Great Backyard Bird Count!

Birding is always a lot of fun. I go whenever I get the chance. But this weekend provides a special reason to go birding: the Great Backyard Bird Count. This count (unlike the tedious and annoying Christmas Bird Count) only requires an eBird account (http://ebird.org/content/ebird/) and a little birdwatching. It is a fun way to contribute your findings to the world of ornithology. People from around the world contribute to this count. It is easy, free and fun! Learn more here and good luck birding.

Great Bird Websites!!!

Great Bird Websites and other cool stuff

There are a lot of cool bird websites for all kinds of bird lovers all around the Internet. Here are some that I have found that will amaze you.

Image sites

http://antpitta.com/ - Antpitta.com is a great birding website for South American photos. This site, which often has updates from the creator's new trips, is a great source for some of the most diverse bird areas on Earth. There are also some non-Neotropical bird pictures. All the photos are great and the species variety there is magnificent.

http://orientalbirdimages.org/  - Oriental Bird Images is a lot like antpitta.com except all the birds there are from, you guessed it, the oriental region. Unlike antpitta, where there is only one contributor, many people add their amazing photos to the site. There are many, many cool bird pictures to observe each day. You can even look at new species that have been recently uploaded to the site. It is usually a hotspot for new species as well as amazing Asian bird pictures.

http://ibc.lynxeds.com/ - The Internet Bird Collection features all kinds of birds from everywhere. Anybody with a free account can upload their photos of birds (even I have an account) and each photo is magnificent. Their database includes over 100,000 bird photos spanning over 9,000 bird species (about 91% of all living birds), as well as over 80,000 videos and over 10,000 sound files. The videos show  a lot about bird behavior and are a great way to learn about birds right from your computer.

http://www.arthurgrosset.com/ - Arthur Grosset's bird website, while focusing mainly on Neotropical birds, has a lot of photo variety featuring birds across the globe. You can also view some of the sound files that he has captured. His collection of species is rather impressive, as are all the great photos he has collected. If you want some info about the bird you're looking at, you can always read the informative couple of paragraphs he writes about most of his sightings.

http://vireo.ansp.org/ - VIREO, or Visual Resources for Ornithology, is another great collection that has birds from all over the world by many different photographers. It has over 160,000 photographs of over 7,000 species and is always growing with each helpful contribution. The search tool allows you to search by common or scientific name, and you can even browse the birds by family.

http://www.arkive.org/birds/ - Although this is a website for all animals, ARKive's bird sector includes great photos of some of the world's rarest birds. Not only that, but it also displays well-known and common birds that are worth a second look. Even though they don't have many species each photo is a lovely look at a bird that may be hard to see in the real world.

Info websites

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/Page.aspx?pid=1478 - You can never go wrong with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Their website has a lot of info on how to tell apart some of the North American birds, and it also goes over general birding topics that every birder should know or understand. As you will see from the front page, there are so many things you can do on this site, from reading the Annual Report to interactive quizzes and games that increase your birding IQ.

http://www.birdforum.net/opus/Welcome - The BirdForum Opus is a great source for bird info and pictures. With an account you can also make your contribution, as well as talking with fellow birders on the forums. Even without an account you can learn about all kinds of birds, as well as locations across the world where birdwatching is the main focus. Just by clicking on the Random Page link you can see a new bird that you may have never heard of before. You can learn a lot here.

http://www.birdlife.org/ - BirdLife International is a site mainly based on concern for the world's bird species. Many of the articles on the front page talk about the state of rare species. If you go to the Data Zone after hovering over science, you can look at profiles for each species. You can even see the estimated populations and ranges of every bird species, as well as a lot of good info about the species' status and future.

http://birds.audubon.org/ - The National Audubon Society focuses on birds, and their website is astounding. It has pages for each bird in North America, set up somewhat like Cornell's pages, with more beautiful bird photos. There is also a section for bird conservation, which heavily interests me as well as many other bird lovers across the world. You can also find ways to participate in citizen science and get out in your community.

http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/avibase.jsp?lang=EN - Avibase is a great website for checklist comparison, as well as finding out the birds of any area. Its checklist page includes lists of birds from every corner of the world, including small regions of each country. Avibase also provides information about the different ways birds are taxonomically organized in checklists, so you can easily compare different checklists.

