What it does
Built for listening in the field, not for being shouted at.
Most bird apps announce every robin, every time. Thicket tells you what’s new and then gets out of the way.
Names what it hears
Thicket picks out species likely where you are this week, and rates each one High, Medium or Possible. It says Possible when it means it.
A live spectrogram shows the last ten seconds, with each bird’s calls drawn in its own colour. Drag back through the session to find the one you missed.
- Works with no signal. Sound is analysed on the phone.
- Tags a bird you’ve never had before as a Lifer.
- Can also analyse recordings from Voice Memos, Files or any app that shares audio.
Knows when to stay quiet
A bird is flagged the first time it sings, then left alone until it’s been quiet for a while. Mute the robin that won’t stop, snooze it for an hour, or mute everything the range model calls common and listen only for what isn’t.
Before you count a bird, replay the clip and confirm or reject it. Mark the ones you actually saw.
Keeps a notebook
Every session is saved: where, how long, what sang. Your life list counts the species you’ve identified, all time, this year or this month, and how many of the birds likely around you this week you’ve had.
Badges for your first 10, 25, 50 and 100 species, the dawn chorus, a careful ear and a rare find. Turn them off if that isn’t your thing.
Tells you what’s about
Recent reports from eBird and iNaturalist near you, rated Common to Rare for where you are and the time of year, with the five best places to go.
Turn on rare bird alerts and Thicket tells you when eBird flags something notable nearby, at most once a week for each species.
And
Set it up the way you bird.
Two birders can use Thicket completely differently and both be right. That is the point.
Nearly every setting is yours
How likely a bird has to be to count as common, how long before it’s flagged again, sensitivity, whether confidence shows as a percentage, whether clips are kept.
Your records, where they belong
Export the birds you’ve checked to eBird or BirdTrack, or as a spreadsheet, and upload them to iNaturalist with the clip of the call. Birds you only heard are never exported.
Two models
BirdNET V2.4 from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, or Google DeepMind’s Perch 2.0. Choose in Settings.
Share what you heard
Send a card of a session or a bird, with a waveform of its call, or the call itself as a sound file. Shares always say the bird was identified by sound.
In six languages
English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Dutch.
On iPhone, iPad and Android
One optional account keeps your history and settings in step between them, and safe if you lose your phone.
Privacy
What you hear stays on your phone.
Sound never leaves it
Identification happens on the phone. Recordings and clips are never uploaded, and only go anywhere if you share them.
No account needed
Listening, history, Recent News and every setting work signed out. Sign in only if you want your history to survive a lost phone.
Nothing to sell
Free, with no ads, no analytics, no tracking and no subscription. This website doesn’t track you either.
Honest about the limits
Identification by sound is hard, and Thicket gets things wrong, most often between species that genuinely sound alike. Treat Possible as a question, not an answer. Confidence percentages aren’t yet calibrated against field results.
I’ll tell you when it’s out.
One email, when Thicket reaches the App Store and Google Play. That’s the whole list.
Made in Hampshire by Thomas Fearn, a wildlife photographer who got tired of being shouted at by a bird app.
Identification uses BirdNET V2.4, developed by the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Chemnitz University of Technology, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, and Perch 2.0 by Google DeepMind. Nearby sightings come from eBird and iNaturalist.