Unlock species accounts, maps, multimedia, and bird family overviews.
Use promo code BOW10
Discount applies to first term only for new subscribers
For public and academic libraries, government agencies, consulting firms, nature centers, nonprofits, and more
Learn more about institutional subscriptionsFor Cornell Lab Chairman's Council members, AOS members, Public Libraries, Bird Clubs and other organizations
Special Member Access
Our partners at re:Wild, American Bird Conservancy, the Search for Lost Birds project published an interesting paper detailing their methods for determining what is a "lost bird." Published in Frontiers in Ecology and Environment (2024).
“This is the first time we’ve had fine-scale information on population changes across such broad spatial extents and across entire ranges of species. And that provides us a better lens to understand the changes that are happening with bird populations,” said Amanda Rodewald, faculty director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology alongside Professor Emily Jane McTavish at the University of California, Merced have mapped the evolution of every known bird species.The resulting database can easily be shared and updated as additional studies are published. The researchers detailed how they created this novel evolutionary map in a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS).
Birds of the World is a powerful resource that brings deep, scholarly content from four celebrated works of ornithology into a single platform where biologists and birders can find comprehensive life history information on birds. Every bird has a story. Discover them all with Birds of the World.
Video: A songbird singing
Audio: Music with rhythmic piano, strings, and and a songbird singing
Text: A power new resource for birders
Video: A flock of shorebirds flying over the ocean
Text: Take a deep dive into the remarkable world of birds with:
Audio: A bird singing
Text: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology - Birds of the world
Video: A grid of website pages with photos of birds
Text: 10721 species accounts, 249 family accounts
Video: An animated map of bird migration across the Western hemisphere
Text: Range and migration maps
Video: Four illustrations of birds
Text: Color illustrations
Video: Two grebes in the water
Text: Images, videos and sounds
Audio: Music builds with marimba and percussion
Text: Birds of the World brings together scholarly content from four celebrated works of ornithology:
Video: A close up of a hummingbird
Text: Birds of North America
Video: A bird performs a courtship display
Text: Handbook of the Birds of the World
Video: Two birds perched on a branch
Text: Neotropical Birds
Video: A small songbird perched on a tree
Text: Bird Families of the World
Text: And combines it with:
Video: A map of the world with animated yellow dots representing data points
Text: eBird
Video: A collage of photographs of birds
Text: Macaulay Library
Text: on a single comprehensive, authoritative platform.
Video: A grid of of website pages with photos of birds
Text: "The depth of information is simply breathtaking" - Garret MacDonald, eBirder
Text: Find us at: birdsoftheworld.org
Video: An animated logo
Text: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
The IUCN (2024) Red List is based on a different taxonomy than Birds of the World. As such, we can only display conservation status for taxa where the two taxonomies match at the species level. For all unmatched taxa, the conservation status is "Unknown".
A global alliance of nature organizations working to document the natural history of all bird species at an unprecedented scale.
