‘iOrnithology’: Photos and videos posted online are transforming bird research

Every year, millions of photographs and videos of birds are uploaded to online platforms by birdwatchers, photographers, and tourists across the world. A new study shows that scientists are increasingly harnessing this vast digital archive to conduct ornithological research — and that the approach is now transforming what is possible in the field of ornithology.

In the first comprehensive review of studies using this new approach, researchers found a rapid growth in what they term ‘iOrnithology’, with 64 peer-reviewed papers published between 2015 and 2024. This growth is likely driven by both the increase in digital media online and the growing confidence in web-sourced data as an emerging research tool.
Lead author, Dr. Connor Panter, from the University of Nottingham, explains, “Web-sourced media can support a wide range of ornithological research that would often be difficult or impossible to achieve using traditional field-based approaches.”
The review identifies eight main research topics now being addressed through online media: (1) plumage patterns, (2) distributions, (3) behaviour, (4) diets, (5) species interactions, (6) threats, (7) habitat use, and (8) lateralisation (the study of brain asymmetry and handedness). Plumage studies were the most common, accounting for nearly a third of all papers, likely due to photographs being well suited to documenting colour variation across species’ large geographic ranges.
The study found that most research exploited online photographs, being used in nearly 90% of studies, but videos were popular for studying bird behaviours. The main sources of media came from the Macaulay Library, iNaturalist, Google Images, Facebook, and WikiAves.
Senior Author, Associate Professor Arjun Amar, from the University of Cape Town, said, “As digital media archives continue to grow and analytical tools improve, this approach is likely to expand further. This approach will never replace fieldwork studies, but our research points to the growing value of web-sourced media as a powerful addition to the ornithologist’s toolkit.”
The review suggests that a major advantage of iOrnithology is the geographic scale at which research can be conducted. Nearly 65% of the reviewed studies were conducted at national, continental, or global scales—something that would be logistically prohibitive using conventional fieldwork alone.
However, the authors recognise that this new approach comes with its own set of limitations. Geographic and observer bias are the most obvious issues. Records on many platforms are heavily biased towards North America and Europe, leaving tropical biodiverse regions comparatively underrepresented. They also suggest that larger, more charismatic species tend to attract the highest numbers of photographs and videos, further biasing the samples available.
The future use of this approach may be compromised with the advent of AI. The review highlights the increasing prevalence of AI-generated imagery on open platforms such as Facebook, which could, in the future, threaten the integrity of data used in this method. But AI might also help these kinds of research projects in a positive way, as a means to help screen the vast image archives.
The review concludes that there are many future research questions where iOrnithology may play a role. These include its potential use for disease surveillance (for example, tracking the spread of avian influenza or parasitic infections through online records) and for monitoring the spread of invasive species.
The paper is published in the British Ornithologists' Union journal, IBIS.