September 10th, 2026
For the first time, the occurrence of all bird species in Europe can be tracked in near-real time
The new version of the EBP viewer has already been open to
the public.
This new version provides free access to hundreds of
animated maps showing the weekly distribution of nearly 600 bird species
updated close to real time. Namely, all those regularly and naturally occurring
within the EU (477), those introduced that have self-supporting breeding
populations (32) and a selection of the more regular vagrant species (58).
Now everyone can check the whereabouts of their favourite
bird with just a few clicks!
The Bee-eater and the Hobby are two of the new species that can be seen in the EBP viewer now
This has been made possible by the extraordinary volume of data collected by the different online bird recording portals operating in Europe: 750 million bird records since 2010, of which 76 million in 2026 alone.
All this data is automatically submitted to the EBP central
database on a daily basis, enabling all maps in the viewer to be updated daily
with the most up-to-date information.
This huge biodiversity dataflow, the largest currently
operating in Europe in near-real time, has been completed thanks to support
from EU’s LIFE Programme (LIFE EBP Reinforcement project) and the close
collaboration of a network of 52 ornithological organizations from 41 differentcountries.
The first version of the EBP viewer was launched in 2015, and four years later (2019) it was redesigned to work in live mode, showing data up to the previous day. As in previous versions, the current viewer depicts the week-by-week distributional patterns of bird species using different types of maps. Moreover, to facilitate direct comparison and to better glimpse differences in bird occurrence, two animated maps of any type, species and year can be selected to be shown simultaneously, offering thousands of different map combinations to choose from.
Our warm thanks to the more than 200,000 volunteer birdwatchers who regularly share their observations with the various online bird portals. The new EBP viewer is a recognition to their vital role in the project and showcases how such individual local contributions can be summed up in favour of bird conservation and outreach at the European scale.
