A quiet forecast of the living sky
Above Us shows which birds and butterflies are passing near you: tonight, this week, this season. It is made for people who do not watch birds (yet): nothing to file, no expertise needed. Just look up.
Right now, as you read this, thousands of migratory birds may be flying over you. Some journey from the Arctic to the Antarctic. They don't know you exist, but you share the same sky. Above Us simply makes that visible, the way a weather forecast makes the rain visible before it falls.
How it works
Tonight above you
Below the map, a short forecast: the species reported near you in the last 24 hours, and the moment, around sunset, when many of them lift off again and cross your sky.
The map
Small dots are real, community-reported observations near you. Photo circles rest on soft dotted bands that sketch the seasonal passage; hollow rings are well-loved birding places. Tap anything to read its card.
Where to meet them
Real public places near your area where these animals are often seen in season. A good chance to meet them, never a promise that they are there right now.
Your collection
Keep the animals you have seen, and the postcards you make, in your collection. For now it lives privately on your device; accounts are coming.
Honest by design
Every layer on the map says what it is. A seasonal pattern is never dressed up as a live position. A sighting always carries its date and its source. Locations are approximate. Your position is rounded to about a kilometre and never stored, and private, at-home eBird locations are never shown.
Data & credits
Recent bird observations and hotspots come from eBird (Cornell Lab of Ornithology), used non-commercially with attribution. Bird and butterfly records and species photos come from GBIF, drawing on many datasets, including iNaturalist research-grade observations, and every photo is shown only under a Creative Commons licence, with its photographer credited. The basemap is MapTiler, © OpenStreetMap contributors. Passage timing in the species stories comes from eBird Status and Trends models (Cornell Lab of Ornithology, data version 2023), summarized for New York State.
Every layer is labeled by what it is. A seasonal pattern shows where a species is expected in season. It is never a live position. A recent observation is a real, community-reported sighting, always shown with its date and source. Nothing on the map is a real-time animal location unless it is labeled Live, with its source and time.
Time range and source are shown with every layer as it is connected. Recent observations are live from eBird and GBIF. The dotted bands sketch the seasonal passage across an area, in autumn broadly southwest, and grow wider as more species are reported nearby. They are patterns, never sightings or tracked routes. A photo avatar resting on a band is a species reported nearby this week, placed on the band for readability, and its card says so. The small dots are the reported places themselves; a photo inside a dot’s card is the observed individual when its record includes one, and otherwise a credited photo of the species.
You are part of this migration, too. Under the same sky.
Above Us · aboveus.org