The power of the internet has in the last decade transformed our ability to observe and understand bird populations. Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology and The Audubon Society jointly sponsor eBird: , a site that dramatically illustrates this evolution.

eBird accepts birding observations from people all over the hemisphere. (The site even accepts past observations from old notebooks. I have a dozen years of nature data I kept from my neighborhood--and over time I hope to transfer relevant avian info to eBird.)

The internet has linked together the eyes and ears of thousands of observers. With all of this data, the researchers now can document timing of migrations--how they vary each year, exactly where the birds go, how population size fluctuates. They can document trends of how human activity affects bird welfare. You can see through this website how the range of a bird species is not at all a static thing, in some cases shifting dramatically from year to year.

Isn’t it amazing how willingly each person volunteers their bits of information in order to create a clearer picture of the whole? In order to have a glimpse of the complete puzzle? The internet has accelerated the planet's brain-like evolution, increasing numbers of nerve endings and synapses, birds just one of the specialties interconnected into the spaciousness of human knowledge.