How to use Flyway
Flyway turns live eBird sightings into practice for the birds you'll actually meet. Everything is organized around one idea — building field intelligence — through two frameworks and a place to prove it. New to the idea? See why field skills matter.
The Flyway System
Four things, and each teaches a skill:
The Compass — before you see a bird
Read the place: where to look, when to go, why it's there, what to expect. Open the Compass →
The Method — when you see a bird
The five-step routine to identify it: prime, shape, move, mark, commit. Train the Method →
Practice — prove it
The quiz, on the birds being reported near you right now. Take a quiz →
Progress — watch it grow
Your field intelligence, skill by skill, across the Compass and the Method. See your progress →
The Method — train your eye
Open the Method and pick a drill; each one trains one step of identifying a bird, using real species being reported near you.
Shape-first · trains SHAPE
Color is stripped away — call the family from size and silhouette alone.
Glimpse · trains MOVE
The bird flashes for a moment; read the movement and name the family from the glance.
The Full Method · all five steps
One bird, start to finish — prime, shape, move, mark, then commit. See how the steps compound into a confident call.
Every answer captures how sure you were and how you knew, so your calibration — knowing when to trust a call — improves alongside your accuracy.
Practice — the quiz
The quiz is the heart of Flyway. It builds a set of birds from the species being reported near a place you choose, then asks you to identify them. Species that are genuinely common near you come up more often, so your practice matches real-world encounter rates.
Photo quiz
Identify birds from real photos. After a miss you get a side-by-side field-mark comparison of the bird you picked and the correct one.
By Ear quiz
A mystery recording with no photo — identify it by sound. How to learn bird songs →
Choosing where to quiz
Tap the ⚙ icon in the search box to open quiz options. You can search any place or use your current location, then pick a scope: Region quizzes everything within a radius, while Hotspots lets you drill one specific eBird hotspot — ideal for prepping a particular destination.
Advanced options
Under Advanced options in the same panel you can include unconfirmed reports, restrict to rare (notable) birds only, turn on a high-accuracy frequency scan, and set quiz length from 15 birds up to everything available.
How scoring works
Correct answers earn points weighted by speed, your current streak, and how difficult the species is (uncommon birds are worth more). Leaderboards normalise to a per-30-bird skill score, so a short quiz competes fairly with a long one.
The Compass — read the place
The Compass is everything that helps you predict birds before you see them, grouped by the question it answers — where to look, when to go, why a bird is there, and what to expect.
Find a Bird · Where
Pick a species; get the nearest hotspots it's been reported at, ranked by sighting probability.
Species Explorer · What
Everything being reported around you now, newest first, with how many were seen and exactly where.
Rarities Near Me
Recent notable sightings worth chasing, with photos, map links and the original checklist.
Top Hotspots
The most productive eBird hotspots near any place, mapped and ranked by richness, recent activity and distance.
Explore a Region
A dashboard for any county, state or country — species totals, best spots, recent rarities.
Every tool ends in a “Quiz this spot” link, so anything you find can immediately become practice.
Using each tool, step by step
Find a Bird. Type a target species and a starting point, and Flyway lists the nearest hotspots it's actually been reported at recently — ranked by your odds of seeing it, not just distance. Each result shows how many were seen, how recently, and links to the eBird checklist and a map. Best for chasing one specific bird. Full guide →
Species Explorer. Enter a place or tap the locate button and you get everything being reported around you right now, newest sightings first, with counts and the exact location of each. Use it to see what's active before you head out, then hit “Quiz these birds” to drill them.
Rarities Near Me. The same idea, filtered to eBird's notable (rare or unusual) reports — the birds worth chasing this week. Each rarity shows a photo where available, a map link, and the original checklist so you can judge the report for yourself before making the trip.
Top Hotspots. Give it any location and it maps and ranks the most productive nearby eBird hotspots, blending all-time species richness, how recently the spot was birded, and distance. Tap a hotspot to see it on the map or to start a quiz built from that exact spot. What is a hotspot? →
Explore a Region. Search any county, state or country for a live dashboard — species totals, the best hotspots, and recent rarities in one view. If a region is too large to summarize cleanly, Flyway lets you drill into a sub-region for a sharper picture. Good for planning a trip somewhere new.
Roadtrip Planner. Enter a start and a destination and Flyway finds strong hotspots spaced along the actual driving route, so a long drive becomes a string of birding stops. Full guide →
Photo & Sound quizzes (Learn). These launch a quiz for the birds near you in either sight or sound mode — the same engine as the main quiz. Sound mode is timed mystery audio; see learning bird songs.
Progress — your field intelligence
Your Progress page tracks how your field intelligence develops — a score for each Compass and Method skill, not just one number. Beneath it, your familiar record lives on: answering birds earns XP, which raises your level and unlocks badge tiers for streaks, accuracy, rare finds and more. Scores post to leaderboards for the region you played, and hotspot scores roll up into their surrounding region so small spots still count.
Photo and By Ear each have their own leaderboard — different skills, judged separately. Your personal best per region is tracked so you always have something to beat.
Settings worth knowing
Bird names
Show common names, scientific names, or both — and set the name language from 18 options.
Dark mode
A dark forest theme for low light, toggled from the header.
Add to home screen
Install Flyway as an app so it opens full screen, straight from your phone's home screen.
Accounts
Free and optional. Sign in with a one-tap email link — no password — to save progress and compete.
Where the data comes from
Sightings come from eBird (Cornell Lab of Ornithology), photos from iNaturalist contributors, sound recordings from xeno-canto, and field-mark descriptions from Wikipedia. Flyway is an independent educational tool and isn't affiliated with eBird or the Cornell Lab. Read more about the method on the About page, or see how the probability score is calculated.
Common questions: Flyway FAQ →