Sound websites

http://www.xeno-canto.org/ - Xeno-canto is a great place to listen, research, and download sounds. They have over 160,000 sound recordings, spanning nearly 9,000 species. When you reach a species, you can look at the sound in detail, being able to view the location the sound was viewed, the length of the sound, and extensive details about the sound. You can also download them for free.

http://avocet.zoology.msu.edu/ - The Avian Vocalizations Center, or AVoCet, is another enormous database of bird sounds from across the world. Brought to you by Michigan State University, you can easily browse bird species and listen to their sounds. Once you find a recording you can look at many details, including location, elevation, and confirmation of the bird's ID. You can also download the sound for free, as well as the graphic sound analysis, in picture form.

http://macaulaylibrary.org/ - The Macaulay Library, from Cornell, has many bird sounds. There are some extra features for this website, however. Some of the files stored here are videos of the bird making a sound, which is a unique feature of the three websites. You can view the sound and with QuickTime, you can take part in extra analysis with Cornell's Raven Viewer. You can also download guides that include sounds, including the Cornell Guide to Bird Sounds: Master Set for North America. However, these wonderful sound files are not for download.

Bird feeder cams

http://sabalpalmsanctuary.org/feedercam/ - This live feeder cam, set in Brownsville, Texas (on the eastern Rio Grande Valley), shows a sample of birds from one of North America's most diverse bird areas. I have actually been to this spot and seen the bird cam there, and the site is an amazing place to see birds. Common birds there include Green Jay, Plain Chachalaca, White-tipped Dove, and Northern Cardinal. You can also see a raccoon if you are lucky!

http://www.ornithos.com.br/live-cams/ - This website includes many bird cams from Brazil, and although I don't know all the birds there, there is a lot of variety. Since there are five total cams, at least two or three are on consistently, and since they are set in the rainforest, there are almost always birds there. Common birds on these cams include Palm Tanager, Brotogeris parakeets, Green-headed Tanager and Speckled Chachalaca.

http://www.allenbirdcam.com/ - The Allen BirdCam is set in Pretoria, South Africa. It has a feeder which almost always includes many birds feeding. When I am watching this cam I feel like I am in South Africa. Too bad I can't add those birds to my life list! Common birds there are Cape Turtle-Dove, Southern Masked Weaver and Grey Go-away-bird. You can also view more common species at the website. At night, you can sometimes view genets and bushbabies as well!

http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/ - Yet another facet of the amazing Cornell Lab Website is the set of live feeder cams. In different seasons different cams appear, but birds including albatrosses, hawks, ospreys and the two FeederWatch cams, in Ontario and Ithaca. You can commonly view Pine Grosbeak and Evening Grosbeak in Ontario, and Mourning Dove, Blue Jay and Mallard in Ithaca. Ithaca is another place I have been, set in the Cornell Lab's visitor center.

Other websites

http://www.whatbird.com/ - Whatbird is one of my favorite bird websites ever. It includes an online bird guide for North America, with great drawings and lots of information. It is straight from the mobile app iBird, which in my opinion is the best mobile bird app. You can also view the forums, and with a free account you can reply and meet other bird lovers online. If you have a bird you don't know, post it there and you can find out what your bird is. You can also vote on polls, participate in quizzes, or just talk about birds with other members.

http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ - eBird is a well-known website where you can report your bird sightings and help contribute your findings to citizen science. You can do much more than that, however. You can explore data from already submitted checklists, look at bar charts for a specific location (they are also available for download), and explore hotspots with the new Hotspot Explorer tool. There is also a live submission map that shows when checklists are being submitted by the second.

http://www.hbw.com/ - I decided to save the best for last. The Handbook of the Birds of the World is by far the best of these bird websites. Although it is the most expensive (a basic one-year subscription is about $30) it includes amazing drawings and information from the Handbook of the Birds of the World series. You can also look at Internet Bird Collection photos from the website, look at organized plates of species, and look at news updates about birds. I highly recommend purchasing it.