A picture is worth a thousand words. So too are audio recordings. Videos may be worth even more. But until now, there has been no easy way to explore the checklists that have rich media of a given species. We have updated our eBird point maps to allow you to filter the map to only show locations with photos, audio and video, by checking the box that says “Explore Rich Media”. The map will then show markers to indicate if there is a video, photo or audio. Selecting that icon will then bring up all the checklists and you can see which checklists have video, photos and audio. To get started, check out the map of Yellow-headed Blackbird. Or for something farther afield, check out Plains-wanderer, which only has a single location — but we think you will enjoy the video of this bizarre species — it is the only member of the family Pedionomidae (males are smaller than females and do the work of raising the young — similar to phalaropes).

The nitty gritty details: For checklists with more than one type of rich media we have a hierarchy with video showing first, then photos, then audio. For instance, if a checklist has both audio and a photo, the map will show the photo icon. If it has video and a photo, it will show the video icon.

There will be plenty to explore: the eBird community has uploaded video, photos, or audio for a whopping 5253 species of birds–more than half the total number of species in the world! See if you can add the first photos for a species you have photographed!

This is the first of several improvements we are making to fully integrating rich media in eBird. We are working with the Macaulay Library and other departments at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to develop improved ways of gathering, archiving and displaying rich media. Expect many more improvements.

For information on how you can embed rich media in eBird, see this article.

Let us know what you think by emailing us here. Do you like this new functionality? What else would you like to see?