On desktop, I think you have to click on the tiny icon next to the currently visible bird's name ("select new dataset") and pick one from the list that appears on the left side of the screen.
"Real-time" been +seconds for decades at this point, pretty different from the "original" meaning, so "live" having the same treatment doesn't feel that out of place.
They're calling it "live" and "near real-time" because they're aggregating the data from underlying sources daily, whereas traditionally that happened only on much larger time scales.
It's not very fast compared to most things often called "live", so perhaps it's not a great label for this demo viewer, but the goal of the project seems to be to make the data available for research, not so much for this map.
Die Visualisierung auf dem Eurobirdportal ist wirklich toll gemacht. Es ist spannend zu sehen, wie Echtzeitdaten aggregiert werden, um die Migration über ganz Europa so detailliert nachzuvollziehen.
As a person who emigrated from Scandinavia to the Iberian Peninsula, birds are not the only ones indeed :)
Most of the German/British tourists seem to come during the summer though, in contrast to the tourist birds who come during winter. Smart of the birds to avoid all the tourists!
In some places, it definitely is, we go skiing in Spain in the winter :) Besides, even around Barcelona we get snow every 6-7 years, although it's not like in the north of the world exactly.
Well, your way makes no sense, I visit cold places when they're the warmest (their summer) and make sure to stay home in the summer when it's the warmest. Almost like some people prefer a "cold" life and others a "warm" one, and that's OK :) Not more than preferences, doesn't have to make sense.
It's odd that you can see the borders between Belgium and France for various birds (like the swift and cuckoo), same for the border between Germany and Poland.
I wonder why that is? There are no topological features defining these borders. Maybe the data is normalised in some way across countries?
That’s the more likely hypothesis, but I also wonder if different land management practices could be influencing a map like this. Agriculture in Poland is much more fragmented than in Germany - smaller fields of different crops, often separated by meadows and forests, creating lots of niches for biodiversity. In Western Europe you’re more likely to see giant, mechanised monoculture fields as far as the eye can see, leaving less space for agrarian-landscape wildlife.
Indeed! I wasn't even able to change the bird easily. I like the initiative, though. I remember the whole bird migration from Africa to Europe and how it shapes the skies in autumn and spring.
Could it be you are selecting birds that are not actually in Europe, let alone native, yet are still listed for some reason, e.g., the wild turkey and california quail?
It makes me question the accuracy of the data if anything, especially since the Black Grouse also exists in places that are not mapped and I don’t see anything that could explain omissions, e.g., what the data is based on and how it is collected. My guess based on inexplicable data points for wild turkeys and california quail is that it’s somehow human logged sightings that are accidentally or either impressively logged.
> Could it be you are selecting birds that are not actually in Europe
I tried it for birds which I’m certain fly to Europe and also saw nothing. Also, when searching for the species, the image in the little preview was wrong (it was right in the main interface, though).
Some of the bird data used is available in https://www.GBIF.org (website + APIs + data dumps) but not all of it.
For a visualization like this, the place to start is probably the most recent monthly data snapshot which is available on AWS/Google/Azure's open data portals: https://www.gbif.org/occurrence-snapshots
e.g. start with a DuckDB query:
SELECT scientificName, individualCount, year, month, day, decimalLatitude, decimalLongitude, issue
FROM read_parquet('s3://gbif-open-data-eu-central-1/occurrence/2026-09-01/occurrence.parquet/*')
WHERE class = 'Aves';
(The initial query will be rather slow, I'm currently working on improving this export. I suggest creating a local table and working from that. Alternatively, for a smaller export than "all birds" request a data download through the website.)
Seen a photograph of starlings when the flock takes on the silhouette of a giant bird. I've always been fascinated by that kind of (apparent?) collective intelligence. There's seemingly no leader, but from the interactions of swarms of independent actors emerge (what seems like) a larger mind. Surely we humans exhibit such behavior also, when seen from a certain elevated perspective like statistics.
