About CootDB
What it is, where the data comes from, and how you can help.
Origin
CootDB was built out of a practical need: when birding across different countries, looking up what a species is called in the local language — while also knowing the English and scientific name — requires juggling multiple field guides or browser tabs. CootDB brings those lookups into a single, fast, side-by-side view.
The name comes from the Eurasian Coot (Fulica atra), one of the most widespread and recognisable waterbirds in Europe — a fitting mascot for a multilingual bird name database.
Designed for larger screens
CootDB is built around a multi-column comparison grid, which works best on a desktop computer or tablet. On a phone the table can become cramped, especially with three or more language columns open at once. The experience on small screens is functional but not ideal — if you are on a phone and find it difficult to use, try landscape orientation or reduce the number of active columns. A more mobile-friendly layout is something we would like to improve over time.
Help us add more languages
CootDB currently covers 43 languages, but many are missing or have significant gaps. If you speak a language that is not listed — or you notice that names in your language are incorrect or incomplete — we would love to hear from you. Reach out via the contact page and mention which language you can help with. No technical knowledge is required.
Get involved
CootDB is a small independent project, and real user feedback makes a genuine difference. If you run into a bug, have an idea for a new feature, or just want to say something — the contact page is the right place. Bug reports and feature requests go straight to the person who built this, and everything is read.
Data sources
The species taxonomy and primary common names come from the IOC World Bird List (version 15.1), the internationally recognised standard for bird taxonomy and nomenclature, maintained by the International Ornithological Committee. Licensed under CC BY 3.0.
Additional common names in languages not covered by the IOC list are sourced from Wikidata, the free knowledge base maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. Licensed under CC0 1.0 (Public Domain).
Coverage
The database currently contains 11250 species across 43 languages. Coverage varies by language — the percentage below shows what fraction of species have a name in that language.
Show coverage by language
| Language | Code | Coverage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Latin | la |
100% | |
| Danish | da |
98% | |
| English | en |
98% | |
| Esperanto | eo |
98% | |
| French | fr |
98% | |
| Norwegian Bokmål | nb |
98% | |
| Dutch | nl |
98% | |
| Slovak | sk |
98% | |
| Swedish | sv |
98% | |
| Chinese | zh |
98% | |
| Polish | pl |
97% | |
| German | de |
96% | |
| Spanish | es |
96% | |
| Ukrainian | uk |
96% | |
| Croatian | hr |
94% | |
| Japanese | ja |
94% | |
| Russian | ru |
94% | |
| Turkish | tr |
94% | |
| Catalan | ca |
90% | |
| Czech | cs |
90% | |
| Finnish | fi |
89% | |
| Italian | it |
89% | |
| Lithuanian | lt |
88% | |
| Serbian | sr |
71% | |
| Hungarian | hu |
57% | |
| Estonian | et |
50% | |
| Latvian | lv |
17% | |
| Indonesian | id |
14% | |
| Bulgarian | bg |
12% | |
| Hebrew | he |
10% | |
| Slovenian | sl |
9% | |
| Afrikaans | af |
8% | |
| Icelandic | is |
8% | |
| Northern Sami | se |
8% | |
| Thai | th |
8% | |
| Arabic | ar |
5% | |
| Korean | ko |
5% | |
| Greek | el |
4% | |
| Persian | fa |
4% | |
| Malayalam | ml |
4% | |
| Macedonian | mk |
3% | |
| Romanian | ro |
3% | |
| Belarusian | be |
2% | |