Flock: eBird Re-imagined

Introducing Flock. A personal project to make a popular citizen science app more engaging and welcoming to beginners.

This is a personal portfolio project exploring how eBird (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) could feel more welcoming, motivating, and socially connected—especially for newer and mid-experience birders—without compromising the scientific rigor that makes it valuable.

Date: Summer 2026

Independent concept project. Flock is a personal design exploration. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with eBird, the Merlin Bird ID app, or the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. No proprietary data, source code, or brand assets from those products are used here.

A new social feed helps build community within the eBird app while still enabling the checklist to take a central role when out in the field.

Why this exists

I love birding, and I’m also fascinated by products that help people build skills over time. In birding, there’s a common pattern:

Merlin makes it easy to get started (identify a bird, learn quickly, feel rewarded).
eBird is incredibly powerful for logging and record-keeping—but can feel intimidating until you learn its mental model.

Merlin is where most people start. You point it at a bird, it helps you identify it, and you walk away feeling like you learned something. eBird is where the serious record-keeping happens, and it's genuinely powerful, but it asks you to learn its mental model before it gives much back. The distance between "I just identified a bird in Merlin" and "I have an eBird checklist" is wider than it looks.

I took this on end to end on my own: spotting the gap, running the research, defining the concepts, and building the first prototype with AI-assisted tooling. It was also a deliberate way to show mobile product thinking.

What is eBird?

eBird is a birding and citizen-science platform from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Birders submit checklists of what they saw, where, and when, and that data feeds a global biodiversity dataset researchers and conservationists actually use.

For birders, eBird also functions as:

A personal logbook (your sightings history)
A life list tracker (and other personal records)
A discovery tool (what’s being seen nearby, what’s rare, seasonal patterns)

Its strength is rigor and scale. The cost of that rigor is that the experience can feel dense, especially early on.

Problem

eBird is the most serious tool in birding, but newcomers often find it intimidating, and it does little to pull them back after a first sighting. The opening I saw: make eBird rewarding sooner through visible progress, social connection, and field use that respects the moment, without touching the scientific rigor that makes the data worth keeping.

Research

Method

I ran an online survey of birders across experience levels, weighted toward the newer and mid-experience users this concept is for. It mixed Likert-scale agreement statements about eBird, multi-select questions on what people want from a birding app, and open-ended prompts on frustrations and feature wishes.

This was lightweight, directional research, not a powered study. I used it to find signal and frame a design bet, not to prove a market. With that said, the patterns were consistent enough to act on.

Key findings

Merlin is the gateway. eBird is the destination many people never reach.

Every respondent uses Merlin, most more often than eBird, some far more. Newer birders described eBird as confusing and unfamiliar. One daily Merlin user had never opened eBird at all. The jump from a Merlin ID to an eBird checklist is a real drop-off point, not a rough edge.

eBird is noticeably thin on community.

When asked where eBird helps most, people landed on identifying local birds and keeping a record or life list. When asked where it falls short, they landed on three social needs: connecting with friends in the hobby, finding a community of birders, and connecting with birders nearby. The strengths and the gaps sit on opposite sides of the same coin.

The onboarding curve is real, even for people who eventually love the app.

Among regular users, agreement that eBird makes birding more enjoyable was strong. Agreement that it was easy to get the hang of was not. One person named feeling intimidated outright. The app earns loyalty once you push through the curve, and the curve itself is where people leak out before they ever get there.

Birders use these apps as a field companion first, not as a stat dashboard.

In-the-field jobs, IDing birds, real-time tracking, exploring species in an area, outranked reviewing past sightings or checking personal stats. Whatever the redesign adds has to survive one-handed use, spotty service, and a bird that won't wait.

In their words

“Don’t have the app / confusing web UI.” — On why a daily Merlin user has never used eBird
“I would enjoy more functionality around hotspot management, such as being able to suggest hotspots on the app and seeing where my tracts are generally.” — On where eBird falls short
“Sometimes I will use eBird to look for species sightings in a new area, especially target species.” — On how eBird earns its place in the field

From findings to concepts

Three throughlines carried the research into design.

Smooth the path between Merlin and eBird, and make the app rewarding earlier

If newer birders bounce because eBird feels intimidating, it has to give back sooner: visible progress, less app-switching, and recognition for the small wins that actually happen in the first few weeks.

Embedded Merlin-style quick view of species detail and photos
Personal records page for best list, day, month, and year
Goals and monthly/yearly wrap-ups
Seasonal and regional photo mode

Build a meaningful social layer

Community was the biggest gap people named, so it belongs in the core of the experience rather than bolted on at the edges.

Strava-style social feed with friends and following
Interactive lifer map with a timeline slider

Respect the realities of in-the-field use

Field use is the main job people hire these apps for, and it's where the logging flow can least afford friction.

Offline hotspots saving
Quick add numeric shortcuts
Automatic weather note in checklist comments

What I built

I didn't try to build all of this at once. I picked pieces in an order that let me prove the concept in stages, starting with something that could stand alone, then moving into the flows a birder would actually live in day to day.

The lifer map, first

I built the lifer map first, and it's still its own standalone piece, because three things about it were practical rather than aspirational.

It makes progress something you can see. A life list is usually a number that goes up. On a map, with a timeline, it becomes a route through the places you've birded, which is closer to how the hobby actually feels.

It's personal, which means it can become social later without forcing it. A map of your own first sightings is worth looking at alone, and it's also the kind of thing you'd want to show a friend. That gave the social layer (yet to be built) something real to eventually stand on.

And it runs without a backend. It plots each life bird's first-seen location, replays the list growing over time on a timeline, and does all of it on a quick export of my own personal eBird records, so I could prove the idea without standing up infrastructure I didn't need yet.

The checklist, treated like a session

With the map proving the reflective half of the concept, I turned to the part of eBird people actually open the most: the checklist.

eBird's checklist takes over your screen the moment you start one. It's the right instinct, you need focus, but it also cuts you off from everything else the app does while you're using its most-used feature.

I redesigned it as a session instead of a takeover. Start a checklist and the center navigation button changes from a plain add action into a live indicator, a bird icon with a running count of what you've logged. Tap it and you're back in your list. The rest of the app stays one tap away the whole time. Stop the checklist and the button reverts.

I'd originally sketched this as a bottom sheet, closer to a music player floating over whatever you're doing. I talked myself out of it. A birder mid-checklist isn't peeking at something else, they're in the list, and a full page gave the interface more room to just be a good list: a fixed count column, a tap target to add species you haven't counted yet, and clear flags for anything rare or new to your life list.

The non-existent app switch

Right now, identifying a tricky bird in eBird means leaving eBird. You tap out to Merlin, look at photos, maybe listen to a call, and tap back. It works, but it breaks your place in the checklist every time, and in the field that's a real cost, not a minor one.

I built a species detail sheet that opens directly from a checklist row, no app switch required. Long-press a species, or tap a small info icon if long-press isn't available to you, and a sheet rises from the bottom of the screen showing exactly what you'd need to confirm an ID: labeled photos by plumage and pose, a tab for similar species with the one detail that actually tells them apart, habitat notes, and sounds.

I even added a new sound ID mode I hadn't planned on until I noticed my own frustration with Merlin's live sound ID: when you're trying to confirm one specific bird, a scrolling feed of everything Merlin hears is the wrong tool. I built a focused version instead, one species, one status, and a timestamped log of possible matches so a detection isn't lost if you look away for a second.

Real, meaningful stats to reinforce progress

The lifer map answers "where have I been." A companion screen, My Birding, answers "how is this year going": life list, this year, this month, your best single day. Some things are already in eBird, others, like the “best day” are inexplicably absent. Compare to an app like Strava, where personal records, goals, and challenges are a core part of the experience. It’s the kind of motivation that I want to see when I’m using eBird. Something to give me that boost to go out and find just one more bird to set a new daily record.

A new species detail overlay provides key ID tips without removing you completely from the list. The redesigned stats page adds personal best records and goals to fuel motivation.

Playground

These are embedded, working examples of the concepts I have built so far. Have fun poking around and seeing what they can do!

The lifer map below is the standalone piece, a life list replayed as a route instead of a number. The app to the right is the more recent slice, the checklist, the species sheet, and My Birding, all connected and running on the same mocked data described above.

Flock App — start a checklist from the Feed tab, then long-press a species row to see the ID sheet open without leaving the screen. That interaction is the one I'd point you to first.

Lifer Map — drag the timeline slider and watch the list build itself, sighting by sighting.

Prototype stack

Next.js (App Router) and TypeScript
Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui
Radix Colors, Jade and Sage, wired through CSS variables
Mocked JSON data, no backend for any of this
Built with Claude Code as a build partner, describing behavior and reviewing output rather than hand-writing every line, which let me move from an architecture conversation to working, connected screens inside a short timeline without changing what the underlying decisions were

Constraints and trade-offs

Web over native, on purpose. Web let me iterate faster and produce something shareable and embeddable for a portfolio. Native would be the right call for a production field app, and offline-first behavior eventually has to live there. For this stage, product thinking, design execution, and a working demo mattered more than platform fidelity.
Some pieces are convincing mockups, not working features. The passive listening tool and the wrap-up stats on My Birding are designed to hold up if built for real, foreground-only listening, soft confidence language instead of overclaimed precision, but there's no audio model or live data behind either one yet. I'd rather say that plainly than have someone assume otherwise.
The remaining backend-dependent features are deferred, not designed away. Offline persistence, live sync, and automated enrichment like the weather note are real parts of the concept. They're future work, and I'd rather the current scope be honest about that than imply it's all working today.

What’s coming next

This lifer map prototype is one piece of a broader “Flock” redesign. Planned next steps include:

Species detail sheet (press-and-hold) to reduce Merlin app-switching
Explore map for hotspots and nearby birds
Logging/checklist flow improvements (including quick add)
My Birding dashboard: goals, stats, wrap-ups
Social feed: friends/following, milestones, shareable artifacts
Notifications for lifers, rare alerts, and goal progress

What I think this could do

These are the bets the concept is built to test, not results I'm claiming. There's no production deployment and no usage data behind them yet. They're what I'd want to validate next.

For birders:

A more motivating sense of progress early (especially after the first few lifers)
A “story” view of the life list that’s easier to share and revisit than a stats table
Lightweight social fuel (conversation starters, pride, friendly comparison) without adding pressure to log perfectly

For eBird:

Higher retention from newer and mid-experience birders as the product feels rewarding sooner
More frequent return visits driven by reflection + sharing loops (not just rare-bird chasing)
A clearer bridge from Merlin moments to eBird identity (“I’m an eBird user”) over time

Summary

The research made the core gap clear enough to design against: eBird earns loyalty after people learn it, but it gives too little back early, and it offers almost no community to belong to in the meantime. The Lifer Map is my first answer to the first half of that problem. It makes progress visible, and it leaves a place for the social half to grow into.