Gotta watch ‘em all? Pokémon-style app for birdwatching launches | Birdwatching

A new app has been launched which aims to gamify birdwatching by allowing people to collect digital maps of British bird species every time they record one.

Birdex users accumulate points for each bird they see, with less common and rare species yielding the greatest rewards. It is possible to add friends and compete for bird sightings. The app has allowed birders to talk online – although it has raised concerns among some for its use of AI-generated artwork.

“Birds are great,” said Harry Scott, 24, one of the app’s developers, who works in marketing. He and a collaborator built the app as a side project over a six-month period. He said the idea was to layer a reward-based experience on top of bird watching with a view to engaging young people in nature.

“I think bird watching and Pokémon share a lot of similarities,” he added. But doesn’t using a smartphone to record bird sightings mean that screens are hindering nature? “I think it’s more about using technology … as a learning tool,” he said. “We’re trying to make that screen time [people are] having is much more positive.

One Birdex user, Michelle Williams, a psychologist in London, said she enjoyed using the app to record garden birds such as blackbirds with her two children, aged seven and eight. “It’s an opportunity to get out and help them engage with nature,” she said. “There’s something nice about collecting a set, isn’t there?”

However, some have criticized the app’s developers for using AI to generate depictions of birds. “If art is AI, it’s an instant uninstall, sorry,” one Reddit user wrote.

Scott said they used AI in various ways during development because they had limited funds, but plan to hire artists in the future. The app is currently free, although some content or features may eventually require payment.

To date, Birdex users have recorded the appearances of more than 200,000 birds. There could be an impact on citizen science if these records were made available to bodies such as the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), said Viola Ross-Smith, head of science communications at the trust. The BTO has its own app, BirdTrack, to record bird sightings.

Ross-Smith said Birdex was “pretty engaging” and her son, a Pokémon fan, “thought it looked pretty cool.” But she questioned whether it could pose risks to birds if people were encouraged to look for vulnerable species such as the capercaillie, a rare wood grouse that lives in parts of Scotland.

It is illegal to disturb capercaillies during their nesting season and visitors to the Cairngorms have often been warned not to look for them. Ross-Smith suggested that Birdex could include such warnings.