Panchhi Mitra

This application contains images of 40 common birds found in Central India along with their typical calls. It aims to serve as a ready reckoner for anyone wanting to take their first flight into the wonderful world of birds. This application has been created specifically for school and college students but can be used by anyone interested in birdwatching or birding. Many birds selected for this application have a widespread distribution and can be found not only in Central India but across the entire Indian subcontinent, Asia and also around the world. With this app, the user can learn to identify common birds by direct sightings or by listening and recognizing calls. Learning to identify birds by their calls is particularly useful as on many occasions, birds cannot be seen but their presence in the area can be confirmed by listening to and identifying calls.

Panchhi Mitra should also be useful in training nature guides for wildlife areas. Trainees can use the app to familiarize themselves with birds and their calls while instructors can use the app to test the trainees by randomly playing bird calls and asking the trainees to identify the bird. In a similar way, Panchhi Mitra can be used to conduct wildlife quizzes in school and colleges. Students can use the app to keep a record of sightings on their campuses, create databases of avifauna diversity and visualize collective sightings over time in Google Earth or GIS. The app can also be used to get vocal responses from birds in a nature area by playing a call from the app on the mobile phone and then waiting for a live response from the bird which can be recorded on a second mobile phone.

Key features include:

- Easy to use and intuitive user interface design
- Bilingual providing names and descriptions in Hindi and English
- Close up Pictures of Birds that can help in identification
- Bird calls that can help in identification if bird is not visible
- Scientific names of birds along with brief description of distribution, habitat, food and breeding
- Links to more information on each bird included in the app
- Mark location of bird sighting and store geographic coordinates of the sighting
- See location of all sightings on map
- Download sightings data as an excel file
- Share sightings on Facebook & Instagram
- Tap to enlarge bird pictures

The app is completely free with no ads. It has been built with the sole aim to make people aware of their local avifauna and help them appreciate nature and conserve its biodiversity.

We hope that through this app, people are enthused to better understand natural ecosystems, observe the interdependence of plants, animals and the physical environment and appreciate the interplay of various biological and non-biological elements that come together beautifully to weave the web of life.

This app comes to you from the Chhattisgarh State Biodiversity Board, Raipur, India and the Centre for Geoinformatics, Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal, India.

Enjoy!