Data, photos and licences

Last updated 4 November 2026

FlipTheBird Guide is built on the work of thousands of volunteer atlasers, scientists, photographers and Wikipedia writers. Thank you. This page lists every source and its licence. The app shows the same list under More → Data, photos and licences, and credits each photo under the photo.

Seasonal maps: the bird atlas

The month-by-month maps come from the Southern African Bird Atlas Project 2 (SABAP2), run by the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town, and the volunteers who submit its atlas cards. We use the share of full-protocol cards that record each species in each pentad and month, counted from the atlas data published on GBIF. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

• Brooks, M. et al. (2022) The African Bird Atlas Project: a description of the project and BirdMap data-collection protocol. Ostrich 93(4). doi:10.2989/00306525.2022.2125097
• SABAP2 on GBIF, downloaded 28 October 2026: doi:10.15468/dl.f4hhmm (cards) and doi:10.15468/dl.6yw5jk (species)

Some sensitive species are shown only at a coarser scale, about 25 km, to keep their sites safe.

Which birds, and how rare

The list of birds recorded in southern Africa, and each bird's rarity, come from record counts on GBIF (never the records themselves) in four datasets, all CC BY 4.0:

• SABAP1 and SABAP2, FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology
• eBird Observation Dataset, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• iNaturalist research-grade observations (only records under CC0 or CC BY are counted)

Which birds are endemic or near-endemic comes from AviList's range descriptions, checked against where each bird is recorded across Africa: GBIF.org (4 November 2026) GBIF Occurrence Download doi:10.15468/dl.w49u34 (CC0 and CC BY records only). Licence: CC BY 4.0.

Names and taxonomy

• AviList: species, their order, English names, each bird's global IUCN Red List category and the range descriptions behind endemic status. AviList Core Team (2026) AviList: The Global Avian Checklist, v2026. doi:10.2173/avilist.v2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.
• IOC World Bird List: Afrikaans names and older scientific names. Gill, F., Donsker, D. & Rasmussen, P. (eds) (2026) IOC World Bird List (v15.2). doi:10.14344/IOC.ML.15.2. Licence: CC BY 3.0.
• Older southern African names (Roberts VI and VII, Newman's, the bird atlas), so a search for "Cape Turtle Dove" or "Grey Lourie" finds the bird. We compiled this list ourselves from the field guides' name changes; single names are facts, free to use.

Habitat, diet and size

AVONET: Tobias, J.A. et al. (2022) AVONET: morphological, ecological and geographical data for all birds. Ecology Letters 25: 581–597. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

Species text

Each bird's description, voice, habitat, behaviour, breeding and status text is from its English Wikipedia article, by the article's contributors, shortened for the app. Each species page names its article. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

Photos

About 2,900 photos by over 750 photographers, from iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons. We use only photos in the public domain or under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA. Each one is resized and converted to WebP for the app, and credited under the photo with its photographer, its licence and a link to the original.

Is one of your photos in the app? If you'd like it credited differently or taken out, email support@flipthebird.co.za and we'll change it in the next update.

Maps

The offline base map (borders, provinces, lakes and rivers) is made with Natural Earth, which is in the public domain.

Software

The app is built with open-source libraries. Their licences and copyright notices are in the app under More → Open-source software.

What we don't use

The app is sold, so we leave out anything with a non-commercial (NC) licence, even where it would help, such as most bird call recordings online. If you think something in the app is credited wrongly, please tell us at support@flipthebird.co.za.