Pondlog eBird

Combined feed of recent wildlife sightings near a location. Merges iNaturalist observations (all taxa, citizen-science) with eBird observations (birds, expert-curated) into one chronologically-sorted list. Use this when the caller asks 'what's been seen near me' without specifying birds-only or invertebrates-only. For finer control (taxon filters, date ranges) use the per-source MCP servers (`@pondlog/mcp-inaturalist`, `@pondlog/mcp-ebird`). eBird requires a free API key (EBIRD_API_KEY env var or `ebird_api_key` input). Without it, only the iNaturalist half populates and an `ebird` entry appea…

Fetch a single observation by its iNaturalist ID, with full detail: photos, description, identification count, comment count, plus all the fields from the search response. Use after `search_observations` returns a result the caller wants to drill into.

Status / intensity observation records, individual observer reports of whether a phenophase was 'yes' (1), 'no' (0), or 'uncertain' (-1) on a given date. This is the rawest NPN data type. REQUIRES a year filter and at least one narrowing filter (species/station/state/genus/family/order/class). Unfiltered queries can return tens of MB. For 'is this in phenology now?' aggregated answers prefer `get_site_level_data`. For a place-aware 'what's recently active' shortcut prefer `get_active_phenology_nearby`.

Returns the top observers (most prolific iNaturalist users) for a given geographic + temporal query. Each row: user id, login, display name, observation count, species count. Use this to find local naturalists or to credit who is documenting an area.

Returns USA-NPN site-level phenometric records near a location: which species/phenophases (e.g. 'Flowers or flower buds', 'Open flowers', 'Ripe fruits') have been recorded at NPN stations within radius, with mean first/last 'yes' dates and distance. Useful for 'what's blooming near me' or 'what's leafing out'. Coverage is best in the continental US. NPN's bulk-download endpoint is intentionally not exposed, this composes a station search + site-level query for a polite, bandwidth-friendly answer. No API key required.

Returns recent eBird checklists (birding submissions) for a region, with submission ID, location, observer, observation date/time, and species count per checklist. eBird region codes are hierarchical: country (e.g. "US", "CA"), subnational1 = state/province (e.g. "US-WA"), subnational2 = county/equivalent (e.g. "US-WA-009" for Clallam County, WA). Use a more specific code for tighter scope. Use this to see who has been birding where, recently. Drill into a specific checklist with `get_checklist`.

Place-aware shortcut: 'what fungi have been observed near here in the last N days?' Provide either bbox (lat+lng+radius_km) OR an MO region suffix string. Returns observations sorted by date with consensus name, confidence score, location, and photo URL. This is the recommended starting tool for any 'what's fruiting?' question. Pages through MO results internally to fill the requested limit. For taxonomy lookup use `search_fungal_names`. For a single record's full detail use `get_observation`. For richer filtering (taxon name, date range) use `search_observations`.

Returns recent notable (rare or out-of-range) bird sightings in an eBird region. "Notable" is determined by eBird reviewers using regional rarity filters, a Mountain Bluebird in coastal Washington might be notable; a Crow is not. eBird region codes are hierarchical: country (e.g. "US", "CA"), subnational1 = state/province (e.g. "US-WA"), subnational2 = county/equivalent (e.g. "US-WA-009" for Clallam County, WA). Use a more specific code for tighter scope. Use this when the caller asks for unusual / rare / interesting sightings. For all recent species (not just notable), use `get_recent_observa…

Returns the most recent observation of each species seen in an eBird region in the last `back` days. Each row is one species (eBird deduplicates server-side: most recent sighting per species). Each row includes species code, common + scientific name, location, observer, count, and date. eBird region codes are hierarchical: country (e.g. "US", "CA"), subnational1 = state/province (e.g. "US-WA"), subnational2 = county/equivalent (e.g. "US-WA-009" for Clallam County, WA). Use a more specific code for tighter scope. Use this for region-scoped queries ('what birds have been seen in Clallam County t…

Returns recent sightings of one species in an eBird region. eBird region codes are hierarchical: country (e.g. "US", "CA"), subnational1 = state/province (e.g. "US-WA"), subnational2 = county/equivalent (e.g. "US-WA-009" for Clallam County, WA). Use a more specific code for tighter scope. Returns each individual sighting (not deduplicated like `get_recent_observations`), including count, location, observer, and date. Use when the caller names a specific species and wants every recent sighting in a region. For coords-scoped, use `get_nearby_of_species`.

