Be a part of birding’s biggest team! Global Big Day is an annual celebration of the birds around you. No matter where you are, join us virtually on 8 May, help celebrate World Migratory Bird Day, and share the birds you find with eBird.
Participating is easy—you can even be part of Global Big Day from home. If you can spare 5 or 10 minutes, report your bird observations to eBird online or with our free eBird Mobile app. If you have more time, submit checklists of birds throughout the day. You never know what you might spot. Your observations help us better understand global bird populations through products like these animated abundance maps brought to you by eBird Science.
Last year, Global Big Day brought more birders together virtually than ever before. More than 50,000 people from 175 countries submitted a staggering 120,000 checklists with eBird, setting a new world record for a single day of birding. Will you help us surpass last year’s records? However you choose to participate, please continue to put safety first and follow your local guidelines.
How to participate
- Get an eBird account: eBird is a worldwide bird checklist program used by millions of birders. It’s what allows us to compile everyone’s sightings into a single massive Global Big Day list—while at the same time collecting the data to help scientists better understand birds. Sign up here. It’s 100% free from start to finish.
- Watch birds on 8 May: It’s that simple. You don’t need to be a bird expert or go out all day long, even 10 minutes of birding from home counts. Global Big Day runs from midnight to midnight in your local time zone. You can report what you find from anywhere in the world.
- Enter what you see and hear in eBird: You can enter your sightings via our website or download the free eBird Mobile app to make submitting lists even easier. Please enter your checklists before 11 May to be included in our initial results announcement.
- Watch the sightings roll in: During the day, follow along with sightings from more than 170 countries in real-time on our Global Big Day page.
Global Big Day Pro Tips
- If you’re new to eBird or want to make your checklists more valuable for science and conservation, take our free eBird Essentials course.
- Get the Cornell Lab’s Merlin Bird ID app for help identifying tricky species, then use eBird to report them so your sightings are part of the Global Big Day totals.
- Discover the birds in your region or around the globe with the Birds of the World Taxonomy Explorer—beautiful visualizations of all the world’s species by location or conservation status.
- Use eBird Mobile Explore to find recently reported species or new places to go birding nearby.
- Take photos and add them to your checklist—they might end up on the Global Big Day page!
- Make your sightings more valuable: submit complete checklists, keep counts of the birds that you see, and keep multiple checklists throughout the day.
- Share what you’re seeing on social media with #globalbigday!
On 8 May, we hope you’ll be a part of our global birding team. Have fun, enjoy the birds you find, stay safe, and share your sightings on eBird. Because in our world, every bird counts.