The app opens to a national map of NEON sites coloured by biome. Tap one to dive into its birds, or step back and compare the whole network in climate space. Each site loads instantly from a per-site data bundle that ships with the app (no network round-trip). From there it ranks the most-detected species, estimates how many kinds really use the site (beyond what a handful of counts catch), plots every species by how widespread and how often it is detected, and profiles any single species on a downloadable card.
It is built for two audiences: anyone curious about how NEON counts breeding birds, and new field technicians getting to know the species at their site.
Select-a-site map · A national map of all 46 bundled sites, coloured by biome, with a one-tap load and an accessible list fallback. The app opens on LBJ National Grassland in Texas (painted buntings, dickcissels, and northern bobwhites).
Bird Board · Every species as a dot: how widespread it is (the share of points where it turned up) against its detection index. Tap any dot to pin a card; faint dots have too few detections to place.
Across the continent · Every NEON site placed in climate space (breeding-season temperature, with precipitation where a gauge exists) against a community metric, with richness rarefied to a common number of counts so it is not just effort. Space-for-time, stated on the chart.
Community, beyond what a few counts catch · Species accumulation by point-count occasion plus a Chao2 estimate of how many kinds really use the site, since point counts miss the nocturnal, secretive, and rare.
Honest abundance: a detection index · A loud species and a quiet one at equal density give unequal counts, so abundance is shown as birds per point-count, never a population. Each species' detectability is area-corrected (detections per hectare per distance ring).
Species profile cards · A downloadable card (PNG + CSV) for any species: detection index, ubiquity, points and grids, area-corrected detectability-by-distance, and yearly counts.
Overview: the story of a site · The most-detected species (coloured by how they are first found: singing, calling, or seen), a plain-English summary, and a seasonal-context panel placing the count window on the site's green-up and temperature year.
How we keep it honest
Every chart says how its numbers were made. When we show how common a bird is, that is a
detection rate (birds heard or seen per six-minute count), not a true headcount, because
a loud bird gets noticed more often than a quiet one even when there are the same number of each.
A steadier measure is how often a bird shows up at all (the share of spots where it was found),
and the tool leans on that. Counts of how many kinds live at a site are adjusted so sites with
more visits are not credited with extra birds just for being visited more (raw counts climb with
effort, so we level the effort before comparing). When we compare sites across the country, we are
comparing 46 different places watched at the same time, not one place warming up over the years,
so the patterns are a starting point for questions, not proof of cause. Rainfall is shown only at
sites with an actual gauge, never guessed. This is a tool for learning and exploring. It is
not affiliated with NEON, Battelle, or the NSF.