Resources
Part of the fun of the Aussie Bird Count is getting to know the birds that live in your area. You can probably identify a lot of them already, but there’s always one or two elusive species to learn more about!
We’ve compiled a whole heap of resources to help you get to know your local birds and more about birding. Click through below to get started. If you can’t find the right resource for you below, try checking with your local library or council.
How To Count
Discover which birds live in your area
1. On your computer, go to the Birdata website.
2. Select ‘explore’ from the navigation.
3. Use the Filter on the left-hand side of the page. Use the ‘Area Layer’ dropdown menu and select ‘Local Government Area’. Start typing the name of your council into the ‘Area’ field, and select the relevant option from the list (e.g. ‘Yarra’). The list of birds in this area will appear on the right.
4. Sort the list of birds by clicking on the sort icon in the top right-hand corner. Select the option to ‘Sort by reporting rate’. This will bring the most common birds in your area to the top of the list.
5. Select the print icon located in the menu near the sort icon to print a copy of the list or save as a PDF. Note you can also save the list as a .csv file using the download icon.
For more information, and additional filtering options, you can watch the video below.
Weekend Birder Podcast
Have you taken an interest in birding and want to learn more? The Weekend Birder podcast is a great resource for beginners to discover how to identify birds, fun facts, where to go birdwatching and how to use equipment.
What Bird is That? Videos
Bird ID Field Guide Books
A field guide is a bird counter’s best friend! The Aussie Bird Count app has a great ‘Find a Bird’ feature, but sometimes only a book will do. A good field guide will help you identify any birds you might be unsure of, and there are loads of great field guide options to choose from. The ones listed here are among of the best known and most popular Aussie bird guides, but there are many worth checking out. All of the titles below will likely be available in your local bookstore, public library, or online.
| Title | Usual price |
| The Field Guide to the Birds of Australia – Pizzey and Knight The classic guide, known affectionately as The Pizzey. Excellent text. | $35-45 |
| The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds – Peter Slater The guide for out in the field – less text but beautiful illustrations and fits in a jacket pocket. | $27-35 |
| The Australian Bird Guide – Menkhorst et al The most recent bird guide and a firm favourite among many – but quite heavy! | $37-40 |
| Field Guide to Australian Birds – Michael Morcombe This guide has a very useful section on nest and egg identification. | $50 |
Bird Sound Identification
The holy grail of birding, there have been many brave attempts at creating an app that identifies bird sounds – a “Shazam” for birds, if you will.
But it is a much bigger ask than it sounds – bird calls aren’t like pop songs, which are identical on each play-through, and often tagged and archived to a convenient internet database upon release. Not only is every bird call and song a unique live performance, but a single species may have many different calls, and some species may sound identical to another species. Some birds are talented mimics. Creating a repository of all these sounds, and an algorithm to compare and correctly match them, is a huge undertaking that requires a lot of resources. Bird song is so varied that machine learning struggles to interpret and match all the possibilities.
So far, there is not a definite winner among the existing app pool, and most of the big ones don’t focus on Aussie birds. At this point, none has proven accurate enough for BirdLife Australia to wholeheartedly endorse it. Of course, you are welcome to search around and give one or two of them a try – but don’t be shocked if it’s not spot-on every time.
Another option: if you think you might know what kind of bird if might be but want a comparison to be sure, most field guide apps include bird call recordings. If you don’t want to use an app, there are also websites with bird calls you can try.
WEBSITES
Birds in Backyards – Top 40 Bird Songs
Graeme Chapman’s Bird listings with recordings of bird calls
Xeno-canto – Sharing bird sounds from around the world
