About BioAcoustic Database

The BioAcoustic Database is a free, open-access reference for bird species and their vocalizations. It aggregates data from multiple trusted sources to provide comprehensive species profiles alongside audio recordings of bird calls and songs from around the world.

Data Sources

This project brings together data from several leading biodiversity and knowledge platforms:

• Xeno-canto — The primary source for bird audio recordings. Xeno-canto is a citizen-science project that collects and shares bird sounds from around the world, contributed by thousands of recordists.
• Wikipedia — Species descriptions and general information are sourced from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, providing a broad overview of each species’ biology, behavior, and ecology.
• GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) — Occurrence data and taxonomic information are drawn from GBIF, an international network providing open access to biodiversity data.
• iNaturalist — Community-sourced species observations and photographic references contribute to species identification and distribution data.
• Wikidata — Structured data about species, including taxonomic identifiers, conservation status, and cross-references to other databases.

Licensing

Audio recordings hosted on and sourced from Xeno-canto are shared under their respective Creative Commons licenses as specified by the individual recordists. Each recording’s license is displayed on its detail page. Common licenses include:

• CC BY 4.0 — Attribution
• CC BY-NC 4.0 — Attribution, Non-Commercial
• CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike

Species descriptions derived from Wikipedia are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. Data from GBIF, iNaturalist, and Wikidata are used in accordance with their respective open-data policies.

Attribution

We are grateful to the many contributors who make this project possible:

• The thousands of recordists who share their field recordings on Xeno-canto
• Wikipedia editors who maintain comprehensive species articles
• GBIF data publishers and the institutions that share occurrence records
• The iNaturalist community of naturalists and citizen scientists
• Wikidata contributors who curate structured biodiversity data

Contact

If you have questions, suggestions, or would like to report an issue, please reach out via the project repository or contact the site administrators.

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