BirdPulse

Bird migration is the seasonal movement of birds between their breeding grounds and the places they spend the rest of the year. Twice a year — north in spring, south in fall — billions of birds shift across continents, tracking longer days, melting ice and the flush of insects and seeds that feed their journeys. Many travel at night, navigating by the stars, the setting sun and Earth’s magnetic field.

BirdPulse maps where birds are being seen right now, using sightings that birdwatchers submit to eBird, the global citizen-science project run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Each colored point is a recent report — a species, a count of individuals and a place — so you can watch the pulse of migration build, peak and fade across a region or follow a single species as it moves.