Bird Identification

Quick links:

This identification program is for birds in the northeastern and central parts of United States and adjacent Canada. Fill out the form as best as you can and you'll find which bird match. If you find no bird that match, use the "Back" button and try unchecking a box or two. If you want to see all the birds in the database, simply hit "Identify" without checking any boxes.

The database used here is derived from the "Quick-Key Guide to Birds," by John T. Emlen and David Archbald, Doubleday Press, 1967 (long out of print, unfortunately). A large number of corrections and additions have been made to the original data. A Bird Quiz Program is also available, which lets you test and improve your knowledge. There are also identification programs for wildflowers and trees.

Fully identifying the bird is up to you. Cornell's Lab of Ornithology Birding 1,2,3 site is an excellent introduction for beginning birders, pointing out what to look for when identifying birds. They also have a comprehensive bird guide available online.

Some books which can help include:

There are many other useful sites on the web having to do with birding. For example, there is Bird Checklists of the U.S. (and Canada), Jim Rosso's photo collection, Tony Phillips' bird songs site, and a huge number of links at Google's backyard birding directory. For more elaborate birding software, see Thayer Birding's offerings.

Note: This bird database is not all-encompassing; it contains about 300 of the 500 or so species of birds found in the eastern parts of the U.S. and Canada. Also, all the juvenile, morph variants, etc. are not included. The idea is to get you thinking about observing various characteristics, and to help you get started identifying a particular bird you have seen.

If you find any errors or want to add more birds, write me. The database and perl program that runs here is free to download, and is fairly simple to figure out where and how to add birds.

Bird Characteristics: see this image (from Wikipedia) for a useful description of the terminology used below. For North vs. South, North includes the northern half of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, upstate New York, West Virginia and central Pennsylvania, and Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. All other states are South.