A beautiful birding companion book that helps you catalogue and learn about the birds you see around you. Keep track of your sightings while recording fond memories, and try to see every bird!
This life list contains all birds in the continental United States, as well as Hawaii and Alaska. Entries are split taxonomically, with both common and scientific names given for each bird and each taxon. Also included is information about endemic species and conservation status. Write directly in the book to keep track of which birds you’ve seen on your adventures!
Features
Each species has a designated area for sighting notes, so you can keep track of any interesting observations you see in the field. There are also spaces designated to date and location to document your first sighting of each bird species.
Endemic birds are special because they’re only native to one geographical area. We added symbols indicating whether birds are endemic to the US mainland, or if they’re endemic to Hawaii.
Our books are organized taxonomically, meaning birds are grouped together by their shared characteristics and evolutionary relationships. Each chapter represents a bird order, so once you’ve completed a chapter you’ve seen all birds of this order in the United States! We hope that by organizing our books in this manner we will not only make it easier for experienced birders to locate their bird of interest, but also help new birders learn a bit of taxonomy. Knowledge of taxonomy is not at all needed to use this book, though, as there are ↓
Sometimes common bird names change. Sometimes bird species get split or combined. This can make birding difficult, as references can become outdated. We did our best to cover our bases by providing both a common name index and a scientific name index, the latter being sorted alphabetically by genus. Hopefully this will help you more easily find the bird you’re looking for!
Birding as a hobby is inextricably tied to conservation. We added the current conservation status of each bird species to educate a bit on this topic. If you see that your favorite bird is threatened, consider looking into how and why, and if you have the means, help out your avian friends! That way, future birders can see them too.
Birding is unpredictable, and that’s part of why it’s so fun! To account for birds that are migrating, lost, escaped pets – whatever it may be, we added extra pages to allow for those nonconventional bird sightings. Each entry has all the same spots for notetaking as our normal entries, as well as an empty sighting map that you can mark up all you want. Sometimes the most interesting birds are the ones we don’t expect and cannot predict!