Returns the human-readable name and geographic bounds for an eBird region code. eBird region codes are hierarchical: country (e.g. "US", "CA"), subnational1 = state/province (e.g. "US-WA"), subnational2 = county/equivalent (e.g. "US-WA-009" for Clallam County, WA). Use a more specific code for tighter scope. Output: `result` (display name like "Clallam, Washington, United States") and `bounds` (minX/maxX/minY/maxY = lng/lat extent). Use to convert an opaque region code into a readable name, or to get the bounding box of a region.

Returns metadata for a single USGS gauging station: official name, coordinates, site type (stream/lake/groundwater/etc.), hydrologic unit (HUC), state/county codes, and gauge altitude. Use after `search_sites` finds candidate gauges, or to confirm a site number returned in someone's data.

Per-site phenometric aggregates: for each (site, species, phenophase, year), returns the mean first/last 'yes' date (when phenophase began and ended on average across observed individuals). This is the right granularity for 'when do magnolias typically bloom in WA?', much smaller than `get_observations`. REQUIRES a year filter and at least one of species_ids/station_ids/states. Site-level dates are returned as both julian-day (mean*Julian) and ISO date (mean*Date). Sample size fields (firstYesSampleSize, lastYesSampleSize) tell you how many individuals contributed to the mean.

Returns a count of observations per species for a geographic + temporal query. Each row: taxon name, common name, iconic group, observation count. Use this for 'what species have been seen here' rather than 'show me each individual sighting'. For a higher-level summary grouped by iconic taxa, use `get_iconic_taxa_summary` instead.

Returns the number of USA-NPN stations per US state (a quick map of NPN's geographic coverage). Useful for deciding which state to query for phenology data, eastern US states (NY, MA, ME) and Arizona have the densest coverage; Pacific Northwest is sparser.

Returns NPN stations inside a Well-Known Text polygon. NPN's spatial filter is WKT-based, not lat/lng/radius. WKT format example: 'POLYGON((-123.7 47.9, -123.0 47.9, -123.0 48.3, -123.7 48.3, -123.7 47.9))', coordinate pairs are 'lng lat', the polygon must close (first point repeated as last). For most use cases prefer `get_active_phenology_nearby` which builds the WKT from coords + radius internally.

List all USA-NPN observation stations in a given US state. Returns each station's NPN station_id, name, coordinates, and (when applicable) network ID. Pass `state_code` to narrow. NPN's unfiltered list is ~50,000 stations. Use station_ids returned here to filter `get_observations` or `get_site_level_data`.

Returns all NPN stations that have observations for any of the given species. Use to answer 'where in the US can I find phenology data for saguaro?' Note: due to a known upstream NPN bug, some species (notably species_id=3, red maple) return an empty result; the tool surfaces these as empty arrays rather than errors.

Enumerates the immediate child regions of a parent. Pair `region_type` with `parent_region_code`: for `country`, parent must be "world"; for `subnational1`, parent must be a country code (e.g. "US"); for `subnational2`, parent must be a subnational1 code (e.g. "US-WA"). Use to discover region codes when the caller names a place but doesn't know the code.

Returns the full list of locale codes eBird supports for common names (en, es, fr, de, etc.) with their human-readable names and last-updated dates. Use to discover which locales are valid before passing them to other tools.

Fetch a single taxon by ID, with full detail: ancestry chain, Wikipedia URL, total observations count, default photo. Use after `search_taxa` to drill into a specific match.

Returns the recognized subspecies and identifiable forms (issf entries) of a given species. Returns a list of subspecies species codes that resolve under the parent species. Use to enumerate variants when the parent species code is known.

Returns species groupings used to organize the taxonomy for human browsing. Two flavors: "ebird" returns standard taxonomic-order groups (waterfowl, shorebirds, raptors, etc.); "merlin" returns life-list-style groups used in the Merlin Bird ID app.

Returns eBird's taxonomy entries: scientific name, common name, species code, category (species/issf/hybrid/etc.), taxon order, family. Useful for looking up a species code by name, or browsing the full eBird taxonomy. Filter via `cat` (categories) or `species` (specific codes) to avoid downloading the entire taxonomy (~17k entries).

