🐦 eBird Bird Observations Scraper

🚀 Export real-time bird observation data in seconds. Pull recent and notable sightings from the Cornell Lab eBird public API by region code. No browser, no scraping - direct API access to one of the world's largest citizen science datasets.

The eBird Scraper connects to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's eBird API and returns structured bird observation records with 16 fields per record, including species codes, common and scientific names, GPS coordinates, observation counts, checklist links, and validation status. The eBird dataset is the world's largest biodiversity-related citizen science project, with over 100 million bird observations submitted annually from birders across every country.

This Actor covers recent and notable (rare) observations in any eBird region, from country level (US, GB, MX) down to state/province (US-NY, CA-ON, GB-ENG) and county level. Results are available as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML in seconds.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Ornithologists, citizen science researchers, wildlife conservationists, data scientists, nature app developers, birding enthusiasts, environmental agencies	Migration tracking, rare species alerts, biodiversity mapping, research datasets, birding app feeds, conservation monitoring

📋 What the eBird Scraper does

Two observation workflows in a single run:

• 🦅 Recent observations. All bird sightings reported in a region within the last 30 days, up to 10,000 per region.
• 🌟 Notable (rare) observations. Unusual or rare sightings flagged by the eBird review system for any region.
• 📍 Region filtering. Target any eBird region by code: country (US), state/province (US-NY, CA-ON), or county (US-NY-109).
• 📊 Rich observation data. Species code, common name, scientific name, GPS location, bird count, checklist ID, and observation validity.
• 🔗 Direct checklist links. Each record includes a URL to the full eBird checklist for verification and deeper context.

💡 Why it matters: eBird data powers migration models, climate impact studies, and conservation planning worldwide. Building a direct integration means no more manual CSV exports, no stale data, and full control over which regions and observation types you monitor.

📊 Data fields

Each record includes: comName, howMany, lat, lng, locationPrivate, locId, locName, obsDt, obsReviewed, obsValid, results, sciName, speciesCode, subId, url. These field names come straight from the actor's dataset schema, so what you see here is what lands in your dataset.

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free account on Apify (includes $5 credit).
2. Open the eBird Bird Observations Scraper on the Apify Store.
3. Get a free eBird API key at https://ebird.org/api/keygen.
4. Enter your region code (e.g. US-NY, GB, MX), observation type, and API key.
5. Set maxItems to control how many records you want.
6. Click Start and wait for the run to finish (typically under 10 seconds).
7. Download your dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML from the Storage tab.

🔗 Recommended Actors

Complement your eBird data with these related ParseForge Actors:

Actor	What it does
OurAirports Global Airport Database Scraper	Export 85,000+ airports worldwide with GPS, ICAO, IATA codes
USGS Earthquake Scraper	Real-time earthquake events from the USGS public API
EPA AQS Air Quality Scraper	US air quality monitoring data from EPA public API

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for dozens of free public-data Actors covering science, finance, government, and more.

Disclaimer: This Actor uses the Cornell Lab eBird public API, which is freely available for non-commercial and research use under eBird's terms of service. All data belongs to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the eBird contributors. Always review eBird's data use policy before using observation data in commercial applications. ParseForge is not affiliated with Cornell Lab of Ornithology or eBird.

🆘 Need Help?

If you hit a bug, have questions about setup, or need a scraper we haven't built yet, open our contact form or write to parseforge@protonmail.com. We also take on paid custom data projects.

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