Aves Vox question (1 Viewer)

[Sharpbill]

This is probably a daft question but… I want to use Aves Vox to create a playlist of birds on my iPhone15 pro to use in the field in Ghana.

I already have a ‘Species List’ of selected birds downloaded to my phone but when I experimented with this in the UK the calls on my phone would not play in areas with no 3G/4G reception.

So the question is, when I go abroad how can I play these in the field? Must I buy a local pay-as-you-go SIM (which could be of limited use anyway depending by the quality of reception in the area), or is there a way of playing this downloaded list without buying one?

Many thanks.

 

[THE_FERN]

This is probably a daft question but… I want to use Aves Vox to create a playlist of birds on my iPhone15 pro to use in the field in Ghana.

I already have a ‘Species List’ of selected birds downloaded to my phone but when I experimented with this in the UK the calls on my phone would not play in areas with no 3G/4G reception.

So the question is, when I go abroad how can I play these in the field? Must I buy a local pay-as-you-go SIM (which could be of limited use anyway depending by the quality of reception in the area), or is there a way of playing this downloaded list without buying one?

Many thanks.

You should download the recordings before you go. The same goes for any ebird or other checklists: even if you do have a local SIM you'll almost certainly find this easier and quicker at home than in country.

I haven't really used aves vox recently. Once upon a time you could bulk download species I think but iirc this was disabled because of the pressure it put on xeno canto servers. I see you can choose a checklist but it looks as though you have to download recordings individually within that.

If so, this means that Merlin is a better bet---if it has good species coverage for your area of interest. Often it doesn't, at least for more "exotic" places (e.g. Sulawesi)---and the restrictive Macauley licensing doesn't help here.

Alternatives to one-at-a-time downloads include writing scripts or finding another app (increasingly common these days to have sounds included in the field guide apps)

 

[THE_FERN]

Just looking, again not tried recently, but you might investigate the African Bird Club (ABC) Birds of Africa app which includes calls and is free