Living Bird – All About Birds

*featured photo by Eamon Riordan-Short / Macaulay Library

Living Bird is a superb magazine published by Cornell Lab and can be yours with a small $35 yearly donation. We’ve been receiving copies for the last several years, and it quickly became our go-to source for birding.

The magazine and online site offer a great array of images, along with in-depth articles on everything from migration to backyard birding. They also offer courses on bird identification, bird biology, bird song basics, feeder birds, along with webinars. For a real treat, catch their live cams on barred owls, great horned owls, red-tailed hawks, and royal albatross, just to name a few.

Below: Live Birds in 4K! Cornell Lab FeederWatch Cam at Sapsucker Woods

Macaulay Library’s Best Bird Photos 2025 – featuring birders around the world who have contributed more than 67 million photos to the Macaulay Library archive.

Add an app to your phone that helps you identify who’s singing the greatest bird songs in your part of the world.

Part of the mission of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is to help people find the answer to “what’s that bird?” We know sorting through a massive field guide, using search engines, and other resources can make it really challenging to figure out what you just saw—our goal is to make that challenge easier.

Merlin is designed to be a birding coach for bird watchers at every level. Merlin asks you the same questions that an expert birder would ask to help solve a mystery bird sighting. Notice that date and location are Merlin’s first and most important questions. It takes years of experience in the field to know what species are expected at a given location and date. Merlin shares this knowledge with you based on more than 800 million sightings submitted to eBird from birders around the world.

Merlin also asks you to describe the color, size, and behavior of the bird you saw. Because no two people describe birds exactly the same way, Merlin presents a shortlist of possible species based on descriptions from Cornell Lab experts as well as thousands of bird enthusiasts who helped “teach” Merlin by participating in online activities. They’ve contributed more than 3 million descriptors to help Merlin match your input with the most likely birds. When you identify a species and click “This is My Bird,” Merlin also saves your record to help improve its future performance.

Happy Birding

*American Tree Sparrow – Marion J Chard