Getting the most from the BirdID website

This page is devoted to some of the not so obvious features of our website that you may find very valuable when practising for the exam (or when having fun).


Always log-in before practicing to record your mistakes and correct answers.

Adaptive learning: after logging in go to "Myprofile" on our site. There you can see the progress you are making in learning the bird species as a total score. You can see which species you need more practise for. To practise only those weaker species you just press "Practice using only these species". For this to work you need to stay logged-in while practicing, so that mistakes are recorded.

Practice a limited set of species:
We recommend switching between testing yourself with quizzes on the whole syllabus, and custom made quizzes with just a limited set of species. For example it can be very rewarding to practice a particular family of birds while using a field guide extensively. Learn the characters that distinguish each bird in the families from the others by reading after each mistake you make.

There are several ways in which you can make a custom quiz:

Choose specific species for a quiz:

When starting the quiz click "yes" in the settings under "Select species?". Start entering the species you would like to include. For example; to make a warbler quiz, write "warbler", keep the ctrl button pressed, and select all the species with warbler contained in the name (latin names also works, type e.g. Sylvia, then select listed species). To save you from entering all the species again when repeating the excercise, read on about competition groups.

Choose groups of birds from our bird guide: Choose silhouettes and then for example "Gulls", then press "practise using only these species".
https://www.birdid.no/bird/eBook.php
Note: the Bird Guide now has about 290 species. New species will be added from time to time to eventually cover the whole of WP.

Make competition groups yourself with particular choices like; number of attempts, whether you want to challenge somebody etc. :
https://www.birdid.no/bird/userCompetitionGroup.php
Competition groups can be used for:
• Practising on selecteds species before a trip
• Making a nice learing curve
• Challenge friends with "one try only" quizes
• Compete within groups with isolated highscores
(requires log-in to edit or create)

If you are a teacher, note that you can give your students tests by creating competition groups and choosing "Highscore only visible to creator". Then tell the students to enter the group, complete the test, and enter their score as an assignment. Results will then only be visible to the teacher.

Use the Bird guide

Read about the fieldmarks. They may be totally different from what you imagine from the species name etc. Have a look at the topography page to learn the terms to better understand the texts. When doing the training quiz in regular mode (not exam mode), you can click on the book icon next to the species name to quickly look-up the species in the bird guide. Species that are not yet published (unfinished records) are marked in red, published species are marked in green (the bird guide is a work in progress).

Formal exam:

You can always test yourself in the training quiz to see if you are ready for the formal exam. Choose your country/area, then press yes for "Exam mode" (you must be logged in for this). You should score above 40% regularly before starting the exam. The grading table is at the bottom of this page.

To find the syllabus for each country go to https://www.birdid.no/bird/index.php, then click on the map. The WP syllabus can be found here.

More:

Here's a collection of links we recommend.

Tricky sounds for TOV-E field survey, advanced difficulty.