This is Bird Note.

Ebert, an online tool for submitting bird observations,

allows scientists to keep track of birds around the world.

Ebert now has over 1 billion bird observations for more than 700,000 people.

Most of them, community scientists, who care about their local birds.

And as more people and more places join in,

Ebert becomes an even better way for researchers to understand birds.

To make your birding more helpful to science,

you can look up local parks on Ebert, often listed as birding hot spots on the site

and see if they're getting visited enough.

Do people post checklists there every day or just once every couple weeks?

Consider giving those less visited parks some attention.

If a hot spot has too few Ebert checklists for a certain time of year,

Ebert can't estimate which birds are there at that time.

Submitting checklists during those times can help Ebert fill in the gaps.

In some cases, a good spot for birds might not even have an Ebert hot spot yet.

In that case, you can recommend that place as a hot spot for Ebert reviewers to consider.

With more dedicated people pitching into community science projects such as Ebert,

we'll know even more about how to protect our birds.

Learn more on our website, birdnote.org.

I'm Ariana Rimmel.