Field records for managed land, by TinajaLabs.com
NestBox is a tool for documenting what lives on and happens across a piece of land: the nest boxes you monitor, the feeders and game cameras you check, the wildlife you see. You record observations in the field on a phone, and NestBox turns that one record into whatever different institutions need — a science contribution to Cornell's NestWatch, a compliance summary for your county, or a private archive of your property over the years.
It runs on your own server. Your data stays yours.
A landowner managing property for wildlife usually has three separate needs and no single place to serve them:
just this season but over years. Paper survey sheets answer "what happened this year" and then go in a drawer. NestBox keeps the history attached to each box, so patterns become visible.
the county appraisal district documentation of the practices you carried out: nest boxes maintained, feeders kept up, census counts made. NestBox records those activities as they happen and produces a dated summary.
nesting records used by researchers across North America. Your nest checks can contribute to it directly.
The important idea: these do not have to be separate work. You survey once, and NestBox produces both the compliance summary and the NestWatch export from the same records.
This is worth understanding, because it shapes how the app is built.
Compliance data is a dead end by design. The report you file goes to your county appraisal district to confirm you did what your management plan committed to. The state wildlife agency does not keep it; no researcher receives it. It proves you did the work, and then it sits in a county file. That is fine — it is what the valuation requires — but the nesting data you gathered is scientifically valuable, and compliance alone throws that value away.
NestWatch is the opposite: a lasting, open, scientific record. By monitoring your boxes on a regular schedule and exporting to NestWatch, the same effort that satisfies the county also becomes a genuine contribution to ornithology. Small landowners are an underrepresented source of nesting data precisely because there has been no easy path from a clipboard to Cornell. NestBox is that path.
So: do the compliance report because you must, and send the same data to NestWatch because it costs almost nothing more and does lasting good.
NestWatch asks for nest checks on a regular schedule during the breeding season. The essentials:
central Texas). This cadence is frequent enough to pin down when eggs are laid, when they hatch, and when young fledge, which is what makes the data useful.
afternoon, in fair weather.
bluebirds). Opening a box late can cause young to fledge before they are ready.
NestBox structures this the way NestWatch does, using two ideas: rounds and attempts.
NestBox is organized around a property. Everything — boxes, cameras, feeders, observations — belongs to one property. The five tabs across the bottom are:
and log a visit. This is where you spend field time.
arrow pointing the way.
live position.
the property, review a feature's full history.
The menu in the top-right corner (the ☰ button) holds your account: edit your display name, change your password, open this help, and sign out. If you are an owner, it also has Manage users.
A feature is a durable thing on the land that you revisit — a nest box, a game camera, a feeder, a food plot, a water trough. Each belongs to a module that defines what you record about it.
To set one up, go to Records, choose the module, and add a feature. Give it the label you use in the field (the number on the box), set its location by standing at it and tapping Use my location, and fill in the fixed details — for a nest box, the entrance direction, hole size, and predator guard; for a camera station, the type and what feed it holds.
If you type coordinates by hand instead of using the location button, enter both numbers separated by a comma — latitude first, then longitude, for example 30.201, -96.401. In Texas the longitude is negative. Google Maps gives you both when you right-click a spot. For a box you are standing at, Use my location is more accurate, since it reads your GPS directly. Every field has a ? beside it explaining what it means and why it is recorded. The full set of definitions is also collected under Reports → Field guide.
The nest box module follows the NestWatch protocol. When you record a visit you note the nest's status, any eggs or young, adult activity, and management actions taken. You also record the species using the box — the picker offers birds plausible for your region, so in central Texas you will see Eastern Bluebird and Carolina Wren near the top.
One field worth explaining: cowbird eggs. Brown-headed Cowbirds are brood parasites — they build no nest of their own and lay their eggs in other birds' nests, where the larger cowbird chick often outcompetes the host's own young. You count them separately from the host's eggs. Note that cowbirds are federally protected; their eggs may not be removed without a permit.
The camera module covers game cameras, feeders, food plots, and water sources. When you pull a card you record what species appeared and how many; when you refill a feeder you record what and how much. These entries document the supplemental food, water, and census practices a county wildlife report asks about, and the wildlife sightings can feed broader records over time.
On the paper forms this replaced, each survey sheet had a single date — the day you walked the property and checked everything. A round is that idea.
