All About Birds
An online resource produced by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; a wealth of information about each species of North American birds, including photos and sound recordings
www.allaboutbirds.org
Birds of North America Online
Produced by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the American Ornithologists’ Union, is an in-depth survey of each species of bird that breeds in North America, with an extensive bibliography for each.
www.bna.birds.cornell.edu
Dunn, Jon L., and Jonathan Alderfer. National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Fifth edition. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2006.
Kaufman, Kenn. Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
Peterson, Roger Tory. A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
Peterson, Roger Tory. A Field Guide to Western Birds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Sibley, David Allen. The Sibley Guide to Birds. New York: Knopf, 2000.
These books, each with an accompanying CD, contain a wealth of information about how and why birds sing.
Elliott, Lang. Music of the Birds: A Celebration of Bird Song. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
Kroodsma, Don. The Singing Life of Birds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
Colver, Kevin, and L. Elliott. Know Your Bird Sounds: Common Western Species. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole, 2008.
Elliott, Lang. Know Your Bird Sounds, Volume 1: Yard, Garden, and City Birds. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole, 2004.
Ellott, Lang. Know Your Bird Sounds, Volume 2: Birds of the Countryside. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole, 2004.
The following CD sets are primers explaining what elements to key in on when learning to identify bird songs and calls.
Walton, Richard K., and R. Lawson. Birding by Ear: Eastern and Central North America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
Walton, Richard K., and R. Lawson. Birding by Ear: Western North America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
Walton, Richard K., and R. Lawson. More Birding by Ear: Eastern and Central North America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
Chu, Miyoko. Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds. New York: Walker & Company, 2007.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Handbook of Bird Biology. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Erickson, Laura. 101 Ways to Help Birds. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stack-pole, 2006.
Kaufman, Kenn. Lives of North American Birds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Kaufman, Kenn. Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Kress, Stephen W. The Audubon Society Guide to Attracting Birds: Creating Natural Habitats for Properties Large and Small, Second edition. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006.
Weidensaul, Scott. Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds. New York, NY: North Point Press, 2000.
eBird
A splendid online resource that compiles birding lists from North America and the world over, giving our individual sightings a huge level of importance beyond our personal fun, providing helpful data for understanding birds, migration, and conservation issues.
www.ebird.edu
Project FeederWatch
A winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders all over North America, helping scientists track broad-scale movements of winter bird populations and long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance.
www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw
NestWatch
Aims to provide a unified nest-monitoring scheme to track reproductive success for all North American breeding birds: citizen scientists submit their nest records to NestWatch’s online database where their observations are compiled with those of other participants in a continent-wide effort to better understand and manage the impacts of environmental change on bird populations. www.nestwatch.org
The Christmas Bird Count
Longest-running wildlife census to assess the health of bird populations, conducted from mid-December through early January and sponsored by Audubon; data provides a look at bird populations in early winter throughout the Americas.
www.audubon.org/bird/cbc
The Great Backyard Bird Count
This annual four-day event engages bird-watchers in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent in mid-winter, often at the peak of northern bird invasions into the more populated areas of North America; sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon.
www.birdsource.org/gbbc