Birds in the Hand, and on the Laptop: Birds of North America Online

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Eastern Towee
Eastern Towee

Birds of North America (BNA) Online provides scientific information for each of the 716 species of birds nesting in the USA and Canada, with image and video galleries showing behaviors, habitat, nests, eggs and nestlings, recordings of bird’s songs and calls selected from the collection in Cornell’s Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds. Species accounts include references to relevant scholarship.

Red-headed Woodpecker
Red-headed Woodpecker
In two centuries of American ornithology, The Birds of North America (BNA) is only the fourth comprehensive reference covering the life histories of North America’s breeding birds. Following in the footsteps of Wilson, Audubon, and Bent, BNA provides a quantum leap in information beyond what those historic figures were able to assemble. The print version of BNA was completed in 2002—a joint 10 year project of the American Ornithologists’ Union, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Tufted Titmouse
Tufted Titmouse

Now as an online project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, BNA is becoming a living resource. Account contents are updated frequently, with contributions from researchers, citizen scientists, and designated reviewers and editors. In addition, BNA Online contains image and video galleries showing plumages, behaviors, habitat, nests and eggs, and more. And most online BNA accounts now feature recordings of the songs and calls of their species, recordings selected from the extensive collection of Cornell’s Macaulay Library.

Check out these life histories of birds you may see when out and about on the Razorback Greenway or floating on the Buffalo River:

All images © Cornell Lab of Ornithology