eBird's New Horizons

Spanning the hemisphere for information about birds

By Brian Sullivan

Thanks to generous supporters (see Team Sapsucker Wins World Series of Birding), eBird is moving in exciting new directions. Available to everyone at www.ebird.org, this online application has proven to be extremely powerful and adaptable, from reaching out geographically to collect information about birds in countries with little conservation infrastructure, to providing data to model the spread of avian flu. An application like no other, eBird is quickly gaining prominence in birding communities across the Western Hemisphere.

eBird is a tool for gathering, archiving, and disseminating observational data. Each time birders raise binoculars in the field, they make valuable observations. eBird is designed to gather and help interpret these data. The power of the program comes in its broad geographic coverage and in the volume of data. In May 2006 alone, eBird gathered more than 500,000 bird observations and more than 30,000 checklists from across North America! These data link the numbers of each species to a place and a time. Scientists, conservationists, and birders alike can then use these data to look at patterns of bird distribution and abundance, and even watch the migratory ebb and flow of a population of birds across the continent.

This "big picture" monitoring has big implications. For the first time scientists can track bird populations as they move across political borders. For example, a new application based on eBird will track the movements and distributions of five target species: Olive-sided Flycatcher, Golden-winged Warbler, Blue-winged Warbler, Cerulean Warbler, and Canada Warbler. The prospect of monitoring birds across their range from South America to the boreal forest of Canada is daunting, but observers can now gather information on these five focal species from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. For the first time, researchers will be able to follow the movements of these species from their breeding grounds to their South American wintering grounds, and perhaps more importantly be able to define and observe the migratory routes and corridors used by each. Unlike the other large-scale citizen-science projects, such as the Breeding Bird Survey and the Christmas Bird Count, eBird does not have a limited time frame. Observations are gathered year-round, allowing researchers to look at the migration of entire bird communities. This has never before been accomplished and is proving to be of critical importance to researchers attempting to model the spread of avian flu. eBird data are now being used to model the potential spread of avian flu viruses for a subset of species thought to be susceptible to this disease. We can use eBird data to delineate the migratory pathways and timings typically used by each species, and then use this information along with data on locations of poultry centers to concentrate avian flu research efforts.

A new application based on eBird will help track migratory birds such as Golden-winged Warbler (above) and Cerulean Warbler (below) across international boundaries. Photos by Roger Erikkson

As understanding and defining the migratory pathways of birds becomes increasingly important, so does the need for full geographic expansion of eBird. As the program is adapted and expanded in foreign countries across Central and South America, the complexity and utility of the database will likewise expand. eBird has the capacity to unify the sometimes disparate conservation efforts of many groups and cultures. The importance of crossing political and cultural boundaries to build a unified bird conservation database cannot be overstated. After all, birds know no borders; eBird will help us see things from a bird's-eye view.

Brian Sullivan is a project co-leader of eBird.

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu