🐦 birdtrip

An eBird road trip planner — it maps the best birding hotspots along the driving route between two places, powered by eBird / Cornell Lab of Ornithology data.

This project is entirely self-funded and has no affiliation with eBird or the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Consider supporting eBird.

© Metolius Research / Bart Wickel, 2026

How to use

Open Plan Route, enter a start (A) and end (B) — leave A blank to use your current location — then Show routes, pick one, and Find hotspots. Tap a hotspot to add it to your route as a stop, and use the two sliders (bottom-right) to filter by species and distance off the route.

Map legend

Gray dots

All hotspots with >10 all-time species — context

Colored dots

Sized and colored by species richness: green 50+, cyan 150+, amber 200+, red 250+, purple 300+

County lines

Low-resolution US county outlines (toggle in the layers menu)

Route options

Alternatives

Up to two alternate routes are drawn where the road network has them; tap to select

Avoid Interstates / tolls

Reroutes via Valhalla to prefer smaller or toll-free roads

Save routes

Name and store routes in this browser; reopen or delete them under Plan Route

Data

eBird hotspots © Cornell Lab / eBird. County boundaries from US Census TIGER. Geocoding by Nominatim & Photon; routing by OSRM and Valhalla — all OpenStreetMap-based.

Enabling location on mobile

Safari (iOS)

Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Safari → While Using.

Chrome (Android)

Tap the lock icon in the address bar → Permissions → Location → Allow.

All browsers

Your device-level Location must also be on.