Painted bunting
Books
Birder’s Dictionary, Randall T. Cox, Falcon Press Publishing Company, Inc., 1996, 186 pp.
Birding Texas, Roland H. Wauer & Mark A. Elwonger, Falcon Publishing, 1998, 525 pp.
Birds of North America – Eastern Region, Smithsonian Handbooks, Fred J. Alsop, DK Publishing, 2001, 752 pp.
Handbook of Bird Biology, 3rd ed., Irby J. Lovette and John W. Fitzpatrick, eds., The Cornell Lab of Bird Biology, John Wiley and Sons, 2016, 716 pp.
Hawks from Every Angle: How to Identify Raptors in Flight, Jerry Liguori, Princeton University Press, 2005, 129 pp.
Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds, 2nd ed., Paul J. Baicich and COlin J.O. Harrison, 2005, 347 pp.
Reference Atlas to the Birds of North America, Mel Baughman, National Geographic, 2003, 477 pp.
Sibley’s Birding Basics, David Allen Sibley, Knopf, Borzoi Books, 2002, 154 pp.
The American Bird Conservancy Guide to the 500 Most Important Bird Areas in the United States, Robert M. Chipley, George H. Fenwick, Michael J. Parr, and David N. Pashley, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003, 518 pp.
The Art of Pishing: How to Attract Birds by Mimicking Their Calls, Pete Dunne, Stackpole Books, 2006, 92 pp + audio CD.
The Birder’s Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural HIstory of North American Birds – The Essential Companion to Your Identification Guide, Paul R. Ehrlich, David S. Dobkin and Darryl Wheye, Simon and Schuster Inc., 1988, 785 pp.
The Birdwatcher’s Companion to North American Birdlife, Christopher W. Leahy, Princeton University Press, 2004, 1039 pp.
The Shorebird Guide, Michael O’Brien, Richard Crossley, and Kevin Karlson, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006, 477 pp.
The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, Chris Elphick, John B. Dunning, Jr., and David Allen Sibley, Alfred A. Knopf, 2001, 588 pp.
The Sibley Guide to Birds, David Allen Sibley, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, 545 pp.
What It’s Like to Be a Bird, David Allen Sibley, Alfred A. Knopf, 2020, 203 pp.
Field Guides (listed alphabetically by title)
National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 7th ed., Jon L. Dunn and Jonathan Alderfer, National Geographic, 2017, 591 pp.
Peterson Field Guide to the Birds of Texas, Roger Tory Peterson, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2012, 304 pp.
Organizations and Websites
Social Media
Apps
iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature.< It’s also a crowd-sourced species identification system and an organism occurrence recording tool. You can use it to record your own observations, get help with identifications, collaborate with others to collect this kind of information for a common purpose or access the observational data collected by iNaturalist users. It is a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.
See this NPR news story for more on iNaturalist: HERE
To learn how to use iNaturalist, please visit their great video tutorials HERE
There are directions for using your smartphone or PC, taking photos, and everything else you need to know!
The Seek app (free on iOS), developed by iNaturalist, combines the gamification and collection aspects of Pokémon Go with an exploration of the natural world. It works like this: The app uses your general location to populate a list of plants and animals you’re likely to encounter in the area, and each plant and animal listing in the app also includes photos and useful facts.
You can then snap photos of those species as you come across them, adding them to your virtual collection in the applications.
Videos
Podcasts
Ornithological Training
Cornell’s Bird Academy
Get started HERE. From free curricula to all-inclusive kits, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a wide variety of lessons and activities to captivate learners of all grade levels.
Do you have a resource that we should add to this page? Please email we*****@**mn.org with the information.