eBird Data Repository 

The National Audubon Society

Audubon, National Science Foundation, American Birding Association, Bird Studies Canada

Oracle Database

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Birds

The implementation of eBird – an on-line checklist project where users can enter and store your bird observations in a central database, track their personal records, and share their observations with other birders and scientists. The aim is to allow the public to keep track of the birds they see throughout the year from all over North America, and to allow ornithologist, scientists and conservationists to use these observations to help fill in the gaps in knowledge about birds.

• Users add checklists of bird sightings to database – documenting the presence (and ideally absence) of species at a specific time and geographic location.
• The observations of the species are then plotted over days, weeks, months, or years to determine the species' range, including movement patterns and changes in distribution.

• Data is available to anyone with internet access and the website allows personalised maps and graphs to be created. 
• A central database of observations allows the scientists, amateur naturalists and conservationists to look at large geographic areas and address questions on a larger scale. The database can be used by: 1) The public - to track and maintain lists of personal observations or to create lists of birds recorded from various locations; 2) Amateur naturalists - allowing them to learn about the birds in your region; 3) Scientists - to uncover patterns in bird movements and ranges across North America; 4) Conservationists - to identify important areas for birds based on current range distributions, and to track population trends that can be used to create management plans for endangered, threatened, and at-risk species; 5) Educators - who may use the cumulative database to teach students about birds and the scientific process, including collecting, analyzing, and interpreting results.
The project is too young, with not enough long-term data to have been used by conservation groups for analyses, but conservation groups (such as Important Bird Area programs, and local-scale research through students, nature centers, etc) are entering survey data. All the observers contribute more data in the form of regular observations than any scientist, or team of scientists, could collect on their own.

Currently the program cannot upload existing computerised files, which people might have stored on their own computer. It is hoped that this function will be implemented soon.

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