BeakBrain teaches you to identify birds before your trip. Pick a country and it builds a learning path from the most common birds up to the rarities, tuned to the time of year you travel.
Free to start. No account needed. Coming soon to iPhone and Android.
Choose where you are birding. BeakBrain ranks every bird by how common it is where you are, so you start with the ones you will really meet.
Review lookalike groups side by side, then recall each bird from a single photo or call, the way real birding works.
A daily streak keeps you going, and the birds you find tricky come back more often until they stick.
Real photos and recordings, a learning path for every country, and quick games that make practice a habit.
Learn from the everyday birds up to the rarities and endemics, one clear step at a time.
Beat the Clock, Pairs, and a rapid challenge round turn a spare minute into real practice.
Real calls from the Xeno-canto community, with slow playback so you can hear every note.
Compare the birds people mix up most, so you learn the field marks that tell them apart.
A gentle daily goal and a growing streak keep the habit alive, the way the best learning apps do.
Track the birds you have seen, and bring your history with you by importing your eBird life list.
Set a destination and the month you travel, then drill exactly the birds you will meet, national park by national park.
Download your packs so you can keep learning on a plane or deep in the field with no signal.
Explore more than 10,900 species by family and group, each with photos, calls, and a plain-language identification tip.
Every country is ordered by how often each bird is actually seen there. Your first birds are the ones outside your window, not a stray that turned up once.
You learn from real photos and real recordings, so a bird you meet in the wild already looks and sounds familiar.
Spaced repetition brings tricky birds back at the right moment, and mixed practice trains you to tell similar species apart.
Seasonality means a pack shows the birds present in the month you travel, so you prepare for the birds you will really find.
Whether you are meeting your first birds or sharpening the calls that always trip you up.
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 birds in the US, the Antarctic, and 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.
More than 10,900 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.
BeakBrain is coming to both. Join the waitlist and we will email you the day it is ready to download.
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.
Join the waitlist and we will email you the day BeakBrain is ready.
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