Supporting listing and monitoring of birds across India
Animated Migration Maps
Enabled by the observations of 1000s of birdwatchers around the world
Newsletter
Bunting Count
Join the 3rd edition of Bunting Count where Asian countries are teaming up to monitor buntings for conservation. The goal is to raise awareness and conduct baseline studies on key bunting sites..
Poila Baisakh Bird Count 2025
Watch and count birds from anywhere in West Bengal on 12th to 15th April 2025!
Himalayan Bird Count 2025
Join the 2025 Himalayan Bird Count on 10th May! Help document bird diversity across the majestic Himalayan regions of India, Nepal, and Bhutan through this collaborative citizen-science initiative.
Endemic Bird Day 2025
Join the 2025 Endemic Bird Day on 10th May! This special day is dedicated to documenting South Asia's 236 unique endemic and near-endemic bird species..
Red-headed Bunting
Red-headed Bunting (Emberiza bruniceps) breeds largely in Central Asia and winters in western, central and northwestern India.
Great Backyard Bird Count 2025—Preliminary Results
The 13th edition of the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) 2025 in India concluded with remarkable success, with 6,612 eBirders documenting 1,084 bird species across the country. Participation peaked on Day 3 with 3,956 observers, and for the first time, Brazil tied with India for the third-highest number of species recorded globally. This year’s event featured over a thousand bird walks, participation from every state and union territory, and an estimated 5,000+ new enthusiasts introduced to birdwatching. Complete results will follow in April 2025.
Fulvous-breasted Woodpecker and Stripe-breasted Woodpecker: ID
Fulvous-breasted and Stripe-breasted Woodpeckers are similar-looking species that can be hard to tell apart. This guide highlights key differences in their appearance, range, and vocalizations to help you identify them with confidence.
Bird Atlases
A bird atlas is a citizen science project intended to map the distribution and abundance of a region’s birds. In an atlas project, the region of interest is typically divided into cells that are often subdivided into smaller cells, a design that can ensure uniform sampling in space by volunteer birdwatchers.
ID Articles
A series of articles to help with the identification of difficult birds.
Identifying Waders: Part 1
In the first part of the series related to identifying waders, we try and tackle an often misidentified group consisting of the Tringa sandpipers.
Leafbirds – Golden-fronted, Jerdon’s and others
By Ramit Singal There are four species of leafbirds (also known as chloropsis) found in India and they never fail to enthral a birder. Each of them is largely green, slender in build, with a medium-length tail and the habit of dwelling in the top or mid-canopy....
Red-breasted, Taiga and Kashmir Flycatcher ID
By Tarun Menon and Ashwin Viswanathan This article is available in Hindi, Kannada, and Marathi Red-breasted, Taiga and Kashmir Flycatcher are three very similar looking flycatchers belonging to the Ficedula genus. Initially, all three were considered to be...
Bushlarks, Skylarks, & Crested Larks
By Ramit Singal Hopefully, you've had some practice over the past month(s) in telling apart larks from pipits. In this article, we'll try and give some tips to tell between 3 different groups of larks and the species within these groups. We'll start with the...
Identifying Paddyfield Pipits
The Paddyfield Pipit is resident across most parts of the country and this is an excellent time of the year to familiarise oneself with the most common pipit of the region.
Cormorants Clarified
By Ramit Singal Ever seen a V-shaped flock of black birds flying purposefully in the sky near a water body? Or a black bird sitting still with its wings spread out in a small village pond? Or a bird's head sticking out of the water at a lake or pond? Did you notice...
Fulvous-breasted Woodpecker and Stripe-breasted Woodpecker: ID
Fulvous-breasted and Stripe-breasted Woodpeckers are similar-looking species that can be hard to tell apart. This guide highlights key differences in their appearance, range, and vocalizations to help you identify them with confidence.
Field Identification of Green and Greenish Warblers
By Ramit Singal Green and Greenish Warblers have always been notoriously difficult to tell apart. Till recently, Green Warbler (P. nitidus) was considered to be a subspecies of the Greenish Warbler (P. trochiloides). Considering the difficulties involved in...
Identifying Waders: Part 2
This article focusses on the two species of a group of very small shorebirds known as Stints (Calidris sp) - the Little Stint and the Temminck's Stint.
Keeping an ear out for prinias: A beginner’s guide to vocal identification
-Anand Krishnan Every new birdwatcher starts off identifying birds using illustrations of plumage in a field guide. Building field skills, we all eventually use a suite of traits to ID birds, of which plumage is just one. Behavioural traits, habitat and other...
Dark egrets can be white…
By Ramit Singal The previous article focussed on the 4 regularly occurring white egrets from India. In this follow-up post, the attention will shift to egrets that happen to be dimorphic, i.e., they have a dark morph as well as a white morph. The Reef-Egrets are...
Red-breasted, Taiga and Kashmir Flycatcher ID-Kannada
लाल-छातीचा, लाल-कंठाचा आणि काश्मिरी माशीमार पक्ष्यांची ओळख कशी करावी? फिसेडूला गटातील या सारख्या दिसणाऱ्या प्रजातींमधील महत्त्वाचे फरक जाणून घ्या.
Fulvous-breasted Woodpecker and Stripe-breasted Woodpecker: ID
Fulvous-breasted and Stripe-breasted Woodpeckers are similar-looking species that can be hard to tell apart. This guide highlights key differences in their appearance, range, and vocalizations to help you identify them with confidence.
Identifying Indian and Singing Bushlarks: White on the tail is not diagnostic!
By Ashwin Viswanathan Indian Bushlark and Singing Bushlark are very similar species that share many morphological features. Identification can be a real challenge. Luckily, one feature has often served as a shortcut out of this identification conundrum - the...
Identifying Swallows: Red-rumped, Barn, Streak-throated and Wire-tailed Swallow
By Kaushik Sarkar and Ashwin Viswanathan Presented here is an easy guide to help identify the four most common Swallow species in India. You can also download just the photographic guide to this article: PDF format (345 KB). In India, there are 15 species of...
What’s that White Egret sp?
By Ramit Singal Egrets are beautiful and elegant birds to watch. You'll often see them standing still over water and, in a flash, using their long, pointed bills to stab a fish or pick out an insect. No matter where you are in India, it is common to see one or many...
Red-breasted, Taiga and Kashmir Flycatcher ID-Hindi
रेड-ब्रेस्टेड, टैगा और कश्मीर फ्लाईकैचर की पहचान कैसे करें? इन प्रवासी पक्षियों को पहचानने के आसान तरीके जानिए।
Red-breasted, Taiga and Kashmir Flycatcher ID-Marathi
माशीमार कसे ओळखावे: लाल छातीचा माशीमार (Red-breasted Flycatcher), लाल-कंठाचा माशीमार (Taiga Flycatcher) आणि काश्मिरी माशीमार (Kashmir Flycatcher) इंग्रजीत प्रकाशीत झालेल्या मूळ लेखाचा हा मराठी अनुवाद आहे. लेखक : तरुण मेनन आणि अश्विन विश्वनाथन, अनुवादक : स्वरूप...
From our partners
Latest news and updates from our many partner groups
