Alert zones
Draw a circle around your patch, your commute, or the county you're visiting next weekend. Birdr watches live eBird data inside that circle and sends you a notification the moment a rare bird, a species on your watchlist, or a bird missing from your life list is reported there. No statewide digest to wade through, no rarity three hundred miles away that you were never going to chase.
A rare bird alert is a notification that an unusual species has turned up somewhere near you. Birders have run them for decades — first as telephone hotlines, then as listservs and regional mailing lists, and now mostly through eBird. The purpose has never changed: a bird that shouldn't be there is often gone within a day or two, so the value of the information decays by the hour. An alert that reaches you on Tuesday morning about a Tuesday morning sighting is useful. The same information on Thursday is a story about a bird you missed.
The problem with most alerts is scope. They're built around administrative boundaries — a county, a state, a province — because that's how sighting databases organise themselves. But nobody birds a state. You bird a lake, a park, a stretch of coast, a radius you can drive before work. A statewide rare bird alert for Texas or California is mostly noise, and noisy alerts get muted, which means you also miss the one that mattered.
Every sighting Birdr alerts on originates in eBird, the citizen science database run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the largest biodiversity dataset in the world, with over a billion bird observations submitted by birders. When someone finishes a checklist, their records become queryable almost immediately.
Rarity itself is decided by eBird's regional filters. Volunteer reviewers — experienced local birders — maintain a list for each area of which species are expected, in what numbers, and during which weeks of the year. A report that falls outside its filter gets flagged as notable. That's a genuinely local judgement rather than a global rarity ranking, and it's why the same species can be routine in one place and alert-worthy fifty miles away. Birdr doesn't second-guess those reviewers; it forwards what they flag, scoped to where you are.
An alert zone is a named circle on the map: a centre point and a radius, anywhere from about 5 km (3 miles) out to 100 km (60 miles). Set the centre with one tap using your device location, by dropping a pin on the map, or by typing coordinates directly. Give it a name you recognise — “home patch”, “the lake”, “parents' place” — because you'll be reading it on a lock screen.
Every 15 minutes, Birdr pulls the latest eBird observations for each active zone and checks them against that zone's triggers. Three triggers are available, and you turn them on per zone:
Matches arrive as a push notification on iOS, as a web push in the browser, or by email, and each one names the species, the eBird location, and the time it was reported. Tapping through opens the sighting on the bird sightings map so you can see exactly where it was and what else has been reported nearby.
Zones can overlap and they don't have to be near you. A common setup is one tight zone on your home patch with every trigger on, and a wider one over a region you're visiting next month with only the rare trigger enabled, so it stays quiet until something genuinely worth the detour appears.
Chasing is a question of time and distance. If a bird is reported thirty minutes away you can go at lunch; if it's reported six hours away you almost certainly won't, however good it is. A region-wide alert can't tell those two apart, so it sends both and leaves the filtering to you — usually at the exact moment you're least able to do it.
A zone encodes the decision once, up front. You choose the radius you would realistically drive, and everything outside it stops reaching you. The result is fewer notifications and a much higher hit rate, which in practice is the difference between an alert stream you act on and one you swipe away. It also handles the awkward geography that administrative boundaries create: if you live near a state line, a single circle covers both sides, where region alerts would need two subscriptions and would still send you the far end of each state.
Freegives you one alert zone and one watchlist species, with rare bird alerts switched on. That is a complete rare bird alert service for one place — for most birders watching one patch, it's all they need, and it stays free.
Birdr Prolifts the caps: unlimited alert zones, unlimited watchlist species, and the target and life-list-gap triggers on top of rare alerts. It also unlocks the offline field guide, advanced life list views, and the rest of the Pro feature set, and half of Birdr's profits go to a conservation partner you choose. Full plans and prices are on the pricing page.
Birdr uses eBird's own definition. Every eBird region has a filter, maintained by local volunteer reviewers, that lists which species are expected there and in what numbers at each time of year. When a checklist reports a species outside that filter — a bird that doesn't belong in the area, or one that's months early or late — eBird flags the record as notable. Those flagged records are what Birdr treats as rare bird sightings. It means rarity is judged locally: a Snowy Owl is routine in northern Canada and a genuine rarity in Georgia, and the alert reflects that.
Birdr checks every active alert zone against fresh eBird data every 15 minutes, so an alert usually reaches you within minutes of the sighting appearing on eBird. The real-world delay is on the reporting side: a birder has to submit their checklist before anyone can be notified. Some submit from the trail within minutes, others upload in the evening. No alert service can beat that, which is exactly why a tight zone matters — you want to hear about the birds you can still reach.
No. Rare bird alerts are part of the free tier. A free account gets one alert zone and one watchlist target, and receives alerts for rare and notable birds inside that zone. Birdr Pro removes the caps: unlimited alert zones, unlimited watchlist species, and two extra trigger types — watchlist matches and life-list gaps.
eBird's alerts are scoped to an administrative region — a whole county or a whole state — and arrive as a daily or hourly email digest. That works, but a statewide alert for Texas covers a 12-hour drive, and most of what lands in the inbox is unreachable. Birdr alerts are scoped to a circle you draw, from about 5 km up to 100 km, centred wherever you actually bird. You get a push notification for the birds inside that circle and silence for everything else.
Yes. Each alert zone has three trigger types you can switch on independently. Rare birds fires on anything eBird flags as notable. My targets fires when a species from your watchlist is reported in the zone, which is how you chase a specific bird you've been missing. Life list gaps fires on any species you haven't recorded yet, so ordinary birds you happen to be missing still reach you. Target and life-list triggers are Pro features; the rare trigger is free.
Push notification on your phone through the Birdr iOS app, web push in the browser, and email — whichever channels you've enabled. Every alert names the species, the eBird location it was reported from, and when, and links straight through to the sighting on the map so you can decide whether it's worth the drive.
One zone, rare bird alerts on, no card required. Add it in about a minute and leave it running.