Your first eBird checklist: make it complete and useful

eBird is the free bird-recording platform run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and its value to science rests on one simple idea: the complete checklist. A complete checklist reports every species you identified during a session, by sight or by sound, including the pigeons and sparrows you might be tempted to skip. Because researchers know you would have listed a species if you had detected it, a complete list also tells them what was not there, and that is what powers eBird's Status and Trends maps and many conservation projects (eBird on complete checklists).

You do not need to be an expert. A 20-minute session in a city park, done carefully, is a genuinely useful first contribution.

What "complete" actually means#

Complete does not mean you found every bird present. It means you made birding your main activity and reported everything you could identify. eBird is explicit about the common traps: leaving out Rock Pigeons, starlings or House Sparrows, or skipping a bird you identified by its song alone, makes a list incomplete (complete-checklist guidance).

Birds you could not pin down still have a place. eBird has broader entries for exactly this:

• Spuh ("sp."), such as gull sp. or hawk sp., for a bird you could place in a group but not to species.
• Slash, such as Common/Thick-billed Murre, when you narrowed it to two species.

These entries tell researchers that something was present but too distant or brief to identify, which is different from a species being absent (eBird taxonomy). Using them is better than guessing a species name because it would look more interesting.

Pick a place and a protocol#

Choose somewhere you can stand or walk comfortably for 15 to 30 minutes: a pond edge, a park with mixed trees, a river path. Water attracts variety, and a fixed spot lets you concentrate on listening as well as looking.

The protocol describes how you birded:

Aim for Stationary or Traveling, because they record your effort as well as your birds (protocol definitions). For a Traveling count, give the distance of the route walked; retracing your steps on the way back does not double it.

Shorter is better. eBird asks you to keep Traveling checklists under 8 km and Stationary ones under three hours, and notes that lists under about 1.6 km or one hour are more precise still. Start a new checklist when you move to a different site or habitat, change how you are birding, or have been stationary for over an hour (best practices).

Count as you go#

The free eBird Mobile app makes this easy. You set the date and start time, it records a GPS track and a timer for you, and you add each species and number as you go. It works offline: an unsent checklist waits on the phone until you have a connection (eBird Mobile guide). A paper notebook works just as well; write the start time before you begin.

For numbers, eBird ranks the options clearly:

A best estimate is always more informative than X (best practices). For a big flock, count a block of ten birds and see how many blocks the flock fills. Never type "1" just to mean "present": that is a count, and it will be read as one.

If you can, photograph or record anything unusual. Media attached to a checklist goes into the Macaulay Library, and a rare record is checked by a local volunteer reviewer before it appears publicly (eBird FAQs). That review is routine and nothing to worry about; good evidence makes it quick.

What stays off the list#

Some sightings do not belong on an ordinary checklist: captive birds, dead birds, anything seen only on a nest camera, feeder camera or trail cam, and birds reported to you by someone else. When you bird with friends, keep one shared checklist for people who were close enough to see the same birds, rather than everyone submitting overlapping lists (best practices).

Before you press submit#

Run through the details once:

1. Location. Pick an existing public hotspot if you birded at one; otherwise drop a pin where you actually were.
2. Date, start time and duration. These come from the app automatically, but check them if you entered the list later from notes.
3. Distance and party size. Distance for Traveling counts, and the number of observers.
4. The completeness question. The app asks whether you are reporting all species you could identify. eBird calls this the most important question in the whole process (eBird Mobile guide). Answer yes only if you left nothing out on purpose.

Birding in Bulgaria or elsewhere in Europe#

The protocols are the same worldwide, so a checklist from a Sofia park follows exactly the rules above. eBird also offers species names in many languages, including a global Bulgarian name set, which you can choose in your preferences (bird names in eBird). Help pages and procedures were checked on 8 October 2026.