The Audubon Guide to North American Birds and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds both offer a wealth of information on bird species: behavior, habitat, full range maps, songs and calls, and more.
The Audubon Guide to North American Birds also has information on how climate change could affect a bird's range.
All About Birds has details on each bird’s life history and integrates eBird sightings to supplement range maps.
Go to the Audubon Guide to North American Birds. →
Go to about All About Birds. →
There are many apps for smart phones and tablets that can help you identify birds. These are free and are available for both iOS and Android.
The Audubon Bird Guide is a complete field guide to over 800 species of North American bird. It will help you identify the birds around you, keep track of the birds you’ve seen, and send you a daily notification when the birds you want to see are sighted nearby.
eBird is an online database of bird observations that keeps track of your bird observations and shares the data with scientists and researchers.
eBird data are stored across secure facilities, archived daily, and are freely accessible to anyone. eBird data have been used in hundreds of conservation decisions and peer-reviewed papers, thousands of student projects, and help inform bird research worldwide.
The web version of eBird can help you find more birds, keep track of your bird lists, photos, and sounds, explore latest sightings from around the world, join the world’s largest birding community, and contribute to science and conservation. There is also a section For Young Birders that contains pretty much everything that a young birder needs to know about a life with birds, including community resources to connect with other young birders and tips and tricks about choosing colleges and career paths.
The the eBird mobile app can help you find birds by discovering where birds are based on the latest sightings from around the world. You can enter your new bird sightings in the field and they will be integrated into your life list.
Merlin is a free bird identification app that uses eBird data to help limit the likely species for identification and answer the question, “What is that bird?”
Merlin is designed to be a birding coach for beginning and intermediate bird watchers. Merlin asks you the same questions that an expert birder would ask to help solve a mystery bird sighting. Notice that date and location are Merlin’s first and most important questions. It takes years of experience in the field to know what species are expected at a given location and date. Merlin shares this this knowledge with you based on more than 200 million sightings submitted to eBird from birders across the United States and Canada.
Merlin also asks you to describe the color, size, and behavior of the bird you saw. Because no two people describe birds exactly the same way, Merlin presents a shortlist of possible species based on descriptions from Cornell Lab experts as well as thousands of bird enthusiasts who helped “teach” Merlin by participating in online activities. They’ve contributed more than 3 million descriptors to help Merlin match your input with the most likely birds. When you identify a species and click “This is My Bird,” Merlin also saves your record to help improve its future performance.