Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity

Second Floor

Select a region of the floor plan to learn more.

Members of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology receive Living Bird, our award-winning, full-color magazine packed with information about birds.

These two programs engage thousands of nonprofessional bird enthusiasts in projects including eBird, Project FeederWatch, the Home Study Course in Bird Biology, The Birdhouse Network, Urban Bird Studies, House Finch Eye Disease, Great Backyard Bird Count, and others. The data these participants provide to the Lab contribute to our understanding of birds and bird populations.

Which bird species are declining? Which are increasing? How do we know? Researchers in these two vital programs collect these data and analyze them in order to determine the status and population trends of North American birds.

The Lab and Audubon work closely together on several projects, and several Audubon departments are housed here.

The Lab is home to staff from Audubon’s New York State office whose focus is the Important Bird Areas program and other conservation issues.

This arm of Audubon works to develop techniques for creating and actively managing and monitoring seabird colonies. The program is best known for its work restoring Atlantic Puffins to Eastern Egg Rock, an island off mid-coast Maine. The successful restoration of the Egg Rock puffin colony (extirpated nearly 100 years earlier due to excessive hunting) and other seabird species encouraged researchers to expand the program worldwide to benefit rare and endangered seabirds.

The Lab’s communications staff produce BirdScope, our quarterly newsletter for members and citizen-science participants featuring the latest findings from Lab research and other Lab news. All of the Lab’s brochures and other promotional material are created here as well. C&M staff also work with businesses and other entities interested in using the Lab’s resources in their products, publications, and on their web sites.

Spot birds, beaver, deer, and other wildlife from the Allen Tree House, which offers a bird’s-eye view of the Sapsucker Woods pond and some of the beautiful walking trails.

Our Adelson Library houses thousands of valuable books on birds and other animals, open to our visitors. The Adelson Library houses the only Children's Life Science Collection at Cornell. Visit the Adelson Library web site.

Our Information Technologies make the maps for Project FeederWatch, Great Backyard Bird Count, eBird, and other Internet-based projects. IT staff manage the databases and make the data available to the public for use in any number of ways.