eBird is a wonderful on-line system that allows you to keep track of your bird sightings as well as make them available publicly.
You can view your own and other users’ bird sightings in different birding spots by date. This can help you decide which birding spot to visit next.

  1. Creating an account and submitting a checklist of birds
  2. Exploring data – The feature I found most useful is viewing the summary of bird reports for specific regions.
    • Click on the tab ‘View and Explore Data’.
    • Click on ‘Bar Charts’.
    • Select a region. For example, select ‘Canada’ and then ‘British Columbia’ on the left.
    • Select a subregion.
      To see the birds reported for a single birding spot (e.g. a specific park) check ‘Hotspots’ on the right. Press ‘Continue’. You’ll get a long list of locations. Check one of them (e.g. ‘Stanley Park, Vancouver’) and press the ‘Enter’ key.
      Alternatively, to see the birds reported for a whole region, check ‘Counties in British Columbia’. You’ll get a list of counties. Select one (e.g., ‘Metro Vancouver’) and press ‘Continue’.
    • Now you’ve got a barchart of birds reported in your selected location by date. To narrow down the list only to birds that were reported on a specific month, click on the month name on the very top row.
      To get more elaborate data for a specific bird, click on the bird’s name on the left. Wait for a map to load. You’ll see bubbles on the map representing the locations where that bird species has been reported. Click on one of the bubbles and you’ll see the exact dates that species was viewed on, the number of individuals viewed and the viewer user name.
  3. Sharing a checklist – in ebird terminology, sharing a checklist means you both went bird watching together. The person you share a checklist with can edit his own copy of the checklist (in case you didn’t see exactly the same birds) without altering your copy of it.
    If you just want to show someone the birds you saw on a trip he wasn’t on, click the ‘Email’ link instead of the ‘Share’ link. This will email the list to the owner of the ebird account (i.e., you), then you can forward it on. Or you can click ‘Print’ and save the resulting page, for a better looking format. For more on checklist sharing click here.