mnowls.com - Owl Tracker

You might notice a few links on the left to a few various simple web tools I have put together. The one I want to talk about today is the Owl Tracker.

What Is the Owl Tracker? The Owl Tracker is a tool that uses the eBird API to pull owl locations and put them on a map!

Why? Doesn't eBird Do That Already? Yup! I am a photographer. I like taking pictures with my camera. Sometimes I like those pictures to be of owls. When I am feeling inspired to go take a picture of an owl, the last thing I feel like doing is firing up various eBird tabs/web browser apps and typing in each owl, making sure my date range is correct, etc. So, I made this tool.

Okay, So You're Still Describing What eBird Does, Why Is This Different? Mnowls is meant to be one webpage. There are a few buttons on that webpage, but not too many. Mnowls does not want you to leave mnowls. The tool was designed to be really simple. A header that tells us how stale our data is, a map in the middle that shows where owls are found on the map, a tool for selecting owl species on the left side of the page, a list of sightings, in order of age, on the bottom, and a footer with attribution to the resource that made this project possible. Click the owl you want to see, locations show on the map.

Cool, I Think I Get It! Great. Any other questions?

Is It Complete? You Ready to Ship This Thing? Nope! Check out my todo list. I was going to put it in this post, but I think the idea of maintaining a todo list in the middle of a random blog post sucks, so it's at that link.

Thanks for listening.