendary

White-tailed Eagle

Haliaeetus albicilla

200–400 pts

The card, up close

Every catch becomes a card worth reading.

Tap any bird in your Aviary and it opens as the full record of how you found it. Nothing on a Lifer card is decoration. Every chip, star, and number is earned in the field.

Rarity: How hard the species is to find in your region, from Common to Legendary.
Mastery: Spotted, Familiar, Regular, Expert, Mastered. It deepens every time you re-catch the species.
Biome: The place you found it, from urban to wetland, stamped onto the card.
Quality: A star rating scored from your actual recording or photo, not a random roll.
Caught count: 13× means thirteen real encounters with this bird, not one lucky afternoon.
Points: Rarity sets the base, quality multiplies it. A perfect legendary is the jackpot.

An open Lifer card for a Rose-ringed Parakeet: Uncommon and Familiar chips, Urban biome, three-star quality, caught 13 times at Great quality for 38 points

Biomes

Where you found it is part of the card.

Lifer reads your location at the moment you save a sighting and records the biome with it. A Kingfisher found at a wetland feels different to the same species seen in a park.

The Catch screen repaints itself for your surroundings: eight hand-drawn watercolour worlds, one for every biome.

Urban

Park

Countryside

Forest

Moorland

Coast

Wetland

Field

Your collection

Your Aviary, your way.

Every sighting you save lives in your Aviary as a card. Reorder them, change finishes, pick favourites to show off on your public profile, and browse either a UK or Europe field guide as your collection grows.

Catches, Guide, and Archive tabs with live species, rare+, and high-quality counts
Custom frames and finishes for every saved bird
Multiple effects unlock as recording quality improves
Level up to unlock profile rings and richer showcase options
Favourites pinned to your public profile
View UK and European species in full with your records
Cards tilt, catch the light, and behave like real 3D collectibles

The Aviary in Lifer: a stats bar showing 55 species, 9 rare+ and 193 high-quality catches above a grid of collected bird cards with rarity, mastery, stars, and points

Milestones & badges

Every birder has a story. Yours lives on your profile.

Catch enough of the right birds and you unlock milestone badges. Pin the ones you're proudest of to your public profile, alongside your level and bird rank, streak, follower counts, and the twelve favourite cards you put on show.

tap a badge to see what it means ↴

Milestones on your profile tell other birders what kind of birder you are.

Mastery Shelf

Hold the top spot.

Catch a species more times than anyone else and you become its master, with your name on that bird until someone out-catches you. The shelf shows every species you currently lead, and how far ahead you are.

Favourite Cards

Twelve cards on show.

Pick the twelve cards you're proudest of and pin them to your profile: best finishes, foils, first-in-the-wild finds. It's the cabinet other birders browse when they visit.

Rare finds

Then there are Prismwings.

Very occasionally, a bird comes back as something different. A Prismwing. Nobody knows exactly how they happen, and that's the point. If you find one, you unlock an exclusive finish for that species that won't look like anyone else's.

Bird Walk

Log the whole outing, not just one sighting.

Bird Walk tracks your route, distance, and time, then adds every species you find along the way to a single session. Good for a morning walk, a longer trip, or anyone who covers ground.

Walks can be shared, too. Browse routes other birders have made public near you and see what a walk is really worth before you lace up.

Route, time, ascent, species, and catches recorded for every walk
Discover nearby public walks, sorted by top rated or most species
Import GPX routes from your watch or other apps, then follow them in the field
Bookmark walks you want to come back to and get directions to the start

Bird of the Day & challenges

A new featured bird, every day.

One species is featured each day with a point bonus shown up front, plus a fact worth knowing about it. Find it before midnight and the bonus is yours. A good reason to go out even when you think you've already seen everything nearby.

Underneath it sits the weekly challenge, a goal like catching something uncommon or rarer every day, with your week tracked day by day and a bonus for completing all seven.

Bird of the Day on the Lifer home screen: Western Jackdaw worth 100 points with a did-you-know fact, above the Uncommon Streak weekly challenge with days ticked off and +150 points earned

The map

Every catch, pinned to the place you found it.

Your map fills up as you bird. Every catch with a saved location is plotted with a rarity-ringed bird-image marker, alongside your Bird Walks and imported records. It becomes a living map of everywhere your birding has taken you.

Markers worth zooming in on

Catches appear as bird-image markers ringed in their rarity colour, so the map reads like your collection.

Your whole history

Old finds stay on the map, so a catch from last spring is as easy to revisit as one from this morning.

Date ranges and filters

Jump from the last week to all time, then narrow by rarity, source, species, person, or point threshold.

Imported locations

Mapped imports from eBird, Birda, and iNaturalist sit alongside your Lifer catches in one birding history.

Following and public layers

Switch layers to see what people you follow have found, or explore recent public catches shared nearby.

Map styles

Switch between standard, satellite, terrain, and buildings to get the view that helps most where you are birding.

Free birders see the last 24 hours of catches. The full history, filters, and extra layers come with Lifer Pro.

The Lifer map: satellite view of the UK with bird-photo catch markers clustered around real locations, plus My Catches and Bird walks layers and 3D map controls

Community

You're ranked. Among birders.

