Veldsong privacy policy

Last updated: 7 November 2026

Veldsong is made by GreenERP, a New Zealand company. It identifies birds by their sound and does not collect or share personal information: what it saves stays on your phone. It has no accounts, no advertising, no analytics and no tracking.

The microphone

Veldsong uses the microphone only while you are listening: from when you tap Start Listening until you tap Stop Listening or close the app. The sound is analysed on your phone, seven seconds at a time, and then discarded. It is never saved to a file or sent anywhere. While you listen, the last call of each bird shown, and for a bird found by listening a second time under a louder bird also the sound of that second listen, is kept in memory only, so that it can be played back while the bird is on the list, and is discarded when you start listening again or close the app; it is never saved or sent.

Sightings and location

Veldsong saves the birds you hear as sightings, so that you can look back at them and see them on the map. Only a bird under Heard is saved; moving a bird to Maybe removes its sighting.

• A sighting keeps the species, the day, when it was first and last heard, how often, its best score, which sound model found it and, with location on, where you were when it was heard and how precise that position was. If you pin a place on the map yourself, what is heard while it is pinned keeps that place instead, also with location off. A species heard more than 50 metres from where it was heard earlier that day starts a new sighting, so with location on your sightings also show where you went while listening.
• Location is off until you turn it on. Veldsong offers to turn it on the first time you start listening or open the map; after that you can turn it on in Settings (Sightings and location, Location) or from the map, and off in Settings. While it is on, Veldsong reads your position while you are listening and while the map is open, and only while Veldsong is on screen, not in the background.
• Your sightings and positions stay on this phone. Veldsong doesn't upload or share them, and makes no copy elsewhere: no account, no copy of its own elsewhere and no sync; the only backup is the file you make yourself (below). They are kept in Veldsong's own storage on the phone, which other apps cannot read. A list of birds leaves the phone only when you send it yourself (Sharing a list, below), and your sightings only when you back them up yourself (Moving your sightings to a new phone, below).
• You can delete a sighting on the map; a bird with Remove on its page, from today's list when you open it from the Listen screen, or from the days History shows when you open it from History; or every sighting of the region you are in, in Settings (Sightings and location, Delete all sightings). Turning Keep a history off can delete the saved sightings of every region; with it off, new sightings are kept only until Veldsong closes. Uninstalling the app, or clearing its data in your phone's settings, deletes them too.
• The map is drawn on your phone from map data that comes with the app (from OpenStreetMap). Showing it sends nothing anywhere.

If a later version offers to send sightings on by itself, for example to a bird atlas, that will be your choice: off until you turn it on, never for sightings from before unless you choose them, and this policy will say so first.

Sharing a list

You can send a list of the birds you heard to someone else: what you heard since you started listening, or the days you chose in History.

• Veldsong first shows you the list as it will be sent: a picture that looks like a till receipt. Nothing is sent until you tap Share and pick an app, such as a messaging or mail app, in your phone's own Share sheet. That app gets the picture and the address of Veldsong's website. Or tap Share link, which sends a link to a page of Veldsong's website that shows the same birds: the birds are in the link after its "#", a part that browsers never send to a website, so the website receives no list. Or tap Copy list, which copies the list as text for you to paste somewhere yourself.
• The list holds the region's name, the dates, each bird's name and when it was heard (on a list of one day the time it was first heard, on a list of several days on how many of them) and, where the region knows it, which of the birds are rare there. A list from the Listen screen also holds the times you listened between and for how long. It holds no bird listed under Maybe.
• The list holds no place unless you turn on Show location before you share it. That switch is off every time the list is shown. When you turn it on, the list also holds the name of the place, such as a camp or a picnic site, where each bird was first heard, as the map names it. It never holds a position or a map.
• Veldsong sends nothing itself. It hands the list to the app you pick, which sends it under its own privacy policy. Veldsong keeps no record of what you shared or with whom.

Moving your sightings to a new phone

• In Settings, Back up and restore opens a page with two rows. Back up my sightings puts the saved sightings of the region you are in into one file, with everything a sighting keeps, where you heard each bird among it. Veldsong first says how many go and that the file holds where you heard them. Nothing leaves the phone until you choose where the file goes, in your phone's own Share sheet, such as an email to yourself, a chat or a cloud drive, or by saving it on the phone. The file holds no species whose place Veldsong never keeps.
• Restore sightings reads only the file you pick, and adds its sightings to those on the phone; it replaces none.
• Veldsong sends nothing itself. It hands the file to the app you pick, which sends it under its own privacy policy, and keeps no record of where it went.

What Veldsong downloads

Nothing. Everything it needs comes inside the app: the sound model, the photos and recorded calls of its species, the map and the demo recordings. Google Play installs and updates the app, under Google's own privacy policy. Veldsong itself has no permission to use the internet, so it sends nothing: no requests, no identifiers, no recordings, no location and no information about how you use it.

What stays on your phone

• The app's own files: the sound model, the photos, the calls and the map, so that Veldsong works offline. Uninstalling the app removes them.
• The region you used last, so the app opens on it next time.
• Your sightings, and your choices about them (Location, Keep a history).
• The birds you chose to ignore, so that Veldsong keeps them hidden.
• The view the map was last left at, for each map, so that it opens there next time, and the map layers you chose to show. The view often shows where you were, so Delete all sightings clears it for that region, and turning location off clears it for every region.
• Your choice of Dark at night, and the place it takes the time of dusk at: the region's own point on the map, never where you are.
• Your other settings (Dark screen, Two microphones), whether the app has asked you about location, and what it found works best on this phone to listen and to score the sound: which microphone path, and how many of the processor's threads.
• How much battery Veldsong uses while you listen: a reading of the phone's battery every 30 seconds of listening and whenever the battery saver comes on or goes off, with whether it was on, over the last hour of listening, for the battery the dark screen uses an hour. Older readings fall off by themselves, and the readings never leave your phone.
• What you shared last, the pictures of a list or a file of sightings, among the app's temporary files, until you share something else.
• A short error log, kept in memory while the app is open and gone when it closes, and your choice of Detailed log, which adds detail to it: timings, the readings of the phone's proximity and light sensors, and which of the app's own files were read from its storage. It leaves your phone only if you copy it yourself (Settings, About, Error Logs, Copy) and pass it on.

Permissions

• Microphone: to hear birds while you are listening.
• Keeping the screen on while you are listening.
• Location, only if you turn it on: to pin where you heard each species, to show where you are on the map, and to know when the sun sets there, for the night colours.

Veldsong does not use your contacts, camera, photos or files. Sharing a list needs no permission.

Links to other websites

The credits link to licences, to Wikimedia Commons, to Wikipedia and to the sources of the recordings and the data, the map's credit links to OpenStreetMap, and the Website row in Settings opens veldsong.com in your browser. These pages open only when you tap a link, and the other websites have their own privacy policies.

Your rights

The privacy laws of New Zealand, South Africa and elsewhere let you ask a company what personal information it holds about you, and have it corrected or deleted. GreenERP holds none about you: what Veldsong keeps is on your phone, where you can see it in the app and delete it yourself, as above. For any question about this, write to the address under Contact.

Children

Veldsong collects no personal information from anyone, children included.

Changes

If Veldsong ever starts to collect or share information, this policy will say so first, with the date of the change.

Contact

For a question about this policy or about Veldsong, write to hello@veldsong.com.