How eBird works

Chris Wood is the Director of eBird at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University in New York State. He and the eBird team have developed a novel approach to citizen science by engaging diverse communities of people interested in watching birds around the world, along with conservation biologists, quantitative ecologists, statisticians, computer scientists, application developers, and data administrators.

To date, the community has collectively spent more than 70 million hours collecting effort-based checklists, amassing more than 850 million records, which have been used in more than 250 peer-reviewed publications in the last five years. As one may guess, Chris is also passionate birdwatcher who enjoys watching birds each day – if even for a few minutes. In a past life he led trips for WINGS / Sunbird, and he still enjoys traveling around the world and meeting new people (and birds).

Come and learn about eBird