Study & Behaviour

This section has links to a number of websites concerned generally with the study of birds and, in particular their behaviour. There are tips on how to note your observations as well as pointers to larger on-line reference resources. For a good starting point I recommend Ornithology.com whose strap line is: Authoritative Information about Wild Birds from a Professional Ornithologist.

There are too, some sites devoted to study in the sense of offering ornithology for full-time students as well as a number of courses for amateur ornithologists; ornithology & birding courses are listed on a separate page. Despite the popularity of birding as a pastime there are surprisingly few full-time university degree courses.

Part of the fascination for us birders is the behaviour of the birds we watch. We do not just appreciate their simple beauty, but for their actions during migration, mating, nesting, overwintering, etc. I’ve been birding for the best part of 70 years, and yet just this week I observed a behaviour for the very first time in a bird species I know well. It is certainly part of the enjoyment for me of our pastime. Rarity chasing is all well and good and none of us would pass up the opportunity to see a bird we’ve never seen before. But everyday birding from your window, looking at your bird tables or on your way to work, it’s often very common birds that we enjoy and it’s always a red-letter day when we see something new in an old friend.

Female House Sparrow Passer domesticus feeding its young during the spring breeding season, in Kathmandu, Nepal – ©Prasan Shrestha CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Indeed, on a wider scale, citizen science is an important part of ornithology, and for some hundreds of years, the science has very much relied upon amateur observation to progress. There are too few professional ornithologists to enable most studies to continue across the world. And it’s down to amateur birders and banders, ringers and general observers to tell us about population sizes and movements, etc.

Us Everyday Birders will find some useful information from some of the websites below. There are, of course, many overlaps with this section and the sections on conservation, taxonomy etc.