eBird and Contributing to Citizen Science About Birds

 

Harris's sparrow (Photo A Burnette)

Yellow-rumped warbler (Photo A Burnette)

We hope you did something to observe International Migratory Bird Day last week.  If not, there are always opportunities for everyone to contribute to the knowledge about birds.

One way is through submitting your sightings to eBird.   What does it do?  By recording the birds you see, it can keep track of your bird lists, allow you to explore dynamic maps and graphs with information from other sightings, and find out what trends might be emerging on bird species populations.  It's very easy - a birder simply enters when, where, and how they went birding, then fills out a checklist of all the birds seen and heard during the outing.  The observations of each participant join those of others in an international network of eBird users. eBird then shares these observations with a global community of educators, land managers, ornithologists, and conservation biologists. In time these data will become the foundation for a better understanding of bird distribution across the western hemisphere and beyond.