Improve Your Birding
One of the fun aspects of birding is there is always something new to learn and always a new ID challenge. Use these resources to improve your skills and test you knowledge.
Test Your Skills
Test your identification skills using this ID quiz by Tony Leukering, Bill Maynard and others who hosted a weekly bird identification contest on the CFO website between 2012 and 2017.
CFO Facebook Group
The Colorado birding community shares observations and other information related to birds and birding in Colorado. You can ask questions about birds you see in Colorado.
COBirds Listserv
COBirds is a CFO-supported Google Group for the discussion of Colorado birds. Ask questions about the birds you see in Colorado and learn from what others post.
More Resources
All About Birds - Cornell Lab of Ornithology
From questions on ID to feeding birds to behavior and so much more, All About Birds if the place to start! View live bird cams from around the world and find so many other resources from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Bird Academy - Cornell Lab of Ornithology
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology offers so many resources to learn more about birds and improve your skills. You should check out all of their resources.
Favorites of CFO board members are:
- The Inside Birding video series, especially the progression of Shape and Size, Color Pattern, Habitat, and Understanding behavior.
- All the learning games
- Videos for improving learning bird calls and songs. To find just these, go to the Videos section and filter to "Songs+Calls".
Bird Bombs - Short ID Videos from Denver Field Ornithologists
David Suddjian with the Denver Field Ornithologists provides 30-60 minute video tutorials on the identification of the species or groups of birds found in Colorado.
Birds of the World - Detailed Information on All Species
Want to deep diver into the remarkable lives of birds from around the world. This site provides approachable, detailed, scholarly information on the life history, behavior,
Many accounts are written by the world's experts on the species and researchers doing the work in the field today.
This is a subscription-based system with limited free content. You may have member access depending on your affiliation with other organizations.
eBird Rules and Best Practices Support Page
Learn more or refresh your knowledge with the eBird support page on eBird rules and best practices.
eBird Essentials Course - Get started with eBird
Don't let "course" scare you off. This is a free overview of eBird that teaches you what you need to know to use the platform.
Course Description: This free, online course teaches the basic of using eBird. Lindsay Glasner, the course instructor, designed the course for you to "discover how eBird can support your passion for birds and how your participation can help us better understand them. Birder, bird watcher, or bird lover, it doesn't matter-this course is for you. Whether you watch birds at your feeder or on the way to work, or travel miles for that one bird you can't wait to see, eBird can help. This free course guides you through how to get the most out of your eBirding experiences and invites you to become a part of this worldwide project.
eBird Essentials Videos
Want to skip the text and just see the videos? You can watch the videos from the eBird Essentials course on Cornell Lab of Ornithology's YouTube channel.
Merlin - An App to Help You ID Birds
Merlin, a free app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, helps you identify the birds you see and hear around the world using four separate tools.
- Bird ID wizard - a simple series of questions that provide you with likely options for your bird. As a bonus, these are the questions many birders subconsciously use every time they ID a bird.
- Where am I observing? When am I observing? - this cuts out the vast majority of the birds in the world.
- What is the size of the bird? - size and shape of the bird really help with IDing a bird
- What is the bird doing? - behavior can help us identify birds
- What are the main colors? - we may see the colors first, but they are most useful to distinguish between species once you've already figured out what type of bird it is. Yellow-green doesn't help figure out if what you see is a vireo or warbler but does help distinguish between types of warblers.
- Sound ID - use this feature to ID the birds you hear calling or ID a call from a recording.
- Photo ID - take a photo and let the app ID the bird for you
- Explore birds - a digital bird book in your pocket.
Resources to Improve Birding By Ear
Being able to identify the songs, calls, and other auditory components of a species' repertoire adds a new dimension to birding. These resources can help you learn and improve your skills.
Sound recording libraries
Databases to listen to bird sound recordings.
- Most digital versions of bird books now include vocalizations as part of their app or website. Merlin (under the Explore Birds option) is a free app that provides a few vocalizations for each species.
- xeno-canto - a database of bird sounds from around the globe which is great for understanding regional variation in songs and for obtaining vocalizations for locations where there are few published resources. Free.
- Macaulay Library - Easily accessed from the various resources provided by Cornell Lab of Ornithology (eBird, Merlin, All About Birds, etc) Macaulay Library is a premier collection of wildlife media. Most resources are free.
Automatic sound identification
Recent advances in AI song recognition have resulted in a number of automatic bird call ID resources. Many of the algorithms are still being perfected so identification needs to be considered provisional but they can be great resources for learning.
Tools to learn/quiz vocalizations
There are numerous resources available. Here are a few that members of the CFO board use.
- eBirds photo/sound quiz - choose between a photo or sound ID challenge and select the time of year and location you want to be quizzed on. Free
- Larkwire - app (iOS/Apple only) or website versions. Designed for learning. Create custom lists or choose to focus on specific taxa or locations. Subscription.
Visual tools for learning bird sounds
Spectrograms are visual representations of sound with frequency represented on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis. Visualizing the spectrogram of the song or call can help many people better remember or differentiate between species.
- Many of the sounds libraries and ID apps allow you to view sonograms of the recordings, including xeno-canto, BirdNet, SongSleuth, and others.
- Earbirding - Colorado author and researcher Nathan Pieplow has created several resources to help improve your auditory IDs. These include:
- earbirding.org
- Peterson Field Guide to Birds Sounds (Easter and Western North America editions)
What Bird? from iBird
What Bird allows you to browse their iBird database to help you learn.