eBird

A Celebration of Sound: Macaulay Library Reaches 2 Million Recordings

By Team eBird
Over the last decade, you have helped the Cornell Lab’s Macaulay Library grow tremendously and recently we reached an amazing milestone. Thanks to more than 38,403 recordists around the world, the Macaulay Library now holds more than 2 million audio recordings. These assets have supplied invaluable information for research, documented extinct species in perpetuity, powered…

Celebrate eBird’s 20th Anniversary on Global Big Day

By Team eBird
eBird is celebrating 20 years of powering data-driven approaches to science, conservation, and education through shared birding experiences. eBird launched in 2002 with a simple idea: “Record any bird you see, from anywhere and any time, then explore where the birds are!” Since the first public eBird checklist was submitted on 8 May 2002, eBird…

2021 Year in Review: eBird, Merlin, Macaulay Library, and Birds of the World

By Macaulay Library and Team eBird
2021 was a year of milestones. From one billion records in eBird, to the transformative launch of Merlin Sound ID, to new conservation decision-making tools powered by eBird Status and Trends visualizations, there’s a lot we’ll remember from the past twelve months. This year, millions of people from every country in the world joined us…

Lockdowns & Less Travel May Have Altered the Behavior of Birds

By Team eBird
Ithaca, New York & Winnipeg, Manitoba—Eighty percent of bird species examined in a new study were reported in greater numbers in human-altered habitats during pandemic lockdowns. Researchers compared online eBird observations from the United States and Canada from before and during the pandemic. They focused on areas within about 100 km of urban areas, major…

Taxonomy Update Coming!

By Team eBird
August is always an exciting time of year for eBird, since we update all eBird records with the latest scientific advances in bird taxonomy. You might even get some ‘armchair lifers’ as species are split! Whenever possible, we change your records for you to match the expected species when a split or lump occurs—this is…

Venezuelan Team Captures First-ever Photos and Sounds of Rediscovered Bird

By Team eBird
An expedition team in Venezuela, led by ornithologist David Ascanio and supported by American Bird Conservancy (ABC), rediscovered the Urich’s Tyrannulet last month. The tyrannulet was first described in 1899, but it has only been spotted two other times; once in the 1940s and again in 2005. With so few records, the Urich’s Tyrannulet is…

Global Big Day 2021 reaches new heights

By Team eBird
Birds unite people. On Saturday, 8 May more than 51,000 people spanning 192 countries celebrated the birds around them for Global Big Day. Together, the global birding community accomplished FOUR world records! Global Big Day 2021 set new records for the greatest number of birders, from the most countries, reporting more species and more checklists…

Conservation partners in Florida use eBird to monitor birds on private lands

By Team eBird
Land trusts and private conservation organizations play an important role in protecting habitats on more than 56 million acres of private lands in the United States alone. These lands support hundreds of common bird species plus more than 100 bird species of conservation significance. The Cornell Lab’s Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative helps to maximize…

Sightings submitted by eBirders can help inform policy to safeguard birds

By Team eBird
Public participation in scientific research through citizen-science projects has skyrocketed in the past 10 years. Citizen scientists have been donating billions of dollars’ worth of their time collecting information on everything from birds, bees, butterflies, and more resulting in a treasure trove of data helping scientists better understand plant, animal, and insect populations. New research…