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Help eBird Fill in the Gaps
Learn how to make your birding more useful to science!
© Channel City Camera Club/Susan T. Cook
eBird, an online tool for submitting bird observations, allows scientists to keep track of birds around the world. eBird now has over one billion bird observations from more than 700,000 people — most of them community scientists who care about their local birds. And as more people in more places join in, eBird becomes an even better way for researchers to understand birds. In this show, learn how you can make your birding more useful to science.
BirdNote®
Help eBird Fill in the Gaps
Written by Conor Gearin
This is BirdNote.
[Wood Thrush song]
eBird, an online tool for submitting bird observations, allows scientists to keep track of birds around the world. eBird now has over one billion bird observations from more than 700,000 people — most of them community scientists who care about their local birds. And as more people in more places join in, eBird becomes an even better way for researchers to understand birds.
[Moustached Wren duet]
To make your birding more helpful to science, you can look up local parks on eBird — often listed as birding hotspots on the site — and see if they’re getting visited enough. Do people post checklists there every day, or just once every couple weeks? Consider giving those less-visited parks some attention.
[Red-winged Blackbird]
If a hotspot has too few eBird checklists for a certain time of year, eBird can’t estimate which birds are there at that time. Submitting checklists during those times can help eBird fill in the gaps.
In some cases, a good spot for birds might not even have an eBird hotspot yet. In that case you can recommend that place as a hotspot for eBird reviewers to consider.
With more dedicated people pitching into community science projects such as eBird, we’ll know even more about how to protect our birds. Learn more on our website, BirdNote.org. I’m Ariana Remmel.
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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Ariana Remmel
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Wood Thrush ML107333 recorded by Wil Hershberger, Moustached Wren ML 247056641 recorded by Ciro Albano, and Red-winged Blackbird M L84698 recorded by Wil Hershberger. BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote January 2023 / July 2025
Narrator: Ariana Remmel
ID# ebird-01-2023-01-13 ebird-01
Conor Gearin
Writer
