12 March 2024
It’s server migration season at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
For two days next week these Cornell Lab of Ornithology services will be down as they migrate from local servers to the cloud.
The following Cornell Lab services will be unavailable starting 6am ET March 19 until 6am ET March 21:
- eBird.org, including eBird portals and email Alerts
- eBird API and data products
- Merlin Bird ID save sightings and refresh life list (only recent locations will be available for ID and Explore)
- BirdCast alerts and migration dashboard
- Macaulay Library
- Birds of the World
- Bird Academy
You will also not be able to access any programs that require logging in with your Cornell Lab account during the outage.
— Team eBird news, Upcoming Maintenance: Cornell Lab Services Will Be Unavailable 19-21 March
I know from personal experience (my career in Information Technology) that there is really no good time to do a server migration and it always takes longer than users want it to. Cornell Lab says they’re migrating 1.6 billion bird observations and that if it goes really well some services may be up late on 20 March.
During the outage eBird will still work on your mobile phone in offline mode. This feature was built into the app long ago because the best birds are far away from cell towers.
So hang tight while Cornell Lab data goes into hiding for two days.
Read more at Team eBird news: Upcoming Maintenance: Cornell Lab Services Will Be Unavailable 19-21 March.
(black-winged stilts photo from Wikimedia Commons; logos from Cornell Lab of Ornithology; eBird screenshot from my mobile phone)