Birda Is A New Birding App

Birdwatching is one of the fastest growing hobbies. Maria chats with Natalie and John White,
co-founders of Birda, the new birdwatching app! Become part of the community while appreciating nature by downloading the app!

***Due to technical difficulties beyond my control, this interview has clicks and drop-outs. I did my best to salvage it as I wanted to share Natale and John with you. I appreciate your patience listening...Maria***

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Maria's MutS and Stuff.It's Maria Malido, So my apologies this
interview you're about to hear. Ihad some technical difficulties and I cleaned it
up as best as I could,and I hope it still makes sense to
you. And I didn't want tolose it because I wanted to share.
Natalie and John White, they areco founders of the app Birda. It's

(00:23):
a birding app and I think you'llfind it interesting and their mission is to
help people experience the natural world,so they'll fight to protect it and you
could learn more at birta dot org. Thanks for your patience listening it's Maria's
MutS and Stuff. What a greatidea on iHeartRadio and with me I have

(00:52):
Natalie and John White, founders ofBurda is an app. So what made
you come up with the idea?It actually starting in South Africa and that
got us onto the idea that thatyeah, when people see they want to
share it. So amazing leopard andour first instinct with our friends and family

(01:12):
game reserved in South Africa, andyeah it become a generalist wildlife app and
then from to bird watching and thatI mean decided to go for birds instead
of wildlife. So we realized thatetin that we had on our we're going
to wild loidon and game reserves fromtime three times a year on the platform,

(01:34):
we're active all the time, gardensand you know, even and sort
of urban environs. So we realizedthat there were a very sort of top
of of a lot more active,but we made the decision a lot simpler
to but of one. It wasa much more coll community to to sure,
Yeah, and I think a lotof it was a band of more
people to connect to us. Uhhuh, I'm going to do that because

(01:57):
you don't need to be a birdwatching you guys. Yeah, exactly.
I'm fascinated by birds, but i'mwatcher so to speak many people who've taught
me things about the different birds andtry to recognize travel that I like yourselves
and about birds, and you couldprobably idea internet get those people to stay
see and we found this list andthe next time familiar with our lifeless is

(02:23):
obviously and yeah, so once yougot lifeless to see that you don't have
on your list, you're you're like, I'm going to add this to my
list, and wow, and it'sabout kind of you know, fun into
it and kind of motivate people toget outside. You know, badges that
you can wear that you can takepart in. And while everything that you

(02:44):
record conservations so at the same tightings, you're also kind of the environment conservation
search. So that's kind of alland then the community kind of whole thing.
Wow, Yeah, it's cool.You have birder dot org because I
thought this was so cool. Peopleexperience the natural, we're a fight to
protect it. So we found thatbird watching it's almost like a gateway the

(03:06):
outdoors. You can you can anywherein the world, even in these there
are birds. Get into on appreciatingnature. And once you start going to
a little wild to you if somethingis threatened that place or when the developer
those people that are like, Idon't want that to happen about wild space.
Sure, So that's the that's thegoal. Yeah, and connect people
with the outdoors they care about it. Walk me through. Say, as

(03:29):
a beginner, I can go tolike the apps of the birder app,
So I go to Central Park abird, take a video of it,
walk me through. You have totake a video or photos. But in
what we've tried to build three stepprocess. The first is feature which helps
you find places to human guards.Okay, and go to Central Park and

(03:51):
there's there'll be locations in Central Parkthat so we'll point those out for you.
Got a species list of what occurs, what you like you to see,
and we rank that likely to seeto the least line. And then
that same feature has got a coolsection to that takes there and then what
birds you've seen before you the birdsthat occur there, but people find to

(04:11):
that will help them see birds.Okay, so that's the first step.
Step where you left off is bethe logging step. So that's a you
see, the thing that you wantto do is identify a built in field
guard where you can reference images andcompare that to scene. You then log
it. You can either log itlike there's the ones that you see something
special, you just do a oneswhere you go into central part of stuff.

