iBird UK Pro: A Search Engine for Nature
iBird UK Pro's search engine provides the most comprehensive set of search attributes of any birding app on the market. It's purpose is to help you quickly identify any bird in the United Kingdom with little effort. This section is designed to help you make the best use of identifying birds with the search engine.

Attributes and Values
Attributes are characteristics that all birds have in common, such as colour, size, shape, location, and so on. Values are the individual items that describe an attribute. For example the values for a Colour attribute are black, white, red, green, etc., while the values for the Location attribute would be the countries or regions of the UK such as Northern Ireland, London, North East, East Midlands etc.

Getting the Most from the iBird UK Pro Search Engine
To identify birds like an expert you need to fully understand how and when to use the attributes. We provide two ways to help with this. One is this "How to Search" tutorial which is always accessible from the top of the Search menu. Second, at the top of every search attribute menu is a link to a tutorial called "How to Use this Attribute". These short help files reveal the most important aspects of each attribute.

1. The most common mistake is selecting a large number of attributes all at once. The secret to getting the best results from iBird's search is to choose one attribute, select one or more values for it, then view species in the matched birds list and see if they resemble the bird you saw. When you have established the birds in the list are getting close to what you are looking for, select a second attribute, select its value(s) and examine the matched list again. If your list seems to be diverging from your target go back and revise the values for this second attribute or eliminate it altogether. Look again at the list generated from the first attribute and make sure it's got the kind of species you expect.

2. The very first attribute you should try to use is Location Common. Location Common contains the countries, regions and coasts around the United Kingdom. It's a good place to start your search because you can eliminate species not normally found in your region.

3. The majority of the attributes needed to identify a bird are found in the Basic Group. Search attributes are divided into Groups: Basic, Song, Body, Flight, Head and Miscellaneous. When starting out it's best to stick to those search attributes under the Basic Group. These are: Location Common, Shape, Size, Habitat, Colour Prominent, Colour Primary, Colour Secondary, Backyard Feeder, Family, Order, and Conservation Status. Of course search attributes in the other Groups are very useful, but when starting out, it's best to stick to those under the Basic Group.

4. The head of a bird contains a great deal of information about its identity. Highly skilled birders begin identification with a bird's head. If you can see the details of the head look for the Bill Shape and Bill Length and select the closest match in the menus. Study the Head Pattern attribute and learn what terms like capped, crested, eyebrow, masked and so on look like. Read the "How to Use this Attribute" to learn how to best use these head features.

As you observe your bird work your way from the head to the tail, carefully remembering those features which stand out, such as the bird's crown colour (top of the head), and, if visible, its eye, throat and nape colour. Commit what you have seen to memory and select what you are most sure of into the search engine. Since colour is not a very reliable indicator of a bird's identification it's better to look for unusual head markings such as eye-rings (a circle of colour around the eye) or eyelines (a dark or light strip of colour extending from front to back of the head with the eye in the middle.

5. The order in which you use search attributes is very important. It's always a good idea to start with Location Common because that will accurately match the most common birds in your region or local area. This will narrow the total number of species so that the possible species may be small enough that you can find your birds quickly.

6. Shape is an excellent search attribute to use after using Location. There are 14 general bird shapes which when used properly can narrow a large list very quickly. Shapes such as Hawk-like and Hummingbird-like are very effective in reducing your matched list because the number of species in these families is fairly small compared to birds which are Perching, Gull or Duck-like, which have many more species.

7. Oddly, colour is not always a reliable indicator of the species of the bird. Colour is an attribute you will likely want to use first, but we recommend using Shape or Location first. This is due to the fact that a) the colours of a bird's plumage change often during the year and with age, and b) the human eye does not do a great job of telling one colour from another. To help make colour work better iBird offers three colour attributes. When you are just starting out the "Colour Prominent" attribute is the best of the three. It answers the question, "Is there a particular colour of the bird that stands out or is the most striking?" and is therefore useful for birds that are all white, all black, all black and white or have a bright colour such as blue, green, orange, etc. on their body. Colour Prominent is often, but not always, the shade used in the common name of a bird such as the Black Swift, Blue Jay, Brown Creeper, etc. Use this attribute when you are certain you know the most obvious colouring of a bird but uncertain about other colouring details. It’s important to keep in mind that you should not use the Colour Prominent attribute with the Colour Primary and Colour Secondary attributes; Colour Prominent is meant to be used by itself whereas Colour Primary and Colour Secondary are meant to be used in conjunction with one another.

8. Colour Primary and Colour Secondary. These attributes are meant to be used together. "Colour Primary" can be used when a particular colour takes up more than 30% of a bird's colour. "Colour Secondary" can be used when a particular colour takes up less than 30% of a bird's colour. So, for example, if you see a bird that has a black body and a red crown you could set Colour Primary to Black and Colour Secondary to Red and many of the woodpeckers, such as the Acorn, Downy, Hairy, etc., would be matched. Note that woodpeckers are usually but not always, comprised of black, white and red. So if you set the attribute Colour Prominent to Black most woodpeckers will not show up because just having red as a crown colour doesn't meet the Prominent criteria of having a single colour that stands out. (However in a few cases the red is so prominent one or two woodpeckers may be matched.) Practice using the primary and secondary colour attributes by selecting a primary colour and studying birds that are matched. Then select a secondary colour and see how the list is narrowed.

9. The Size attribute is useful but only when you are certain of the bird's length, which is not easy to determine when it is far away or very small. Size lets you select from one of five Size ranges, from Very Small which is 3 to 5 inches, all the way up to Very Large, which is 32 to 72 inches (which is as much as 6 feet!). But like the Colour attribute, the Size attribute can be tricky to use and is therefore best used only when you are close enough to make a reliable estimate of length.

10. The Habitat attribute is useful when you are in a well-defined environment like a swamp or coast. But since birds do not stick to the boundaries defined in the app you can't guarantee the Habitat attribute will give accurate results. Therefore use Habitat judiciously. It's generally unwise to pick a large number of habitats as the match list won't shrink very much.

11. Breast Colour is a highly diagnostic attribute. Birds are even named after their breast colour, think robin redbreast. By the way "diagnostic" simply means something is beneficial for diagnosing the identity of a bird. "Breast colour" is found in the Body Group. Certain breast colours such as blue, green and red will narrow your match list quickly.

12. The Backyard (or Garden) Feeder attribute limits the search to those birds likely to be found at feeders. There are two values, "Yes frequently" and "Yes but uncommon". For birds that spend a lot of time in gardens (such as chickadees, sparrows, juncos, etc.), you would chose "Yes frequently". But for those birds that are less likely to use gardens (think ducks, larks, quails, etc.) you would use "Yes but uncommon". This is a very useful attribute when you are in identifying birds in your garden or around bird feeders.

13. The Family attribute is useful when you are certain about which family a species belongs to. However there are over 80 different families so this attribute should only be used if you are an experienced birder and are certain the species belongs to a particular family. A good way to become familiar with the Family attribute is to set the Browse View/Sort Mode to Family (Taxonomic). This will organize the list of birds by family and in taxonomic order (meaning evolutionary order). Note in the species account for a bird there is a "Family" section on the sliding menu. You should read this as it contains copious details about the family for that bird.

14. Conservation Status is used to select the degree to which species are endangered or threatened. There are eight values that represent the threat level of a bird from Least Concern all the way to Extinct. The details on this status can be found on each species account on the Ecology screen.

15. Remaining Attributes. There are 24 remaining attributes located in one of 6 groups. Each of these attributes is described in the How to use this search attribute button that appears at the top of its value list.

¹Percevia is protected by US patent number 7,363,309 and foreign equivalents.