Lists & trips

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

Video walkthroughs

Types of list

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

Atlas list
A structured survey submission. Atlas lists have a dedicated tab and 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 (collaborative) or competitive leaderboard (challenge) involving several birders. See Groups & challenges.

Creating a list

Tap New List from the Lists tab or the Feed header and give it a name. It's open straight away and starts collecting the sightings you log.

How a list collects sightings

A list is really a time window over your sightings: it opens when you start it and closes when you end it. Any bird you log inside that window appears on the list.

So one sighting can land on several open lists at once — keep a day list, a weekend list, and a trip list running together and each will pick it up. A list started from an Area filters by that area's boundary as well.

It also means lists work by time, not location. An open list keeps gathering birds wherever you go, so one you started in Gauteng carries on collecting in the Drakensberg. If a bird turns up on an older list, that list was still open when you logged it.

To stop a list collecting, end it (see below). And because a sighting is a single shared record, removing it from a list's edit screen deletes it everywhere — it isn't a way to take a bird off just one list.

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

Ending a list

Open the list and tap End list. That closes its window — handy when a trip wraps up, or before you head somewhere new. The list moves into your history and stops gathering 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 stay on the server for 30 days. Contact support within that window if you need one back.

Offline behaviour

Creating, editing, and deleting lists all work without a connection. Everything syncs when you reconnect.