bird_migration

Daily bird migration population centers

Daily migration trajectories for ten bird species that breed in North America and cross the Atlantic Ocean during autumn migration. Each row gives the geographic center of one species' population on one day of the year, estimated from eBird occurrence records collected between 1950 and 2015. Tracing a species across the year traces its annual migration: American Golden-Plover begins January on the Argentine pampas, reaches 70°N by late June, and returns.

Because the estimates average many years, no calendar year applies to them. Following seattle-weather-hourly-normals.csv, the date column uses a nominal non-leap year, and day holds the day of the year alongside it.

Transformed using /scripts/bird-migration.py, which downloads the source from Dryad's official Zenodo mirror and verifies its SHA-256 before conversion. It derives the day from row order within each species, drops the 421 of 3650 source rows whose coordinates are NA, and rounds coordinates to four decimal places. Days with no estimate concentrate in the non-breeding season, when eBird coverage of South America and the Caribbean was sparse, so a species' day values are not contiguous: Connecticut Warbler is missing 172 days and Bicknell's Thrush 104, while Semipalmated Sandpiper, Solitary Sandpiper, and White-rumped Sandpiper are complete.

CSV 3,229 rows 5 fields 166 KB

Fields

FieldTypeDistributionSummaryMissing
species

Common name of the bird species

Values: American Golden-Plover, Bicknell's Thrush, Blackpoll Warbler, Bobolink, Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Connecticut Warbler, Pectoral Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Solitary Sandpiper, White-rumped Sandpiper

 string 10 distinct Semipalmated Sandpiper 365 · Solitary Sandpiper 365 · White-rumped Sandpiper 365 Missing 0
day

Day of the year, from 1 for January 1 to 365 for December 31

 integer 1 – 365 · mean 187.8 Missing 0
date

The same day as `day`, carrying a nominal year for use with temporal scales

 date Jan 1, 2015 – Dec 31, 2015 Missing 0
lon

Longitude of the population center, in degrees east

 number -121.6 – -52.3 · mean -79.17 Missing 0
lat

Latitude of the population center, in degrees north

 number -43.26 – 70.17 · mean 25.53 Missing 0

Profiled across all 3,229 rows.

Explore

The bird_migration map, as the starter chart draws it
Vega-Lite · circle mark · equalEarth projection · tooltipVega-Lite · circle mark · equalEarth projection · tooltip
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Preview

First 5 of 3,229 rows5 of 3,229 rows
speciesdaydatelonlat
American Golden-Plover12015-01-01-58.019-31.0456
American Golden-Plover22015-01-02-58.0406-31.096
American Golden-Plover32015-01-03-58.07-31.129
American Golden-Plover42015-01-04-58.1073-31.1447
American Golden-Plover52015-01-05-58.1524-31.1432

Scroll sideways for all 5 fields.

Examples

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This dataset is published and documented but no Vega, Vega-Lite or Altair example uses it. A new example would be a welcome contribution.

Provenance

Source
License
File
data/bird-migration.csv · 165,944 bytes · View on GitHub