Returns the list of eBird taxonomy versions (typically annual: 2024, 2023, 2022...) with a flag marking the latest. Use when you need a specific historical taxonomy version, or to confirm the current version for stable processing pipelines.

Returns a full night-sky briefing for a location: sun times (sunrise/sunset/civil/nautical/astronomical twilight, golden hour), moon phase + illumination + rise/set, dark-sky window with 1-5 quality score, currently-visible planets with magnitude and compass direction, active and upcoming meteor showers, and top visible constellations. Pure local computation via astronomy-engine, no network call, no API key, never rate-limited. Always works for valid coordinates.

Returns the top 100 eBirders for a region on a specific date, ranked by most species seen or most checklists submitted. eBird region codes are hierarchical: country (e.g. "US", "CA"), subnational1 = state/province (e.g. "US-WA"), subnational2 = county/equivalent (e.g. "US-WA-009" for Clallam County, WA). Use a more specific code for tighter scope. Returns user display name, profile handle, species count, and checklist count.

Returns current streamflow (USGS instantaneous values: discharge cfs and gage height ft) plus tide predictions (NOAA CO-OPS, high/low for the date). Both keys are always present in the response, `streamflow: null` when no USGS site is configured, `tides: null` when no NOAA station is configured. Failures populate `errors[]`. Pass `noaa_station` and `usgs_site` per call, or set NOAA_STATION and USGS_SITE env vars at server startup. Neither requires an API key.

Search Mushroom Observer's fungal taxonomy by substring. Returns scientific names with author citation, taxonomic rank, full classification (kingdom › phylum › class › order › family), deprecation status, and a link to the MO name page. Use this to translate vernacular interest ('chanterelles') into MO scientific names ('Cantharellus'), to disambiguate between species in a genus, or to confirm whether a name is current vs. deprecated. Mushroom Observer's name index covers 100,000+ fungal names including many synonyms and historical combinations.

Search recent iNaturalist observations with rich filters: geographic radius, taxon, iconic group, date range, and quality grade. Returns up to `per_page` normalized observations (species name, observer, place, observed date, coordinates, URL). Use this when the caller asks for specific kinds of observations ('show me bird sightings near Olympic National Park last month'). For a simple 'what's nearby' query, prefer `get_nearby_observations`. For aggregate counts, prefer `get_species_counts`.

Look up an iNaturalist 'place' (named region: park, county, country, etc.) by name. Returns up to 10 matches with id, display name, and (when available) coordinates. Use to convert a place name into a `place_id` you can pass to `search_observations` or `get_species_counts`.

Mushroom Observer's geography is a flat list of comma-separated location names ending in a country (e.g. 'Cape Alava Trail, Olympic National Park, Clallam Co., Washington, USA'). MO's `/locations` endpoint has NO name filter, so this tool runs an observations search with the suffix and harvests unique location-name strings from the results, with per-name observation counts. Use to discover well-formed region suffixes before calling `search_observations` or `get_recent_fungi` with a `region` filter. Try broad-to-narrow: 'Washington, USA' → 'Clallam Co., Washington, USA' → 'Olympic National Park…

Find active USGS stream-gauge sites by either (a) latitude/longitude/radius_km, or (b) US state postal code. Returns site numbers, names, coordinates, HUC, and altitude, feed the resulting site numbers into `get_instantaneous_values` or `get_daily_values`. Defaults filter to surface-water streams (siteType=ST) with real-time data (hasDataTypeCd=iv); pass site_type/has_data_type to override. Pass either lat+lng+radius_km OR state_code; the lat/lng path is preferred for place-aware queries.

Search the USA-NPN species catalog (~1,900 species). Returns matching species with NPN species_id, scientific name, common name, kingdom (Plantae/Animalia/Fungi). Use this first to look up a species_id before calling other tools that take species filters. All filters are case-insensitive. Filters compound: passing query + kingdom narrows further.

Search the iNaturalist taxonomy by name (common or scientific). Returns up to 30 matching taxa with id, scientific name, common name, rank (species/genus/family/etc.), and iconic group. Use this to look up a taxon ID before passing it to other tools, or to confirm a species is in iNat's taxonomy.