Start a round from the Survey screen before you set out. As you record visits, they attach to the round. The round shows how many features you have reached, so the ones you have not get surfaced rather than quietly skipped — no more a dozen visits to the easy box by the driveway and none to the far corner. When you are done, finish the round.
Features you have not visited within their recommended interval are badged due, and features never visited sort to the top of the list, so coverage stays honest.
An attempt is one breeding effort by one pair in one box: building, laying, hatching, and fledging — or failing. A single box can host several attempts in a season, such as a wren raising a brood and leaving, then a bluebird moving in, or a re-nest after a predator strikes.
You do not create attempts by hand. The first time you record a species on a visit to a box, NestBox opens an attempt; later visits naming that species join it. What you do need to do is close the attempt with an outcome when the effort ends — fledged, or a failure reason. Open the box under Records to see its attempts and set the outcome. This matters because the outcome is what makes the NestWatch record complete; until it is set, the export marks the attempt as still open.
The Find tab uses each feature's stored location. Pick a box and you get a large distance readout and an arrow that turns to point at it as you walk. It works with no cell signal, since it relies on GPS.
On a phone, the compass arrow needs a one-time permission tap — use the Enable compass button. Until then the arrow still points by direction and tells you which way to head.
GPS requires a secure connection. Phone browsers only allow location on sites served over HTTPS. If you load NestBox over a plain address and GPS fails, that is why, and the app will say so. Serving the app over HTTPS resolves it.
Each screen has its own address, so refreshing the page returns to the same place rather than the start, and the back button steps back through the screens visited rather than leaving the application. A screen can also be bookmarked — a particular box, for instance — and opened directly next time.
Pastures often have no signal. If the server cannot be reached when a visit is saved, NestBox holds the record on the phone and a banner appears at the top of the screen saying how many visits are waiting.
Records held on the phone are not safe. They live in browser storage, which is cleared when the device runs low on space, and on iPhone is cleared automatically after about a week without opening the app. They only become permanent once they reach the server.
The banner stays visible until everything has been sent, and offers a Send now button. Records are also sent automatically when the connection returns. Get back in range and confirm the banner has cleared before finishing for the day.
The Diagnostics screen shows the same count, along with whether the app is currently online.
NestBox runs in a browser, and can also be installed to the home screen so it opens like an app, full screen and without browser chrome.
On Android, the browser menu offers Install app or Add to Home screen. On iPhone and iPad this is never offered automatically: tap the Share button in Safari, then Add to Home Screen.
Two things to know on iPhone:
means signing in again; that is expected, not a fault.
week. For a survey checked a few times a season, do not rely on the phone holding data offline for long stretches — open the app while in range so records reach the server.
Installing and GPS both require the app to be served over HTTPS. The Diagnostics screen in the top-right menu reports whether that is the case, along with location permission, offline status, and storage, and explains anything that is preventing a feature from working.
The Map tab offers satellite imagery (the default, since rural land is nearly blank on street maps) and street maps, switchable from the control in the corner. Your features appear as colored pins, and your own position as a moving dot.
Reports gives you a summary of features and coverage, a maintenance worklist of anything flagged for repair, the field guide, and the exports:
NestWatch's bulk upload. Verify the column layout against NestWatch's current template before your first submission.
management practice categories, with a feature inventory. It documents the work you did; whether it satisfies the valuation is the appraisal district's call, not the app's.
and portability. Copying this and your database file preserves everything.
Preview any export to see what it will contain before downloading.
NestBox supports a small group sharing one property. Three roles:
The first time a new installation is opened, it shows a setup screen where the first account is created. That account becomes the owner, and the screen closes once it exists.
Owners manage accounts from Manage users in the top-right menu: create a user, set a role, reset a password, or remove someone. Everyone can edit their own display name and change their own password from the same menu. The last owner cannot be removed or demoted, so a property can never lock itself out.
Everything lives in one database file on your server. Copy it — plus any photos — and you have preserved the entire record. The Full data export is a portable second copy in an open format.
NestBox by TinajaLabs.com
Birdhouse icon by Zlatko Najdenovski on Icon-Icons.com.
NestBox is free software, licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 (AGPL-3.0) or later.
You may use, study, share, and modify it. If you distribute it, or run a modified version as a network service that others use, you must make your source available under the same license. This keeps NestBox and improvements to it open for everyone.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for the full terms.