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Guide · Birds

How to submit a bird sighting.

You saw a bird and you want it in Clio. This guide takes you from the walk to the finished record. You don’t need to be an expert, and you can be unsure what the bird is.

Private first. Everything you save stays a private draft until you publish it. A published record is public, with a CC BY 4.0 licence. Publishing is not checking: a published record is not a verified identification.

Step 1

Before you go.

  • Charge your phone. You will use it for photos, recordings and notes.
  • Camera location is up to you. With it on, your photos remember where you took them, which helps you fill in the place later. That hidden location is private data: if you use it, make a clean copy of each photo before you publish (see Adding files). Leave it off for threatened birds. Keep location off in your voice recorder: Clio stops recordings that carry location tags.
  • Approach quietly. Walk slowly, keep your distance and let the bird settle. If it stops what it’s doing or gives an alarm call, back away.
  • Check the rules. Ask the landholder before you go onto private land, and check the rules for parks and reserves.
  • Leave sick or dead birds alone. BirdLife Australia’s advice is to keep a safe distance, note the place, date and time, and report it. Read BirdLife Australia: sick or dead birds and H5 bird flu (opens in a new tab) for the current steps.

Step 2

Photos.

  • Take several shots, not one. Birds move, and the best frame is rarely the first.
  • Shoot side-on when you can. A side view shows the whole shape of the bird.
  • Show the bill, the eye, a wing and the tail. These are the features that tell similar birds apart, and they let someone else check your identification later.
  • Don’t crop or edit in the camera. Keep every original file. If you want a tidier picture, crop a copy afterwards.

Step 3

Recording a call.

A recording lets someone else listen and check, and it helps when you hear a bird you can’t see.

  • Use your phone’s voice recorder.
  • Get as close as you can without disturbing the bird. Move slowly and keep quiet.
  • Record for 10 to 60 seconds.
  • Say nothing while it records. Your voice covers the bird.
  • Note the time as soon as you stop. Write it in your record later.

Never play recorded calls to draw a bird in. Playback can distress birds and disturb feeding or breeding. BirdLife Australia says that, as a rule, it does not support call playback for recreational birdwatching. Read the BirdLife Australia ethical birdwatching guidelines (opens in a new tab).

Stay well away from nests. If you think a nest is nearby, move away. Disturbance can cause stress or nest failure.

Step 4

What Clio asks for.

Clio uses the Biological occurrence form for a bird sighting. Open Contribute and, under Evidence profile, choose Biological occurrence. You need a Clio identity first, and the identity page explains how that works.

You can be unsure. Say what you know, and say what you don’t. These are the main questions, in the words the form uses.

Title
A short name for the record, such as “Grey Fantail, creek track”.
Date
The day you saw or heard the bird, as year-month-day, for example 2026-10-22. The form takes the day, not the time, so write the time in What you saw or did.
Place
Describe the place in words: the suburb, park or track. Keep it general if the exact spot could put a bird at risk. The form also asks for Latitude, Longitude and Location accuracy (metres), which you can read from a map app.
Observer or collector
Who saw or heard it. This can be you.
What kind of record is this?
Choose HumanObservation if you saw or heard the bird yourself.
What you saw or did
Describe what you observed, and the time. Keep what you saw separate from what you think it means.
How many
How many birds you counted. Leave it blank if you didn’t count.
Behaviour
What you saw the bird doing, such as feeding, calling or flying. Write what you saw, not what you think it meant.
How you recorded it
How you observed it, such as “photographed from the path” or “recorded on my phone”, and anything you did differently from usual.
What you think it is
Type the name in your own words. A common name is fine here.
How far you could identify it
The most precise level your evidence supports. A genus or family is fine when you can’t be sure of the species.
Scientific name
The Latin name at that level, for example a genus or a family. If you only know it’s a bird, enter Aves and choose class as how far you could identify it.
Why you think it’s that
What helped you: the colours and shape, a field guide, or the call.
How sure you are
Choose from certain, probable, possible, family_only, genus_only or unknown. Not sure is a good answer.
What’s uncertain
Say what is estimated, unclear or missing. Write “none known” if nothing is.
Wild, planted or kept?
Choose wild for a free bird. The list also has planted_or_cultivated, captive_or_kept and not_sure.
Who can see the exact place
Public shows your point. If you leave this blank, Clio treats the place as public. See Threatened species before you publish the place of a rare bird.

