eBirdr is evolved from the oldest electronic bird guide for North American birds (see Historical Gallery). It began by wildlife biologist Larry Bond in 1987, as a text-based expert system. It was called The Electronic Birder.
The Electronic Birder simply asked questions about field marks to identify a bird. By focusing on what to look for, it improved skill level in the identification process. It was only available on floppy disk for IBM compatible computers.
When computer graphics emerged, The Electronic Birder evolved into Birdstar and was available on CDs. Birds themselves are so multimedia that it was a natural progression to incorporate pictures and sounds to assist in the identification process.
eBirdr now represents an advance to the Web 2.0 format (logo courtesy of Laura Bond). The retro name reflects the original moniker. Both Larry Bond and his programmer son, Kevin Bond, maintain the birding experience found here at eBirdr. Anyone on the internet can now use this birding reference and join the eBirdr community.
At present eBirdr serves as a point of reference for all birds found in North America, north of Mexico. For those keen-eyed birders who noted the features listed on the older guides in the Gallery, such as birding games, slideshows, expert system for identification etc, the intention is to eventually include all these features and more in eBirdr. Notice of new features, as they are added will be described on the home page. Please keep posted for these additions. At this time we are not taking online submissions for sightings or photographic contributions but this too is planned. In December 2012 video was added. A mobile phone version will also be available within a few months.
All images on ebirdr.com have either explicit permission from the photographer for their use here, or are licensed under the Creative Commons. Photographers who have contributed their copyrighted images for use here have all rights reserved and their images cannot be reused for any purpose without their permission. All images here credited to Larry Bond however, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) and may be used without permission, provided credit is given. Videos used here are from Youtube and Vimeo under their terms and conditions.
eBirdr videos are used where possible and are also posted on the eBirdr Channel on Youtube. Other videos used are obtained from Youtube or Vimeo. These videos range from well edited professional productions to amateurish clips. In many of the amateur videos the sound quality or editing may be lacking but are included if they portray an aspect of bird behaviour or other aspects of the species that may be benefitial for identification. In some cases however they may be so unique it was felt they should be shared.
We appreciate hearing from users on their experiences here. And if you have a great bird photograph, video or sighting of a particular bird that you would like to share, we would like to include it here it on the site. At this time please email or refer it to us. As always, your feedback on the guide is welcome. If you have any comments, sightings, corrections or omissions to share here at eBirdr, please contact Larry for birding related feedback or Kevin for technical related issues.