What is ebird?
While it is not a requirement to use eBird on your birding journey, I hope that you do make it a part of your daily birding process. Not only is it a great tool to organise all your bird sightings, lifelist and media, but by using eBird, you are contributing valuable data on birds, their populations and trends.
In this lesson, we will go over the basics of using the app. There is a whole world to explore on the eBird website, but we will go over that part in its own course. For now, let’s just master the app.
But first, what is eBird exactly?
eBird is a free, global online platform and mobile app developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for recording, storing, and sharing bird sightings. As the world’s largest biodiversity-related citizen science project, it allows users to track their “life lists,” explore real-time data on bird distribution, and contribute to scientific research and conservation.
Key Aspects of eBird:
- Data Contribution: Users submit checklists of birds seen or heard, including time, location, species, and numbers.
- Scientific Utility: Data is used for research, such as mapping bird populations and informing conservation decisions.
- Global Reach: It covers the entire world and as of mid-2025, the eBird community has grown to over 1.1 million registered users (often referred to as eBirders) worldwide. These users have collectively submitted over 150 million checklists, contributing to a database of more than 2 billion bird observations across 253 countries.
- Features: Provides tools for exploring species, finding “hotspots,” and managing personal records, with data reviewed by experts.
- Access: Available via the eBird website and a mobile application.
- Finding Birds: eBird allows you to search their database to find specific birds or see what has been observed locally based on country, state, county or particular locations like a specific park for example.
Fieldwork:
Before moving on, complete the following steps to get your eBird account all set up.
Go to ebird.org and create an account
Download the app and login