(04:32):
Basically everything that you see so asyou walk, so as you're logging,
and it's basically recording those locations,post that as is, or if
you're a photographer and you've got someof you saw, then you can attach
those and then when you post it, you know the community gets to see
what if you've taken photos of standardis then the community you're going that we
call our sort of ar feature andan intelligence. It's actual intelligence intelligence.

(04:58):
I love it, know what thesure that's unidentified which will come in and
weigh in and say this photo Ithink it's x y Z like almost like
a Reddit up and down based onwhat people are suggested, and then you
can can accept when it has beensuggested. We've had an amazing it was
left behind the naturally, yeah,mostly entire internet. That's that's a very

(05:20):
big compliment that you should use thatcompliment because usually the Internet were as good
as it is, it's not verygood exactly. It's anywhere in the world
correct, anywhere in the world withthe exact number. But we were instance
now Wow Andie and Joah we're focusingon launched in the UK and then based

(05:42):
in Southern Africa, so those areput but we've got people with one hundred
and seventy seven countries posting sightings.You can also sort of from the comfort
of yourself, other people are seeingcolorful exotic birds. We've got quite a
lot of brown birds, so it'syou know, sure, we've got a
feed called the nearby the way inthe world and you can see like a

(06:03):
little feeding in that location. Cool, so you can sort of drop it
into and just see they're all thecool things people. I mean, that's
it's true. It's like it's theworld to people. Yeah, absolutely,
especially to see something for another continentthat they would never be able to.
I'm very intrigued by it. It'sa cool app. There's a lot of
We've had a lot of different platformsand we don't see this competition like in

(06:27):
this eBird, which is massive andincredible work for conservation. They've got a
following. We see ourselves as aggregatorof all these different ass in community and
fun and stuff like that. Thenyou can just empy records over from these
other platforms. Here in the UK, we've got bird Bird lesser cuttings over
that will populate your life, willget you started, and then when you

(06:48):
just do another important is about thecommunity sure built like a new generation.
Yeah, you know, I thinkthis kind of stereotype around bird something for
kind of older you know, plentyof time on their hut. You know.
With Burder, we've really kind ofnew generation of bird. What a
lot of younger people are really likefeel the mental issues that are at stake,

(07:12):
and they really part of the communitythat kind of wants to share their
experiences. It's about sixty percent ofour community of Putty four I think it
was. Oh, that's it's quitea significant proportion that are younger. For
all of thoughts that come from genZ are very interested in the future edge
that's happening to the earth. Weall need them these days, don't we
to kind of get off our scrollingget outdoors. By introducing these kind of

(07:33):
fun challenges, you can set goals, so I'd like to spend so much
time this month. All of thesethings are ways kind of being motivated and
then other piece so kind of asa knock on effect, which is pretty
cool, right right, And Iwont as it goes along, you're going
to have couples or maybe you havealready. Maybe it's like a dating inside
as well. Yeah, the nameBurder we actually for a name we were

(07:58):
called, and then we started tryingto sort of formalize that name, and
we were struggling. We basically lookedat evans on the internet and good and
names that we could trade. Imean when its like short and you had
about one hundred different names bird andthere sure when you use the platform a
Strava feel to it and genality andwhat you can do and trying to as

(08:22):
a friendly and I rather yeah,yeah, it's about birds name it's perfect,
it's perfect. Each have a favoritebird, we do you do?
Okay, go first? So whichsort of reflects on favorite uk bird,
which a great spotted woodpecker, whichare very striking birds. I just think

(08:43):
wod pull birds. And then mysort of which is where I spent a
lot of chart bird, which isthis very kind of tall, it's got
very long walking very gracefully through thecool hair. Do you cool bird?
Cool? And John mine is thebones little fifty upper And yeah it's also
South African pact difficult toy in SouthAfrica and Naskan Creaker National Park. I've

(09:07):
also got to have to competitions.The one is a bond swallow because of
their loves in partly loves in Africa. Like you, right, that's perfect.
So before we go for someone whowants to get started with the app,
take lookings around you see what birdsyou can find, and once you've

(09:28):
logged them, we automate for youand once you go loveless, Ye,
there your first size badge, whichis a pretty cool little badgade, and
you can kind of get started.I love it. Natalie and Genres of
Burda, thank you.