Cornell University

eBird API 2.0

Global bird-observation API run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a unit of Cornell University. Free but token-gated: requests without a valid X-eBirdApiToken return 403. Reference documentation is published as a Postman collection rather than an OpenAPI, so no contract is saved in this repo — a gated surface with no machine-readable contract is recorded as the relationship it is, not as an artifact Cornell published.

GitHub

Documentation

📖
Documentation
https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/664302/S1ENwy59
📖
Authentication
https://ebird.org/api/keygen

API entry from apis.yml

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: cornell:ebird
name: eBird API 2.0
description: 'Global bird-observation API run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a unit of Cornell University.
  Free but token-gated: requests without a valid X-eBirdApiToken return 403. Reference documentation is
  published as a Postman collection rather than an OpenAPI, so no contract is saved in this repo — a gated
  surface with no machine-readable contract is recorded as the relationship it is, not as an artifact
  Cornell published.'
humanURL: https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/664302/S1ENwy59
baseURL: https://api.ebird.org/v2
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: 'https://ebird.org/about states "eBird is managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology"
  (200, 2026-08-19). api.ebird.org is not under cornell.edu, so it is recorded here as an institution
  surface on an affiliate domain, registered in 0-working/university-affiliates.json with evidence. Probed
  2026-08-19: /v2/ref/region/list/subnational1/US 403 with and without a token — gated, live.'
tags:
- Research Data
- Citizen Science
- Biodiversity
- Ornithology
properties:
- type: Documentation
  url: https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/664302/S1ENwy59
- type: Authentication
  url: https://ebird.org/api/keygen