Five more dyamic migration maps

All,

We have posted five more dynamic migration maps on the "Occurrence Map" page. The new species are:

Willow Flycatcher
Eastern Bluebird
Blackpoll Warbler
White-throated Sparrow
Western Meadowlark

As before, comments are welcome below. Thanks to all for the comments on the first round of maps.

Best,
Marshall Iliff

eBird animated occurrence maps -- first batch

eBirders,

Spoiler alert: if you like quizzes, and want to figure out this map quiz before seeign a list of potential answers, go to our homepage story before reading on.

We are excited to announce our new "Occurrence Maps" feature, which you can find under the About eBird tab or through links from the new story on the homepage. We have released a few of these in the past, but thanks to a grant from TeraGrid and several years of research, we are finally able to start sharing more of these maps. These maps are really the heart and soul of eBird, since they showcase how your daily eBird submissions are being put to use for science. We are excited about the possibilities that these models hold and will continue to share results and news related to how these are being used.

Starting this week, we will be publishing these maps on the new eBird "Occurrence Maps" feature. Here we provide a short analysis of the patterns you can see, along with an invitation to comment on this blog. If you notice interesting things, have comments on our analysis, or have anything else to share, please post a message below!

This first batch includes ten species, and we will continue to publish five new ones each week. The following species are the ones in our first run:

Northern Cardinal
American Pipit
Brown-headed Nuthatch (not animated)
Red-headed Woodpecker
Western Tanager
Wood Thrush
Swainson's Hawk
Dickcissel
Grasshopper Sparrow
Olive-sided Flycatcher

All of us at eBird think these maps are one of the coolest things we have seen in the bird world in a long time. Not all of them ae perfect, but some are very hard to find any fault with. We are confident that with more eBird data and continued research, these will continue to get more and more accurate.

Again, we invite your comments on these maps so please let us know what you think below!

Marshall Iliff for Team eBird