Birdlife MCP: AI-Powered Conservation Data

Query bird sightings, IUCN status, and eBird coverage gaps directly from Claude using the Model Context Protocol.

Conservation researchers spend time context-switching between conversation and data lookup. Ask Claude about threatened species in a region, and it can only offer general knowledge — not real-time sighting data or current IUCN assessments.

Today we're launching the Birdlife MCP Server, which connects Claude directly to our APIs. Now you can ask natural questions and get answers grounded in actual bird data.

What you can ask

Once connected, Claude can answer questions like:

  • "What threatened birds have been seen in Serbia in the last week?"
  • "Find coverage gaps near Belgrade that need surveying"
  • "What's the current IUCN status of European Turtle-Dove?"
  • "Show me vulnerable species sighted within 50km of my location"

Claude calls the appropriate tools behind the scenes and presents the results in conversation. No API documentation required.

8 tools, 3 APIs

The server exposes tools across our three main APIs:

Resolution API

  • resolve_taxon — canonical species names with UUIDs
  • resolve_location — place names to coordinates and eBird region codes

Birds API

  • search_species_by_region — recent sightings with IUCN status
  • search_species_nearby — sightings near any coordinates

Hotspots API

  • find_coverage_gaps_region — hotspots needing visits
  • find_coverage_gaps_nearby — gaps near coordinates
  • list_countries — countries with eBird data
  • list_subregions — states/provinces in a country

Get started

Add the server to Claude Code with one command:

claude mcp add --transport sse --scope user birdlife "https://mcp.birdlife.tech/sse"

Type /mcp to verify the connection shows "birdlife" with 8 tools.

What is MCP?

Model Context Protocol is an open standard from Anthropic that lets AI assistants connect to external tools and data sources. Instead of copying data into your prompt, the model calls tools directly and incorporates the results into its response.

Our server uses SSE (Server-Sent Events) transport, which works through firewalls and doesn't require running anything locally.

Data sources

All data comes from eBird and the IUCN Red List, refreshed daily through our existing APIs:

Privacy and rate limits

The server is public with IP-based rate limiting (60 requests/minute). We track usage source in our analytics — MCP requests show as source=mcp vs direct API calls.

No authentication required. The underlying APIs are the same ones powering the Birds PWA.

Questions or feedback? Reach out on Bluesky or Reddit.