Smartphones are nearly constant companions, even during these periods of escape from work. And then there are our smartwatches, headphones, tablets, laptops, etc. In fact, one source in our story on connectivity in the country’s historically Black colleges and universities (p. 36) estimated each student has up to 10 pieces of Internet-connected technology with them every day.
During the last few years, connected devices have become ever more integrated into daily life, including recreation. One of my favorite brain-break activities is to check in on live feeds of the brown bears in majestic Katmai National Park in Alaska. The bears around Brooks Falls are very active this time of year when the salmon are in the midst of their annual migration. In the fall, I look in on the Elk Cam from the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, which offers a glimpse into the animals’ breeding season. There are countless other feeds like these in operation around the world, offering an accessible, meaningful connection to nature through technology.
Local government officials are finding interesting ways to connect residents to the natural world using new tools as well. Some of this innovation is built using publicly available APIs for popular data sets. One interesting example is from Sandy Springs, Ga., where the city’s digital development team spotted an opportunity in a popular city park frequented by bird watchers.
More than a third of American adults fancy themselves bird watchers, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and more than a million of those people are engaged users of eBird, an observation-sharing platform where users contribute details like sightings, photos and audio recordings of birds. In Sandy Springs, Ga., many bird watchers do so from Morgan Falls Overlook Park, and for good reason: eBird users have spotted 110 bird species there between January and early July 2025.
Digital Communications Manager Jason Green and his project team built a way for this data to be visualized to all park users — not just the bird watchers — and perhaps inspire an even greater interest in the community in this fast-growing hobby.
They offer a detailed look at what it took to bring this “simple” idea to life on their project page, if any other agencies are interested in doing something similar.
They were able to take advantage of several existing assets, including the city’s network of digital kiosks, as well as fiber that was placed recently to connect security cameras in the park. Accessing the localized data through the eBird API, they built an application that could feed it to their digital signage player. They developed a prototype website, worked through some image quality and caching issues, and went live with the visual display earlier this summer.
“Will it inspire a child to take up a lifelong ornithological hobby?” Green asked. “Only time will tell. But it will certainly make the birds that call Morgan Falls Overlook Park home more discoverable to the citizens who enjoy this beautiful park.”
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Government Technology. Click here to view the digital edition online.