The form has a few more questions, and each has a short help line. You can save a draft with only a title, date, place, observer and kind of record. Clio asks for more before you can publish, including the ones above from How you recorded it to Wild, planted or kept?.

Choose Save draft to keep your work private. When you’re ready, choose Review and publish, check the summary, then choose Publish now. Clio highlights anything it still needs. To publish, you also confirm that you have the right to share your material under CC BY 4.0.

Step 5

If the bird is threatened.

Some birds are listed as threatened. An exact point for one of them, or for its nest, can bring visitors and put the bird at risk.

  1. Check the bird’s status.

    Look it up in NSW threatened species profiles (opens in a new tab) or Queensland WildNet species profiles (opens in a new tab). A bird can have a different status in another state or under national law, so check the state where you saw it. For another state, use that state’s own threatened species list.

  2. If it’s listed, or you’re not sure, generalise the place.

    Set Who can see the exact place to generalized. That is how the list spells it. Generalised means about 10 km. When you choose it, the form rounds Latitude and Longitude to one decimal place (0.1 degree) and sets Location accuracy (metres) to at least 10000, and shows you the result before you publish. Clio won’t publish a generalised point with more decimal places or a smaller accuracy. Keep Place general too. You can also leave Latitude and Longitude blank.

    Generalising the place doesn’t change your photos. A photo can still carry your GPS position, so for a threatened bird publish only a clean copy (see Adding files), or remove the location from the photo first.

    The list also has restricted, which keeps a place private. It needs a private location record that this form can’t create yet, so a record set to restricted can’t be published for now. If a place must stay private, keep the record as a draft and email us. Please don’t include the place in your email.

  3. Never share a nest location.

    Keep nests, roosts and breeding sites out of every field: Place, What you saw or did, Behaviour, captions and alt text. Don’t photograph near a nest.

Step 6

Adding files.

On the Contribute page, find Evidence files, then Add your images or sound recordings. Choose your files. Clio checks each one on your device first and shows any warnings before it uploads anything. The files upload when you save your draft or publish.

Photos

  • Use JPEG, PNG, TIFF or WebP files, up to 25 MB each.
  • An iPhone can save photos as HEIC, which Clio doesn’t accept. In Settings, Camera, Formats, choose Most Compatible, or export the photo as a JPEG.
  • Use the clean copy option. Photos can hide your GPS position inside the file. For a JPEG or PNG, choose Create privacy-scrubbed copy under the photo. When it works, the button changes to Clean copy selected for publication. Clio then publishes the clean copy, with the hidden location and other private details removed, and keeps your original out of public view.
  • If you skip it, Clio publishes the photo as you chose it, including any hidden location. TIFF and WebP files don’t get the button. Use JPEG or PNG, or remove the location data before you choose the file.
  • Add Alt text (optional): one plain sentence about what the photo shows, for people who can’t see it.

Sound recordings

  • Use M4A, MP3, WAV, FLAC or Ogg files, up to 25 MB each. Many phone voice recorders save M4A or MP3. If yours saves something else, export one of these formats first.
  • Clio can’t make a clean copy of a sound file. It publishes the recording exactly as you upload it.
  • If a recording carries location tags, Clio stops it with the message “This recording carries location tags, and Clio would publish them.” Remove the tags with your recorder app or an audio editor, then choose the file again. Give the place in the form instead, where you control who sees it.
  • Author and date tags only give a warning.
  • Add a Label for this recording (optional), such as “Call at dusk, about 30 seconds”.

Also

Other places your record can help.

Clio doesn’t send your records to any of these services. If you want a sighting there too, you add it there yourself, with that service’s own account and rules.

Birdata (opens in a new tab)

BirdLife Australia’s national monitoring platform. It suits a repeatable survey better than a casual one-off sighting. You need a free account.

Each service has its own terms. Your published Clio record carries a CC BY 4.0 licence, so check the other service’s terms before you copy a photo or recording across. For more bird references, see the Birds reference library.

Ready?

Start your record.

Clio is new, so tell us if something in this guide is wrong or hard to follow. Please don’t email personal data or the place of a threatened bird.

Start a contribution Tell us what to fix