Cornell's Interactive Wall of Birds (academy.allaboutbirds.org)

It’s funny how they don’t include the most populous bird, the chicken. The cognitive dissonance is probably too strong.

If you haven't tried it their Merlin app is pretty fantastic.

The visual map that expands to short descriptions with the sounds, gives me nostalgic memories for Microsoft Encarta.

Is there anything as fun and interactive that is available today that could be used by kids? Wikipedia is great for adults but it’s just too much information and it’s not packaged in short and visual focus of Microsoft Encarta of the old times. The other cool thing of MS Encarta is it wasn’t too big, it was finite, you could exhaust one topic and then go explore something else, it wasn’t infinite rabbit hole.

Neat concept but looks vibecoded/authored by someone who does not know web programming. Many HTML and JS errors. Code is a mess. jQuery, angular, document.write, modernizr. Why?

Could be done at 5% of codebase size, with cleaner code, no var, better error handling ($http calls use .success(...), no zero .error()/.catch() handlers).

Am I wrong... no eagle?

In case it isn't clear, the wall here is a representation of the actual wall at the Visitor Center at the Cornell Lab Of Ornithology. They also have a live webcam of their bird feeder, that is literally just around the corner from this wall:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x10vL6_47Dw

It's a really pretty place to visit, with 5 miles of hiking trails around it. If you get a chance to visit Ithaca, it's worth taking the time to visit:

https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/

How is Cornell’s ornithology lab so strong? They also produce Merlin Bird ID (https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/) and work on the underlying BirdNET (https://birdnet.cornell.edu/).

“all about birds” indeed!

One of the coolest things I've seen. I'd recommend the "Behind the scenes" video in the page.