The scenario. Three days on the coast in early autumn, staying over, hoping for waders and seals. Two of those days are speculative and one is a commission. This is how the whole thing gets planned and — the part people skip — costed.
Planning → Locations → your coastal site, with the type set to wildlife
Set the location type to wildlife and the app looks up what has been recorded near those coordinates, and the months each species shows up in.
Read it for what it is. A record means somebody saw that species there and wrote it down. It does not mean it is reliably there, and no records often just means nobody has surveyed that stretch. As “here is what has been seen around here, and when”, it is genuinely useful.
Seasonality is the question worth answering before booking accommodation. Early autumn is right for arriving waders and wrong for breeding seabirds, and finding that out now is cheaper than finding it out from a hide.
📷 Screenshot needed —
/assets/images/guides/wildlife-species-seasonality.pngA location’s wildlife list showing species with their active months.
Tap a species and you get a written guide — behaviour, when it is active, what to expect on approach, what makes a good photograph of it.
These are generated on the device, in the background while the phone is idle and charging. Which matters for a trip: they are simply present when you open the app in a hide with no signal, rather than something you need to look up.
Wildlife records need a connection to fetch, then cache. Do the lookup before you leave, not when you arrive.
Planning → Permits
Coastal reserves, estates and some beaches want permission for commercial photography, and the threshold is often lower than people expect — a tripod alone can be enough.
Record the permit against the location, with its conditions and expiry. The conditions are the part that matters: no approach within a set distance, no access during breeding season, only outside opening hours. You agreed to them months ago and will not remember them.
Because it is attached to the location, it appears while you are planning rather than while you are being asked to leave.
Planning → Trips → New
Add the travel legs with their distances, and the accommodation with its cost. Two nights in a B&B before a dawn start is a legitimate business cost, and one people routinely absorb personally without thinking.
The mileage claim is calculated from the rate you set in Settings — your rate, in your units, rather than a built-in assumption.
📷 Screenshot needed —
/assets/images/guides/wildlife-trip-legs.pngA trip showing travel legs with distances, accommodation, and the calculated mileage claim.
Planning → Gear → Kits
If you keep a wildlife kit, assign it to the booking. If you are hiring a long lens for the trip, add it as a hired item with its dates and daily cost — the return date then behaves like every other date the app watches, and the hire cost can go into the job’s expenses rather than being an unexplained card payment.
On the trip → Create Expense
The trip’s total, mileage included, becomes an expense against the booking.
That single step is what separates knowing the commission paid £700 from knowing it paid £700 and cost £280 in travel and accommodation before you photographed anything. A three-day trip for one paid day is frequently a worse proposition than it looks, and the only way to find out is to attach the cost to the job.
The same route exists for permits and hired gear, for the same reason.
Open the booking for the address, the access notes, and the light. Tides too, if the hide depends on them — many coastal hides do, and a high-water roost is a different proposition from a low-water feed.
| Module | Guide |
|---|---|
| Wildlife | Wildlife |
| Locations | Location Scout |
| Permits | Permits |
| Trips | Trips |
| Gear | Gear Manager |
| Expenses | Expenses |
| Tides | Tides |