Thinking of making a "life list" of the birds you're finding in your backyard or along your travels? A life list is a record of every bird species one has observed and identified in their lifetime. It's a personal, cumulative checklist you can use to track sightings organized by date and location. Tools like eBird maintain and update a life list, which serves as a meaningful way to document a birding journey and celebrate milestones. eBird is a powerful tool for birders providing several benefits:

Record Keeping:

• Love data? eBird tracks personal bird sightings and organizes birding data over time.

Community Sharing:

• Enjoy learning of new places to visit and see bird? eBird allows users to share observations with a global network of bird enthusiasts.

Conservation Support:

• Be part of citizen science by contributing valuable data to scientific research and conservation efforts. Make your observations count!

Birding Resources:

• eBird has tools like hotspot maps, species lists, and sightings alerts for planning bird outings.

To get started with eBird, create a free Cornell Lab account. This account works across various Cornell Lab projects, including eBird, and Merlin Bird ID. To learn how to use the eBird app, you can enroll in the free online course, eBird Essentials, offered by the Cornell Lab's Bird Academy. This self-paced course guides you through eBird's most popular features, teaching you how to keep checklists, explore data, and make your observations valuable for science and conservation. There's also an eBird Mobile app available for free on both the Google Play and App Stores. eBird Mobile allows you to record bird sightings in the field even without wifi!