Settle by a window, choose one feeder perch and tap when a bird lands. Start with an editable list below, then keep a record of your watch.
Observation session and saving
Checking saved workspace
Observation categories and controls
Session backups and replacement
Your first feeder watch
One perch, one landing at a time
Pick a perch you can see clearly from a comfortable spot. Keep the counter beside you, with the feeder in view. The single Bird landing button counts arrivals without identifying birds. Or use a list of names for the birds you recognise. This is a personal record of arrivals, not a count of unique birds or a population survey.
01
Make the list yours. Choose Count every landing, Simple species watch or UK garden birds. These are editable examples, not identification guidance or different counting modes. Rename, add, remove or reorder the 1–8 categories before Start; names become fixed afterwards. A name such as “Sunday morning at the garden feeder” helps you recognise the saved session.
02
Start when the perch is in view. Tap once when a bird arrives from off that perch. A bird sitting there or hopping along it is still one landing. If it flies away and returns, tap again. If two birds arrive, make two separate taps, using the matching names if you know them. You do not need to recognise whether a returning bird is the same individual.
03
Leave room for uncertainty. If your list includes Unsure, use it for a landing you cannot identify confidently. Other means you recognise a bird outside your named list. For example, if an Unsure arrival was a Robin, pause, open Correct landing and replace its category. An accidental extra tap can be excluded; it stays available to restore.
04
Pause for the kettle, finish when you are done. Pause before looking away, then Resume when you return to the perch. A pause is a gap, not evidence that no birds arrived. Finish ends recording. Review the category totals and landing list, then download a JSON backup to keep the session before starting another.
After your watch
Read the story of your feeder session
One accepted tap records one landing.
Up to 400 retained occurrence records, including excluded taps.
Pauses are not observed. Interrupted coverage stays uncertain.
Exclude or restore a tap, or replace its category. Capture times stay unchanged.
See which birds or categories you recorded most often during this watch, find an arrival in the landing list, and check a correction. Filter by category or hide excluded records to inspect up to 50 at a time. Totals still cover the whole session. The list tells you what you recorded during your watching periods; it cannot fill in what happened while you were away.
Six taps, five included landings
All times here are UTC on September 27, 2026. Start at 09:00. Record Sparrow at 09:00:05.100, Robin at 09:01:00 and an accidental Sparrow at that same time. Exclude the accidental third tap at 09:01:02. Record Unsure at 09:02; pause at 09:03 and replace that record’s category with Robin at 09:03:10.
Resume at 09:05 and record two Sparrow landings at 09:05:10. Pause at 09:06. Resume at 09:07, record nothing, and finish at 09:08.
Expected: Sparrow 3, Robin 2, Unsure 0; 5 included, 6 retained, 1 excluded and 1 recategorized. The three periods contain 3, 2 and 0 included landings, with two unobserved gaps. CSV has 15 data rows: one session, three categories, three periods, two gaps and six occurrences.
A period with no recorded landings
Start at 10:00, record nothing and pause at 10:02. Finish at 10:03. The period contains 0 recorded landings. The 10:02–10:03 gap is not observed; finishing does not turn it into a zero-event watching period.
One retained session
Check saving and keep a backup
Browser storage can fail or be cleared. Keep a JSON backup of work you need.
Finish when you are done watching, check the totals and keep the JSON file somewhere you can find again. Use CSV if you want to read the complete record in a spreadsheet. Only one session is retained here; there is no saved-session archive or comparison view.
Saving, restoring and reading your downloads
Saving and interruptions
The saving label distinguishes a verified browser save from work retained only in this tab. If saving fails, recording stops. Keep the tab open, check the retained records and retry saving. A failed attempt is not automatically replayed. Initial use without browser saving needs an explicit choice; downloading JSON is then your way to keep a copy.
One editing tab
A second tab is read-only until you choose Take over editing. Taking over does not resume watching. Reloaded, imported and interrupted active periods need an explicit Resume. The detection time only records when an interruption was noticed, not when you stopped observing. There is no account, cloud sync or guaranteed offline page availability.
Restore JSON
Preview a JSON backup before replacing this session. Replacement does not merge records.
JSON preserves all retained records, corrections, categories, periods and saved setup drafts. Only a valid Observation backup up to 1 MiB is accepted. It cannot replace another tool’s profile. Export the current session before starting a new one: replacement has no archive or undo. Text still outside the saved session must be copied separately.
Read the CSV report
CSV includes every retained occurrence, category totals, periods and gaps. Filters do not trim the report.
The 23 columns use record_type to distinguish session, category, period, gap and occurrence rows. Unknown times and unobserved gap counts stay blank. The report labels saving status and uses UTC. CSV is not a restorable backup. Formula-shaped names receive an apostrophe prefix; check spreadsheet import settings because applications can interpret text differently.
When watching is interrupted, or the clock changes
Pause and Finish settle pending taps before closing the watching period. Separate deliberate taps remain separate records; holding a key down does not keep adding landings. Reloading, hiding or leaving the page stops recording and makes the previous period uncertain. Resume only when you are watching again.
Times are shown in UTC from your device clock. Record order follows your taps.
Returning to a reloaded page
Use the first example through the two Sparrow landings in period two, then reload at 09:07 without pausing. The result still has 5 included and 6 retained records. Period two has an unknown end; 09:07 is the interruption detection time. Choose Resume only when you are watching again. That starts a new period and cannot repair the unknown gap.
The device clock moves backwards
Record a landing at 11:00, then another when the device clock reads 10:59. Both remain included, in order 1 then 2. A device-clock warning identifies the inconsistency. The tool does not rewrite capture times or calculate rates, elapsed watching time or bird populations from them.