Great birders don't just find birds. They predict them. Read the habitat. Understand the timing. Recognize behavior. Arrive already knowing what you're likely to see.
That's the Flyway Compass.
The nearest hotspots a target species is being reported, ranked by your odds — and why it turns up there.
Open →The most productive eBird hotspots near any place, mapped and ranked by richness and recency.
Open →A live dashboard for any county or country — activity, best spots and rarities in one view.
Open →Enter a start and destination — the best hotspots to stop at all along the drive.
Open →Two local birds — which are you more likely to see here right now? Build encounter-rate instinct.
Start →Time of day, season and weather turned into what's active near you right now — so you go when the birds are moving.
In developmentWhy birds do what they do — feeding, courtship, thermals, flocking, territory. Understand behavior and presence starts to make sense.
In developmentYou've read the place — you know what's likely, where to look, and when to go. Now get out there and see it for yourself.
See what's near you →teaches you to predict.
teaches you to identify.
Together, they help you think like a birder.
Continue to the Method →The Flyway Compass is about reading a place before you ever lift your binoculars — the where, when, why, and what of birding. It turns your location, the season, and recent sightings into a sense of what's likely around you right now, so you walk in knowing which birds to expect and how likely each one is. Observation Odds put a real number on that expectation, built from live checklist data — training the anticipation that separates skilled birders from beginners.
The Compass is the "before you see a bird" half of Flyway: reading a place — where you are, the season, and what's being seen — to know which birds are likely, and why.
Observation Odds show how likely you are to encounter a given species at your location right now, based on live eBird checklist frequency. Training on them builds expectation — a core birding skill.
Flyway reads live sightings and hotspot data from eBird for your location, so the birds you train on are the ones actually being reported nearby.
The Compass reads the place — what's likely, and why. The Method identifies the bird once you see it. Together they make up the full skill of field birding.
No. Flyway uses public eBird data on your behalf — no eBird account or API key is needed to start.
Yes. Flyway is free to use, and a free account tracks your progress and Field Intelligence over time.