Birding Blitz

Birding Blitz is a birding app where you compete against yourself or others to identify as many species of birds as possible within a predefined period and geographical area.

Each species is assigned a point value based upon its rarity in that location and time of the year.

For instance, a Yellow Warbler in Upstate New York is worth 100 points in January but only 40 in July.

Birding Blitz contests can cover a county, a state, the United States, Canada or both. A Blitz can run for an hour, multi-hour, day, multi-day, month or even a 'Big Year'.

Tap 'New Blitz' to define your Birding Blitz and then 'Open Blitz' to begin competing.

To enter a bird, type at least 3 characters of the bird's name (there are over 1,100 in the Birding Blitz database) and select your bird from the scrollable list by tapping the species' photo.

Confirm your selection from the popup window by tapping the ‘OK’ Button.

New Blitz:
When you and your friends or family decide to have a Birding Blitz competition . . . tap the ‘New Blitz Button’ and choose the appropriate time and area from the cascading popup menus.

Once completed, you will see a dynamically created Blitz name, for instance ‘Single Day Birding Blitz in Maine On 7/22/2020’. Feel free to change it to something more meaningful to you: ‘Whitaker Maine Vacation Birding Blitz’ . . . and tap the OK Button.

Open Blitz:
The ‘Open Blitz’ Screen is divided into Future, Active and Expired Sections. From here they can be opened (‘Begin Blitz’ button), invite others (‘Share’ button) or removed (‘Delete’ button). Blitzes are self-contained on your device so each competitor will need to setup a competition on his or her device (‘Share Message’ gives directions).

Selected Bird:
Birding Blitz uses your GPS location and Internet based reverse-geocoding to assign points to each bird. If you have a poor GPS satellite signal due to mountainous or tree covered terrain or simply poor internet signal . . . you can use the time and location popup screens to update your bird upon return to civilization.

If you misidentify a bird (it happens to us all), you can change it (‘Change Bird’ button) or even delete it.



Birds can only be entered while a Blitz is active, between the Start Date/Time and the End Date/Time. Otherwise the ‘Enter Bird’ field is disabled.

At the top of the Blitz ‘Enter’ screen, note the countdown timer which will tell you how much time is left in an Active Blitz or how long before a Future Blitz becomes active.

In a multi-day and/or a Blitz covering a large geographical area, you may replace birds on your selection list with the same bird in a different location (with more points).