A report is not a location
"Reported at Wichelen" is thirty square kilometres. You drive an hour and then spend half a day looking for a sand pit whose name nobody wrote down.
For the ones who actually drive
Reported at dawn.
Reported at dawn.
You are there before it lifts.
A Bee-eater, thirty-eight minutes from your door. Twitchy tells you exactly where, what time to leave to catch the first hour of light, and whether the wind is with you. And it keeps telling you when your signal drops — because that is precisely where it does.
Free. No account, no subscription, no email address.
The problem
Finding the report is easy. Deciding is not.
There is no shortage of places telling you something has been seen. What none of them tell you is whether it is worth getting up for — and that is the only question that matters at five in the morning.
Late is late
The first hour after sunrise is worth more than the rest of the day combined. Arrive at eight and you have missed it — and you only find that out standing there.
The weather decides
Above thirty kilometres an hour everything sits in the lee. A grey, still morning beats a bright one with a raw north-easterly — but no forecast tells you that.
And then your signal goes
Behind a dyke, in a dune slack, inside a hide. Exactly where you drove to, the app stops working. That is not a detail; that is the moment it has to work.
Try it here
Where do I see a …?
This is the app's own search, running on this page with the same calculation. Pick a species and a starting point — the order you get is the order the app would give you.
Runs on a fixed sample of thirty sites. In the app the records come live from GBIF and eBird, and how fresh they are counts too.
Same question, but with this morning's records in it.
What it does
From a report to a day that adds up
Searching is the start. The work is in what comes after: the order, the hours, and the honesty to say when a plan is not going to happen.
The day plan works backwards from the sun
You say where you want to go; the app says what time to leave to be standing at the first site as it gets light. Sunrise is calculated on the phone, so it works with no signal at all.
Four stops or three? It will say
If you are spending more time in the car than in the field, it says so in plain words. If the last stop runs past sunset, likewise. A planner that approves everything plans nothing.
Birding weather, not a forecast
Wind, rain and cloud translated into one number: how good this hour is for looking. An easterly in October scores extra — that is migration wind, and that is what drops a vagrant in.
Alerts that mean something
Not every record within ten kilometres, but the species on your own wanted list plus anything that counts as scarce or rarer. With a quiet window overnight, because a vagrant at three in the morning is tomorrow's news.
Your list stays yours
Life list, notes, photos — all on the phone, none of it on a server. No account, and the button to erase everything sits in the settings.
It works without bars
Whatever came in once stays, with a line saying when it was fetched. "Fetched yesterday" is usable. A blank screen is not.
Where it comes from
Built on other people's work, with their names on it
Every record in this app was entered by somebody who stood outside for it. That is not raw material, it is volunteer work, and it is treated the way it should be: through the official route, with the licence attached, and the source named on each item.
- GBIF and eBirdThe open sources birders feed themselves, through their APIs and within their terms.
- The licence is shownOn every record and every photo, in the app itself — not buried in a colophon.
- Nothing is scrapedNo site is stripped. Where an API needs an application, the application gets made.
- Nests stay hiddenSensitive breeding records are kept off the map in season. Obscured stays obscured.
What it costs
Free where free is right
Every site, every species and the full search are in the free version. Pro removes the ads and opens what a heavy user needs. One payment, no subscription.
Free
€ 0
- All thirty sites, all species
- Search, season and birding weather
- One day trip at a time
- Three species on your wanted list
- Life list with no limit
- With ads
Twitchy Pro
€ 8.99 one-off
- No ads
- Multi-day trips, as many as you like
- Unlimited wanted list and alerts
- Download a region for offline use
- Export to gpx and csv
- Everything added later, at no extra cost
One purchase, on all your devices. Restore works any time, including after a new phone.
Questions
What people ask us
Where do the records come from?
From open sources that birders themselves feed: GBIF, which aggregates hundreds of databases, and eBird from the Cornell Lab. Every record carries its origin and its licence, and both are shown. Nothing is scraped from anyone's site.
Does it work without a signal?
Yes, and that is the point. Everything you have ever loaded stays on the phone. In the hide you still see the sites, your trip, your target species and the past week of records — with a note saying when they were fetched.
Do I need an account?
No. No account, no email address, no sign-in. Your life list and your trips live on your phone and go to no server. The button to erase everything sits in the settings.
Does the app give away the location of sensitive breeding birds?
No. Species vulnerable to disturbance at the nest are kept off the map during the breeding season, and records the source itself obscures stay obscured. An app that walks birders up to a nest is not a birding app but a problem.
What does Pro cost, and is it a subscription?
8.99 euro, one-off. No subscription, no trial that quietly renews. What is free stays free: every site, every species and one trip at a time.
Which countries does Twitchy cover?
The records are worldwide, because the sources are. The written site guides currently cover Belgium and the Netherlands; France and Germany are next.
Tomorrow looks good.
Calm, half cloud, and something sitting forty minutes away. The only question left is what time to set the alarm.
Free. No account, no subscription.
2005Since
Twitchy is an app by Noappy, the app arm of Nonius BV in Dendermonde, Belgium. We have been building software since 2005 for people who use it to get their work — or their Saturday — done.
A question, a mistake, a site that ought to be in there? Write to info@nonius.be. Somebody who built the app answers.