Ooh boids, yes! One of my favorite books is Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology. I learned about it from another favorite, Nature of Code, which has a great list of related books. https://natureofcode.com/resources/#further-reading
I see it's a portal tracking bird data from other websites. I am doing the same but for East Africa, not live birds but generally monitoring biodiversity, what is happening from ebird, to Xeno-canto to iNaturalist every week. Any new research grade species, new updates to ebird and XC sound additions. East Africa is very under monitored compared to other places. Still work in progress. https://platform.maiyoinstitute.org/
It's a little abstract, but the map showing swallows breaking out of the south of Iberia, then rapidly heading north is rather cool. You'll get a much better feeling for what this shows, if, early next spring, you find a natural barrier like a river or estuary. Then you can see birds pushing north and understand what these maps are really showing. For extra drama, hope for a strong headwind, and your admiration of what 20 grams of determination can do, will only increase.
cromka | 9 hours ago
mrrudik | 9 hours ago
mugul | 9 hours ago
genezeta | 9 hours ago
Hamuko | 9 hours ago
embedding-shape | 8 hours ago
psyphy2 | 7 hours ago
jorams | 6 hours ago
It's not very fast compared to most things often called "live", so perhaps it's not a great label for this demo viewer, but the goal of the project seems to be to make the data available for research, not so much for this map.
jeroenhd | 5 hours ago
karol | 8 hours ago
arnemunthekaas | 7 hours ago
I’ve been working on a far nicer way of appreciating bird detections: https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme
bethekind | an hour ago
sph | 8 hours ago
lukan | 8 hours ago
HarroGoerndt | 8 hours ago
jmelo11 | 8 hours ago
bcraven | 7 hours ago
Some birds migrate outside Europe.
hackersnooze1 | an hour ago
darkwater | 8 hours ago
embedding-shape | 7 hours ago
Most of the German/British tourists seem to come during the summer though, in contrast to the tourist birds who come during winter. Smart of the birds to avoid all the tourists!
lukan | 7 hours ago
That never made any sense to me. I also go rather go with the birds north in summer where it is cool and to spain in winter when it is still warm.
alistairSH | 7 hours ago
Now that there’s no kid in my household, we do travel more in winter (or whenever).
bromuro | 7 hours ago
pantalaimon | 6 hours ago
lukan | 6 hours ago
embedding-shape | 6 hours ago
darkwater | 5 hours ago
embedding-shape | 6 hours ago
lukan | 6 hours ago
Which is also what I said?
But otherwise I do prefer a temperate life. Not too hot, not too cold.
embedding-shape | 6 hours ago
Well, "spain in winter when it is still warm" would not be "when that place is the warmest" in my mind. No foul, no harm though :)
ionwake | 8 hours ago
317070 | 8 hours ago
I wonder why that is? There are no topological features defining these borders. Maybe the data is normalised in some way across countries?
Cthulhu_ | 8 hours ago
ileonichwiesz | an hour ago
_joel | 7 hours ago
lioeters | 43 minutes ago
srean | 17 minutes ago
lioeters | 12 minutes ago
dncornholio | 7 hours ago
barnacs | 7 hours ago
boutell | 7 hours ago
blitzar | 6 hours ago
krige | 7 hours ago
aennassiri | 6 hours ago
tyrabound | 6 hours ago
It makes me question the accuracy of the data if anything, especially since the Black Grouse also exists in places that are not mapped and I don’t see anything that could explain omissions, e.g., what the data is based on and how it is collected. My guess based on inexplicable data points for wild turkeys and california quail is that it’s somehow human logged sightings that are accidentally or either impressively logged.
latexr | 5 hours ago
I tried it for birds which I’m certain fly to Europe and also saw nothing. Also, when searching for the species, the image in the little preview was wrong (it was right in the main interface, though).
__jonas | 7 hours ago
MattBlissett | 6 hours ago
For a visualization like this, the place to start is probably the most recent monthly data snapshot which is available on AWS/Google/Azure's open data portals: https://www.gbif.org/occurrence-snapshots
e.g. start with a DuckDB query:
(The initial query will be rather slow, I'm currently working on improving this export. I suggest creating a local table and working from that. Alternatively, for a smaller export than "all birds" request a data download through the website.)__jonas | 4 hours ago
srean | 6 hours ago
https://books.google.co.in/books/about/In_a_Flight_of_Starli...
Murmurations. They are local movements in comparison, but no less fascinating.
lioeters | 36 minutes ago
srean | 27 minutes ago
You can also search for boids to explore simple rules that replicate such dynamics.
lioeters | 9 minutes ago
pantalaimon | 6 hours ago
kiproping | 6 hours ago
abdullahalharir | 4 hours ago
smackay | 4 hours ago