Discover your priority birds at any destination worldwide
Use this tool to build a list of target birds ranked by rarity and noteworthiness for your next birding trip. We make it easy to input a town or lodge you're traveling to and get all the neat birds you've never seen within a search radius. Happy birding!
Upload your life list so we can filter out birds you've already seen.
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Type any city, national park, state, or country name.
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Every bird gets a priority score that combines two factors: its global conservation status from the IUCN Red List and whether eBird has flagged it as a notably rare sighting in your search area within the last 7 days.
| Status | Meaning | Base score |
|---|---|---|
| CR | Critically Endangered | 1,000 |
| EN | Endangered | 700 |
| VU | Vulnerable | 400 |
| NT | Near Threatened | 200 |
| LC | Least Concern | 80 |
| DD | Data Deficient | 120 |
| ⭐ Recently Notable | eBird flagged as rare in this area this week | +50 bonus |
Birds are sorted by Spark Factor (highest first). Because the coolness and notable bonuses are capped well below the smallest IUCN gap, this automatically puts all CR birds above all EN birds, EN above VU, and so on — while within each conservation tier, cooler families and recently-notable sightings float to the top. The family coolness tiers are:
Why is a Short-eared Owl below a Virginia Rail? If the rail has a recent notable sighting it scores 80 + 48 (tier 4 rails) + 50 (notable) = 178, while a non-notable Short-eared Owl scores 80 + 65 (tier 5 owls) = 145. The rail edges it out because the notable bonus outweighs the coolness gap. A Near Threatened Pygmy-Owl will always appear above both, because its NT base of 200 puts it out of reach of any LC bonus.
Spark Factor is the score shown on every card. It starts with the IUCN base score (CR=1,000 · EN=700 · VU=400 · NT=200 · LC=80), then adds two sub-tier bonuses that differentiate birds within the same conservation category: up to +65 for family coolness (tier 5 owl = +65, tier 4 = +48, tier 3 = +32, tier 2 = +16, tier 1 sparrow = +0) and +50 if recently notable on eBird. These bonuses are deliberately capped so that no lower IUCN tier can ever outscore a higher one — the max possible bonus is 65 + 50 = 115, which is just under the smallest IUCN gap of 120 (NT to LC). So the highest possible EN (815) is always below the lowest CR (1,000). The badge colour follows an Olympic medal scheme — gold for CR territory (900+), fading through silver for VU/EN, down to bronze for LC birds.
The ranking is a starting point. Use the drag handle on each card to reorder by your own priorities, and remove birds you're not interested in chasing.