The eBird Mobile app is the best way to record the birds you see while you're traveling. It works anywhere around the world, and incorporates local bird checklists and data quality processes for wherever you are. If you are traveling, or plan to travel to a place where cell coverage will be limited or absent, consider preparing your eBird mobile app with checklists from the places you plan to visit. Once these checklists are stored on your phone, you can access them easily for data entry in places with zero cell coverage. Here's how to do it:

1. Figure out the places where you'll be traveling where cell coverage will be poor.
2. Click  'Start New Checklist' on the main screen.
3. Select the 'Choose a Location From Map' option. This will zoom in on your current location.
4. Zoom the map out and pan around to the region you plan to visit (use your fingers to do this). You'll see your personal locations and hotspots load for the current location, but just ignore these. Then zoom the map in to a place where you plan to go birding. Zoom in as far as possible!
5. Tap on the map to create a new location where you'll be birding. A yellow marker should appear with the location name pre-filled. You can change the location name on this screen to something general that will be easy for you to recognize later (e.g., Quito--City).
6. On the next Date & Time screen just tap 'Start'.
7. The checklist for this location is now on your phone, and will be available for you to select when you get to this place (even without a cell signal or wifi) by going to 'Start Checklist > Create Offline Checklist > Recent Checklist'.
8. When you do this the phone's GPS will create a location, and then use the checklist you've picked to provide you with a local species list for data entry.

In the future we plan to develop more integrated offline tools into the app, which will allow you to store all of the bird lists for a region and choose which one to use when you need it. 

Note: There is no need to submit these dummy lists to eBird. If you do submit a dummy list to the eBird website be sure to delete it. To delete a list from your 'My Checklists', swipe your finger to the left over the list you wish to delete (iOS), or long-press on the list that you wish to delete (Android), and then tap the 'delete' option.