* ONLINE BIRDING RESOURCES *

YUCATAN BIRD CLUB
ONLINE BIRDING RESOURCES

YUCATAN BIRDS
Don’t forget http://www.yucatanbirds.org.mx . This is the site for the Yucatan Birding Festival. It contains a wealth of information. There are checklist of species recorded in Xcambo, Izamal, Calakmul and more. There are several suggested routes for the Xoh chi’ich birdathon; these routes point the way to several birding hotspots in the state.

ALL ABOUT BIRDS
Are you looking for birding basis. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has some great information and learning tools at http://www.allaboutbirds.org/Page.aspx?pid=1189&ac=ac
And, you can sign up to receive their newsletter.

eBird.com – RECORDING YOUR SIGHTINGS
What is it?
For the birder in you, it is a free, real-time, interactive, online global checklist program. It was developed and maintained by the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and is supported around the world by local bird conservation organizations.
How does it work?
1)      Go Birding
2)      Go online and enter your sightings into eBird
3)      Let eBird do all the work and you can enjoy all the benefits.
eBird works by gathering checklists from birders.  Each checklist contains basic information such as the location, date and list of species observed.  You can  think of it like a global, year-round bird atlas.  That information may seem trivial to many people but when it is combined with the observations of thousands of other birders it becomes a powerful tool.  All of the data submitted is collected into a central, permanent archive of bird observations that is available to bird researchers and conservationists, land managers, and anyone else with an interest in birds.

AVIBASE – THE WORLD BIRD DATABASE
http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org is an extensive database information system about all birds of the world, containing over 5 million records about 10,000 species and 22,000 subspecies of birds, including distribution information, taxonomy, synonyms in several languages and more. This site is managed by Denis Lepage and hosted by Bird Studies Canada, the Canadian co-partner of Birdlife International. Avibase has been a work in progress since 1992 and is now offered as a service to the bird-watching and scientific community. Apart from checklists covering almost all of the world like the Yucatan Peninsula checklist: http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp?region=mxyu&list=clements

there are links to hundreds of other websites containing data like Mexican Specialty Birds: http://www.camacdonald.com/birding/birdmexico.htm#Mexican Endemics

THE INTERNET BIRD COLLECTION
This audio-visual site http://ibc.lynxeds.com/ contains more than 120,000 photo, video and sound files covering more than 89% of the world’s 9938 species. You can search by a geographic area as small as, say, Holbox; by individual species such as Squirrel Cuckoo, or by family name, eg. Cuckoos. The displayed results will pinpoint on a map it’s exact location. For photographers and sound recorders, you can submit your own photos, videos and sound files and receive global recognition while contributing to the database.

YAHOO GROUPS MEXICO-BIRDING
You can subscribe to this group to see what other birders are seeing in Mexico. You can post trip reports, photos and follow some of your friends and acquaintances.  Subscribe at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mexico-Birding/

XENO-CANTO.ORG
At this website, you can listen to several species found in the Yucatan peninsula http://www.xeno-canto.org/america/browse.php?query=loc%3Ayucatan&species_nr= by entering sec:yucatan (that is, by typing ‘sec:’ followed by, in this case yucatan, for a list of all the recordings tagged with the word yucatan). In this manner you can also search by the country, state, area or city. Or you can simply type the species name in the search box and listen to the individual species.

DAN MENNILL’S BIRDSONGS
This is another site for listening to birdsongs. Here is the link to the birds of the Yucatan Peninsula.
http://web2.uwindsor.ca/courses/biology/dmennill/Mexico/Mexico.html

Best BINOCULARS
A site for understanding how to by them, and what brand and style is right for you. http://www.bestbinocularsreviews.com/by-use.php

BIRD BIOLOGY COURSE
If you are really serious about birds, you can take the Cornell University home study course in bird biology at http://www.birds.cornell.edu/homestudy