About Birding Compass

A birding travel-planning tool for exploring where and when to find unseen species.

Planning the next birding journey

Birding Compass is a project I am building to help birders compare potential travel destinations and the new birds they could encounter there. It brings together country- and region-level observation data, seasonal patterns and your personal eBird life list, making it easier to begin answering a simple question: where should I go next?

The project is intended as an exploratory planning aid, not as a replacement for eBird, local birding knowledge or up-to-date field information. Support for regional subdivisions and more detailed regional data are now available on country pages where coverage exists. This makes Birding Compass more useful for detailed trip planning while retaining the country-level overview as a starting point.

I started working on Birding Compass as a learning and passion project. Its features, coverage and information will continue to develop over time. If you have any feedback, experience any issues with the website, or have an idea for a new feature, just contact me.

Until then: Happy birding!

How Birding Compass works

Explore

Countries are ranked by the number of potential new species you could encounter. Explore the world map or focus on a specific region to find destinations that interest you.

Upload your life list

Upload your eBird life list to remove species you have already seen from your potential targets. Country rankings are then updated based on the species that are still new to you.

Narrow down your target species

Explore target species for the month you're travelling or across the whole year. Filter by bird families that interest you, and set a minimum observation frequency to focus on the species most relevant to your trip.

Explore a country

Country pages provide more detail about each destination, including regional rankings and maps, target species counts, seasonal patterns and a full list of your potential target species to support further trip research.

Data processing

Species frequency data originates from eBird bar charts, and taxonomy is based on the eBird taxonomy. Birding Compass currently works at the species level and does not support subspecies, although this may be added in the future. Frequency represents the proportion of complete checklists reporting a species in a country or region during a given period. It is not an estimate of abundance or a guarantee that you will encounter that species.

Uploaded eBird life lists are processed temporarily on the server. Birding Compass retains only the species information needed to identify your targets and calculate country rankings. Observation dates, locations, counts and other checklist details are discarded after processing, and your original uploaded file is not permanently stored. Your processed life list is kept only temporarily and can be removed at any time.

Credits

Birding Compass depends on open data, community contributions and open-source mapping projects. Their work makes this project possible.

eBird

Bird taxonomy and frequency data

The Birding Compass taxonomy is based on the eBird Taxonomy v2025. Observation frequency data are based on eBird bar chart data. The underlying taxonomy and frequency datasets will be updated regularly as new source versions become available. Use of these data is subject to eBird's data-use and citation policies.

Clements, J. F., P. C. Rasmussen, T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, A. Spencer, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, M. Smith, and C. L. Wood. 2025. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2025. Downloaded from birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/.

eBird. 2026. eBird: An online database of bird distribution and abundance [web application]. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Available at ebird.org. Frequency data accessed August 2026.

eBird Taxonomy v2025 citation eBird citation guidance Data-use guidance

Wikimedia Commons

Species photography

Selected species photographs are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Copyright remains with each creator, and every image is governed by its own license. Birding Compass therefore displays the photographer and applicable license alongside each image, with links to the source information.

A special thank you to the many talented photographers who share their work through Wikimedia Commons and make their images freely available for projects like this one, Wikipedia, and countless other educational and public resources - for people around the world to use, learn from, and enjoy.

Wikimedia Commons Reuse guidance

Natural Earth

World and country geometry

The country geometry used by the world overview and country boundaries comes from Natural Earth Admin 0 Map Units. Natural Earth data is in the public domain.

Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com.

Natural Earth Terms of use

Interactive maps

Map tiles, schema and rendering

Detailed country maps use the OpenFreeMap Liberty style and hosted vector tiles. The tile schema is OpenMapTiles and the underlying map data is contributed by the OpenStreetMap community under the Open Database License. Maps are rendered with MapLibre GL JS; the projected world overview is rendered with deck.gl.

MapLibre GL JS deck.gl ODbL

Flag Icons

Country flag artwork

Country flags are provided by the open-source Flag Icons collection under the MIT License.

Flag Icons MIT License