Find Your Project

Explore. Learn. Teach. Share. We have dozens of ways for you to be a part of our mission to study and protect birds.

Eastern Bluebirds by Mike Bons/Birdspotter 2015

Be part of something bigger

Participatory Science

Our participatory-science projects engage hundreds of thousands of people in recording bird observations – whether in backyards, city streets, or remote forests. Scientists analyze data submitted through our projects to understand how birds are affected by environmental changes. Whatever captures your fancy, there’s a participatory-science project that can make it more meaningful.

Participants gather around a table during a bird banding demonstration
Participatory-science volunteers learn at a Cornell Lab workshop. Photo by Marilú López Fretts.

Learn with courses and webinars

Lifelong Learning

There’s a huge world of birds, behavior, and science out there. Our Bird Academy offers courses that explain the secrets of what you’re seeing and hearing—from casual webinars, to classes in the basics, to in-depth college-level ornithology courses.

Pass the spark to the next generation

K–12 Education

We have a lively K–12 education program that creates resources for teachers, homeschoolers, and other educators. If you’ve been wanting to incorporate birds and hands-on activities in your science teaching, we have dozens of ways to help you, from simple advice, to games and activities, to full curricula.

Kids looking through binoculars
Watch a live feed of tropical birds from our Panama Fruit Feeder cam.

Share intimate moments in the lives of birds

Bird Cams

Watch a mother hawk protect her chicks from a snowstorm. See Ospreys divide up freshly caught trout among their young. Spy on the multicolored visitors to feeders in Canada, New York, and Panama. Hold your breath as endangered petrels raise their young in an underground burrow. Each and every day, our Bird Cams offer breathtaking views of all the extraordinary moments in the lives of birds.

Discover a new world of birding

eBird

Create birding memories, find new places to explore, learn where birds are seen, and help scientists understand the world. eBird offers global tools for birders and critical data for science

eBird sightings still of North and South America
Sightings submitted by eBirders are enabling us to understand bird populations in ways that have never been possible before.
Brown Booby preening with a photographer blurred behind them
Photographing a Brown Booby. Photo by Michael O’Brien.

Share your images and sounds

Macaulay Library

The Macaulay Library is a multimedia scientific archive for research, education, and conservation powered by you. The archive includes more than 400,000 audio recordings of birds, insects, reptiles, fish, and mammals including audio for more than 80% of the world’s birds, and more than 10 million photographs of birds.

We’re just outside of Ithaca, New York

Come Visit

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, headquartered at the Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity, is a great place to visit. Our Visitor Center is full of science displays and beautiful artwork, all nestled within a nature preserve that’s teeming with wildlife, any time of year.

The entrance to the Cornell Lab visitor center
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology Visitor Center. Photo by Dimitri Ponirakis.
Male Baltimore Oriole perched on a budding branch
Baltimore Oriole by Brian Hix via Birdshare.

Your online guide to birds and bird watching

All About Birds

Use our free Bird Guide and our Merlin Bird ID app to identify birds, learn about their life history, and play sounds and video. All About Birds provides in-depth information and ID help on more than 600 species of birds in the U.S. and Canada.

Join Our Email List

The Cornell Lab will send you updates about birds, birding, and opportunities to help bird conservation. Sign up for email and don’t miss a thing!

Golden-cheeked Warbler by Bryan Calk/Macaulay Library