Leaderboards update as people log birds. Compare with friends, browse Discover highlights, or switch to local ranking based on the town or city on your profile. Your public profile shows your Aviary favourites, milestones, rings, and best records.

The Lifer social feed: Robin Swift upgraded a European Goldfinch from Great to Perfect for +27 points, shown as a card over a map, with emoji reactions and a Re-catch button

Lifer rankings: an all-time global leaderboard by points, with Today, 7 days, and 30 days periods and a scope switch between global and local

Leaderboards

Today, 7 days, 30 days, or all time. Rank globally or against your local area, by points, species, or rarity, so there's always a board you can realistically climb.

Social feed

Saved birds, bird walks, milestone posts, Camera Catch photos, and rare finds from people you follow. React, comment, and re-catch birds from the feed that your own Aviary is missing.

Public profiles

Your Aviary favourites, milestone badges, profile rings, and recent records on a page other birders can actually visit.

More ways to play

A daily game that keeps growing with you.

Bird together live, compete in private groups, sharpen your ID skills with three daily quizzes, and look back on your whole year. Lifer keeps birding rewarding long after your first catch.

Birding Parties Pro

Bird together. One phone catches for everyone.

Out with other birders? A Pro user hosts a two-hour Birding Party for up to four people. Everyone else can put their phones away. When one birder catches a bird, eligible party members get it too. Lifer checks you're near the host when you join and avoids duplicate catches, so it stays fair.

Starting a Birding Party: host a new party for up to 4 people, or join one by scanning the host's QR code

Host or joinStart a party for up to four birders.

A live Birding Party with invite code RMZ5AB, a QR code to scan, 2 hours remaining, and the walking-now member list

Share the codeFriends join with the QR or a 6-letter code.

How parties work: walk as a group, one phone can catch for everyone, proximity keeps it fair, and the party ends cleanly when the timer runs out

Walk and catchEvery catch lands with the whole party, live.

Daily quizzes

Three quizzes a day keep your ID sharp.

The Daily Sound Quiz plays a real call, Daily Rare Bird ID shows a photo of a rarity, and the Daily Field Clue describes a bird by habitat, behaviour, and shape. Each is worth points, and every answer teaches you something for the field.

Daily Sound Quiz answered correctly for 100 points: a waveform plays a call and the answer was Common Swift

SoundName the bird from its call alone.

Daily Rare Bird ID answered correctly for 75 points: a photo of an Atlantic Puffin with four species choices

Rare Bird IDOne photo of a rarity, four names.

Daily Field Clue answered correctly for 50 points: four field clues describing a Eurasian Blue Tit

Field ClueHabitat, behaviour, and shape. No photo, no sound.

Flocks

Create private Flocks for family, friends, or your local bird club, with a shared Life List, feed, and leaderboards across Today, 7 days, 30 days, and all time. Build one combined list together.

Year in Birds

A personal annual recap of your species, streaks, rare finds, distance walked, and favourite moments, wrapped into a shareable card.

Quiz streaks

Every quiz builds a streak and feeds the quiz leaderboard, so there's a daily reason to open the app even on days you can't get out.

Your birding history

Bring your past with you.

Years of sightings don't disappear when you start on Lifer. Import from eBird, Birda, BirdTrack, or iNaturalist and your Archive fills out with records from before Lifer existed.

eBird Birda BirdTrack iNaturalist

Bird Alerts

Watch for the birds that matter.

Set an alert for a species or rarity level near you and Lifer will notify you when one shows up. Some sensitive birds go quiet during breeding season because rare breeding birds need the quiet.

Peregrine · 3.4 km away

Rare+ · Watching

White-tailed Eagle · Quiet during breeding season

Citizen science

Birding that gives back to science.

Lifer is endorsed as a data publisher on the GBIF network, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, through the UK's National Biodiversity Network. It's the same open infrastructure researchers use to study bird populations around the world.

From the next update, you'll be able to contribute your catches as real biodiversity records. Every sighting you share becomes a data point scientists can actually use.

Endorsed data publisher NBN · UK participant node Coming in the next update

Privacy

You control what's visible, and where.

Birding involves real locations, including where you live, where you go, and what you've found. Lifer gives you fine-grained control over all of it.

Per-sighting location control

Each saved sighting has its own location toggle. Sharing the species is fine. The exact GPS coordinate is your call.

Bird Walk privacy

Each walk can be private, visible to followers only, or public. You set it per outing, and you can change it afterwards.

Start point obfuscation

Bird Walk routes can mask the first 250m to avoid showing where you set off from. Useful if you start from home.

Sensitive species are protected server-side

Rare breeding birds have their exact locations hidden on alerts and maps during sensitive periods. This is enforced at the database level, not just in the app.

Control your archive visibility

Imported birding history from eBird and other sources can be kept private or shared on your public profile. Your choice, changeable any time.

Encrypted Cloud Vault

New private catch audio, private catch photos, and private card photos are encrypted before they are stored in Cloud Vault. Public/shared photos are kept separate.

Get the app

Your first card is minutes away.

Free on iPhone and Android, with full UK and Europe field guides. Worldwide coming soon.