Open bird data
Every bird detection from our five Lake District bird stations, free to download and use. We promised this data openly to ecologists, schools and the Lake District Foundation, whose HEART grant funded the stations.
Download
One CSV file per station, with 106,727 detections in all. Last updated 6 October 2026; we refresh the files periodically.
Basecamp North Lakes
Basecamp North Lakes · Wetland
24 Jul 2026 to 6 Oct 2026 · 2,970 detections · 46 species
Foulshaw Moss
Cumbria Wildlife Trust · Lowland raised bog
8 Sep 2026 to 25 Sep 2026 · 5,604 detections · 46 species
Gowbarrow Farm
Gowbarrow Farm · Upland wood pasture and moorland
24 Jul 2026 to 6 Oct 2026 · 62,440 detections · 79 species
Low Beckside Farm
The Ernest Cook Trust · Upland hill farm
12 Sep 2026 to 6 Oct 2026 · 11,215 detections · 44 species
Sizergh
National Trust · Parkland and limestone woodland
11 Sep 2026 to 6 Oct 2026 · 24,498 detections · 57 species
How to read this data
- Automatic identifications. Each row is a bird sound identified by BirdNET, running on BirdNET-Go at the station. We spot-check identifications by listening back, and almost all are right, but individual records aren't verified.
- Detections, not birds. One bird singing for a few minutes can produce many detections, so counts show activity, not numbers of birds.
- Use the confidence score. It runs from 0.2 to 1. Treat low-confidence records, and single records of rare or unexpected species, with caution; filtering to 0.7 or above gives a more conservative list.
- Leave out rejected records. A few rows are marked
false_positive, where a person listened and the identification was wrong. - Gaps. A station can miss days if it loses power or its microphone. A gap in the data isn't evidence that birds were absent.
- No recordings of people. The files contain only bird identifications: no audio and no personal data. The stations discard any recording in which they detect human speech.
Columns
| monitor_id, monitor | Which station heard it. |
|---|---|
| detection_id | The station's own number for the detection. |
| date_local, time_local | When, in UK local time. |
| timestamp | The same moment in ISO 8601, with the time-zone offset. |
| scientific_name, common_name | The species BirdNET identified. |
| confidence | BirdNET's confidence in the identification, from 0 to 1. |
| review_status | "unverified" for automatic identifications; "false_positive" where a person listened and rejected it. |
Licence
The data is free to use, share and adapt under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0). Please credit it as: "Bird detection data from Beak Tech Community Interest Company (beaktech.org), CC BY 4.0."
Using the data for research, teaching or a report? We'd love to hear about it, and can help with questions. Get in touch.