The situation
Bird migration is one of the great free spectacles, and the data about it is public. But it is spread across databases built for scientists, not for someone who wants to know whether the hummingbirds have reached their zip code yet.
We wanted a product that anyone could open and understand in five seconds, that cost nothing to use, and that we could run on infrastructure we already paid for.
What we built
- Live maps of 78 species in nine groups across North America, updated from public sighting data.
- Centred on you: enter a zip code and the map, the counts and the alerts are local.
- Rare-bird alerts by email when something unusual shows up nearby.
- A personal viewer for any screen: a token-based display mode for a TV in a shop, a lobby or a living room.
- Free forever: sign-up without a card, no ads.
How it is built
Mygration runs inside the Axis codebase as its own product with zero Axis branding: same servers, same database, same deploy pipeline, a different host name. That is the reason it can be free.
For the engineer reading along: sighting data ingested on a schedule from public sources, 33,000 zip codes geocoded locally, map tiles rendered client-side from pre-aggregated points, display tokens for unauthenticated TV screens, users stored as Axis users with a product flag so none of the Axis UI is ever reachable.
What it does today
Counts from the production database, 2026-11-03.
Running it
Deployed with Axis, monitored by Watchdog, with a weekly signup and usage report so we know whether it is growing. Marginal cost per user is close to nothing, which is what lets a free product stay free.
Have something that needs building, or running?
Tell us what you are trying to do. We reply within one business day, and the first conversation is free.