If you’re a bird enthusiast, you might know what I’m talking about when I describe the frisson of excitement I get from seeing even the most commonplace bird flitting or strutting about on its daily business. It’s never tiresome to watch robins as they officiously circumnavigate my lawn like plumed bureaucrats, periodically diving into the earth for a worm with uncanny accuracy. I love to see a house sparrow bobbing around by my picnic bench hoping to be gifted a cracker crumb, its head tilted charmingly to the side in polite entreaty. There’s even a certain appeal, or at the very least a role model for those of us lacking in assertiveness, in a burly seagull striding the length of the beach like a bouncer hoping to be bribed with lunch scraps.
With Cornell University’s Birds of the World, an immense avian database available to you for free via Beebe Library, you can expand your knowledge well beyond the backyard birdfeeder. It’s a huge amount of information about our hollow-boned buddies, appropriate both for beginners just looking to browse and for experts wing-deep in a bird identification mystery. As an important access note, in order to use this resource as a Beebe patron you’ll need to navigate to the website from our Beebe homepage, starting from Research & Learning Resources and clicking on Birds of the World, which you can find quickly by typing “Birds” into the search bar. Clicking that link will take you to a page where you’ll be prompted to log in with your library card number and PIN.
One of the things I like best about Birds of the World is that you can search for bird names, and you can narrow the search down by taxonomy if you are a bird wizard who knows all about that, but you can also just click “Surprise me” and be delighted by a random selection from over 11,000 species. Just now, I’ve learned that there’s a bird called a pale-bellied Tapaculo, and when I woke up this morning I didn’t know that such a creature existed. When I’m less in the mood for whimsy and more in search of hard feathered fact, I can use the search function to try to identify a bird I’ve recently seen. For example, a few months ago I saw an unusual goose standing on a grassy embankment in the midst of BU Bridge traffic, and when I typed “goose” into the search bar, I swiftly sorted through my options and came to the conclusion that I had caught a glimpse of a migrating snow goose, taking a break from flying to pal around with some local Canada geese. What a treat!
Another indispensable bird resource available through Cornell is the Merlin Bird App, which is not a library resource, just a free app that Beebe librarians use and recommend. You can use it to identify birds based on appearance, size, song, and a variety of other features, and it uses your location to provide you with lists of birds you’re likely to see in your area, like an avian dating app. Short, dark and handsome? You might be on a blind date with a dark-eyed junco! One Beebe librarian likes to sit in her backyard and let the app listen while the birds around her sing. The app can identify the various nearby species from their songs, which makes it great for identifying birds while hiking, too. You can keep track of your sightings so that you remember which birds you saw and where as you get more comfortable with birding. Who even needs Pokemon Go?
I’ve bird you for too long with all these details, so I’ll stop before you cry fowl play. But if you’re still peckish for more, why not try one of these ornithological reads to supplement your birding?
