First, the birds
Everything else on this page is ordinary. This part is not, and it is first because it is the part people get wrong.
Do not press anybody for an exact location
Asking where a bird was is normal. Asking twice, after somebody has already given you an area rather than a spot, is not. “Whereabouts exactly?” is a question the finder has already answered by choosing a circle, and pushing past that answer is the behaviour this rule exists to stop.
The person who found the bird decides how precisely it gets shared. That is the whole design of the app and it is not up for negotiation.
Do not share nest sites
Any nest, any species, anywhere in the app. Not in a clue, not in a place hint, not in a group name, not in a party meeting point, not in a bio.
A nest is the one location where being found is fatal. This applies to a Blackbird in a hedge as well as to an eagle.
Do not post the breeding location of a Schedule 1 bird
Under section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 it is a criminal offence to intentionally or recklessly disturb a bird listed on Schedule 1 while it is building a nest, or is at or near a nest containing eggs or young, or to disturb its dependent young. The word “recklessly” was added to the Act to close a loophole, and publishing a precise location is exactly the conduct it was added to cover. You do not have to go anywhere near the nest to commit it.
Golden Eagle, White-tailed Eagle and Osprey nests are protected all year round, not only in the breeding season.
Magpeye enforces part of this for you: Schedule 1 and Rare Breeding Birds Panel species are withheld from every shared surface between March and August, and no clue about them can be sent in that window at all. That protection covers coordinates the app handles. It cannot cover a place name you type into a free-text field, which is why this rule exists as well.
Do not work around the blurring
Do not write into a place hint the exact spot that the map deliberately moved. Do not compare several people’s circles to triangulate a position. Do not make repeated requests hoping the answer moves — it does not, on purpose. Do not attempt to reverse the offset by any means.
The blurring is a safety measure with a criminal offence behind it, not a feature to beat.
Do not use Magpeye to harm a bird
No planning or coordinating disturbance. Nothing to do with egg collecting, nest robbing, trapping, poisoning, shooting or taking birds. Nothing to do with buying or selling wild birds or their eggs.
If you see any of it here, report it. Wildlife disturbance is the first reason in the list, and it is first because on this service it is the one that comes up.
And in the field
Follow the Countryside Code and the birdwatchers’ code. Do not trespass. A bird is never a good enough reason to cross a fence, block a lane or walk into a field. If watching a bird is disturbing it, you are too close.
Second, the records
Do not log a bird you did not see. Do not log somebody else’s bird as your own.
The collection, the badges, the metal ladder and the conservation export all rest on the claim that you saw the bird. Invented records make your own collection meaningless, and they contaminate a dataset that conservation organisations may end up relying on. This is grounds for removing an account and it is not treated as a joke.
Being wrong is completely fine. Sound and photo identification are wrong all the time and so is everybody else. Guessing honestly is birdwatching. Claiming is not.
Third, the ordinary rules
They are ordinary, but they still apply.
No harassment. No threats, no stalking, no pile-ons, no repeated unwanted contact. If somebody has declined your friend request or blocked you, that is the answer.
No impersonation. Do not use somebody else’s name, handle or photograph. Do not imply you speak for Magpeye, a conservation body, a landowner, a reserve or the police. Handles cannot be changed more than once a month, precisely so that nobody can borrow yours around a trade and hand it back.
No sexual content. None, anywhere, including profile photographs. This is a service used by children and there is no context here in which it belongs.
Nothing involving children. No sexual content involving a child, no content that sexualises a child, and no approach to somebody under 18 that you would not make in front of their parent. Do not ask a child for personal details, photographs, or to meet you. We will remove the account and report it to the police.
No hate. No abuse or harassment aimed at somebody’s race, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or age.
No illegal content. That includes terrorist content, content encouraging serious self-harm or suicide, fraud, the sale of drugs or weapons, and anything that would be an offence to share.
No spam and no selling. No advertising, no recruiting, no links to marketplaces, no promotion of anything. Magpeye has no market surface and is not going to be used as one.
No attacks on the app. No scraping, no automated accounts, no attempts to read data belonging to other people, no attempts to reverse the location blurring.
Where these rules apply
Everything in Magpeye that one person writes and another person sees. That is a short list, and it is short on purpose: your display name and handle; your bio; your profile photograph; group names and descriptions; goal names; party names and meeting points; battle names; the text on a clue, meaning the place hint, the best time and the habitat tip; and the preset message on a trade.
That is all of it. There is no feed, no comments, no direct messages, no free-text messaging of any kind, and no sharing of photographs between accounts other than a profile picture. The photographs you take of birds are private to you and no other account can see them.
How to report
One tap, from the thing itself. Every profile, group, clue, trade, party and battle has a report control on it.
Choose a reason — wildlife disturbance, abuse, harassment, impersonation, nudity, spam, child safety, or something else — and add up to 1,000 characters of detail if it helps. You do not have to have any relationship with somebody to report them.
You can also block somebody, which is separate and immediate. A block is one-sided, it works in both directions from that moment, and it survives you unfriending each other. Blocking somebody removes you from each other’s view everywhere in the app at once.
What happens after you report
A person reads it. Every report is read by a human being.
There is no automatic removal on report count, and this is deliberate rather than an oversight. A rule that hides content once three people have reported it is itself an abuse vector: three accounts acting together can silence anybody they like, and organised groups are considerably better at filing reports than the people they target. So nothing is hidden by arithmetic.
There is one exception, and it is narrow. Reporting a profile photograph hides that photograph immediately, pending review. Only a photograph. The cost of getting it wrong that way is that somebody looks like a bird for a day. The cost of getting it wrong the other way is an image nobody has checked sitting on a service used by children. Everywhere else the same trade runs the other way, which is why nothing else auto-hides.
We do not tell the person who reported them. Reports are one-way. Telling somebody who reported them is how a report turns into a reprisal.
What we might do: nothing, if no rule was broken; remove the content; remove a single feature, such as a profile photograph; suspend the account; or remove the account. Serious or repeated behaviour means the account goes.
How quickly. We aim to look at every report within a few days, and at the serious ones — anything involving a child, a credible threat, or a Schedule 1 nest — the same day. Be clear about what that is: Magpeye is run by a very small team. There is no 24-hour moderation desk, no rota, and no out-of-hours cover. That is a statement of effort, not a guaranteed response time, and we would rather say so than publish a number we cannot keep.
If we remove something of yours
You can complain, and we will look again.
Reply to the message that told you, or email support@magpeye.app. Say what was removed and why you think the decision was wrong. A person — not the same automated process, because there is no automated process — will review it. If we got it wrong, it goes back and we will say so.
If you think our complaints process itself is not working, Ofcom regulates services like this one under the Online Safety Act 2023 and you can raise it with them. Ofcom will not overturn a decision about one piece of content, but they do oversee whether a service handles complaints properly.
If your complaint is about personal data rather than about content, the Information Commissioner’s Office is the place, and the privacy notice has the details.