Birdeez Team Launching Into Action to Change the World!
Left to Right – Thomas Kuo, Jeff Simeon and Patrick Toerner.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Audubon Society‘s news letter – El Tecolote for June-July 2013.

If numbers are to be believed, only a quarter of those reading this sentence can identify birds. The US Fish and Wildlife Service reports that 74% of people who watch birds can identify fewer than 20 species by sight. We at Birdeez hope to change that and, in the process, change the world.

Birdeez is an iPhone app, but you can think of it as the un-iBird. Instead of being an encyclopedia, we built Birdeez to be the easiest app for anyone to pick up and start learning local birds. The app knows where you are and what birds are near you at any given time of year.  Enter a bird’s shape, size and color and you’ll get a short list of birds that match. You can even save your bird sightings right in the app. We designed it to help anyone from 7 to 70 years old learn their birds. By connecting more people to the birds around them, we hope to create the next generation of environmental stewards. Continue reading →