Lists & trips

A list groups sightings from a session or outing. You never need one to record birds, sightings stand alone, but lists make it easy to review what you saw on a specific day or trip.

Video walkthroughs

Types of list

Personal list
Your own trip or birding session. Create one any time and add sightings manually as you go.

Atlas list
A structured survey submission. Atlas lists have a dedicated tab and move through a simple lifecycle, active while you're logging, then Ended, then Submitted once it's sent to SABAP2. See Atlassing.

Group list or challenge
A shared list where multiple birders contribute. Visible under the Groups tab alongside any pending invites and upcoming collaborations.

Creating a list

Tap New List from the Lists tab or the Feed header, give it a name, and it's ready. A new list is open straight away and starts collecting the sightings you log (see below).

How a list collects sightings

Your sightings are independent records — a list is really a filter over them, defined by a time window (from when you start it until you end it), and for a list started from an Area, that area's boundary too. A sighting shows up on every open list whose window it falls within, so you can keep several open at once (a day list, a weekend list, and a trip list) and one sighting appears on all of them.

Lists work by time, not location, so an open list keeps gathering birds wherever you are — one you started in Gauteng keeps adding sightings even after you travel to the Drakensberg. That's also why a bird can turn up on an older list: it was still open when you logged the bird.

To stop a list including new sightings, end it (see below) — that closes its window. Because a sighting is one shared record, removing it from a list's edit screen removes it everywhere, not just from that one list, so it isn't a way to take a bird off a single list.

To group birds by place instead of time, use Areas.

Ending a list

Open the list and tap End list. This is how you stop a list collecting new sightings — handy when a trip wraps up, or before you head somewhere new. It marks the list complete and moves it into your history; ended lists no longer gather birds.

If you've turned on exports, ending a list also emails you a file to import into BirdLasser or eBird. See Exporting your data.

Deleting a list

Deleted lists disappear from your view immediately, but are kept on the server for 30 days. Contact support within that window if you need to recover one.

Offline behaviour

List create, edit, and delete all work without a connection. Everything syncs to the server automatically when you reconnect.