The 2026 Bird of the Year is the Horned Lark: a widespread, resilient, and fascinating species uniting birders through art, storytelling, and conservation all year long.

The annual highlight of the birding calendar is, for so many birders, the Christmas Bird Count. Birding Editor Ted Floyd and ABA cartoonist Sal Palmero team up to celebrate "Birding's Grandest Tradition" in this article in the Dec. 2025 Birding. It's both fun and thoughtful, and we at the ABA are delighted to make this content available for free to the entire birding community. Seasons Greetings to all of you!

The American Birding Association has appointed nonprofit leader and lifelong birder Kimberly Ann Check to the role of Director of Young Birder Programs.

Acompañen a Cristina Devin Vojta en una visita a una encantadora reserva natural familiar en el corazón de Colombia. ¡Seguro que quedarán encantados!

ABA Bird of the Year artist Sam Zimmerman celebrates a landmark year of public art, books, and bird-inspired works honoring Ojibwe culture, conservation, and the beauty of Lake Superior.

Renowned artist Tony Fitzpatrick was beloved in the Chicago birding community and a dear friend of the ABA. Read this celebration of Tony's life by ABA web czar Greg Neise.

An enthusiastic birder volunteers for a kestrel nest-box project, boosting awareness through hands-on volunteering and creative social media, embodying how local connections power conservation efforts.

Warbler wizard Gene Koziara goes over some of the challenges of identifying one tricky fall warbler migrant which may receive less attention than it deserves, the Prairie Warbler.

Get tips from saltmarsh expert Alex Troutman on birding this special habitat responsibly, including what gear to bring, how best to access, ways to minimize disturbance, and of course strategies for seeing more birds.

Get tips from swamp-birding expert Heather Hill on how to comfortably, safely, and responsibly explore swamps, including off-trail adventures while minimizing disturbance.

After Lyme disease forced him into retirement, geologist Bob Bell found healing in birding, improving wellness, sharing knowledge, and inspiring people to connect with birds.

The ABA’s Executive Director and Chair of the Board reveal and reflect on the ABA’s new mission statement: to make birding better by providing knowledge, sharing experiences, and building community.

Researchers at the University of Maine seek birder reports of American Goshawk nests from 2020–2025. Data aids conservation, taxonomy, and understanding of this elusive forest raptor.

A top Fort Worth birding hotspot is closed indefinitely after an oil leak. Birders mourn the loss and advocate for access, restoration, and habitat protection.

ABA Executive Director Wayne Klockner shares his thoughts on how, in this time of global upheaval and uncertainty, birding has a bigger role to play than ever before.

A new study finds that Golden-winged Warblers from wetter forests depart later but migrate faster, often overtaking earlier birds, underscoring the value of high-quality winter habitat.

Peter Kaestner, who became the first person in the world to see 10,000 species of birds in 2024, meditates on how global birding and our understanding of which species are in or out of reach has changed in the last 50 years.

A new community science project called Gulls Eating Stuff invites public submissions of gulls eating anything to help researchers study urbanization’s effects on gull diets and behavior.

Enjoy Common Loons responsibly this summer by keeping your distance, minimizing disturbance, using safe fishing practices, and respecting nesting areas to help protect this iconic species.

The Toronto Whimbrel Watch tracks thousands of migrating Whimbrels each May. This important effort supports international research and urgent conservation needs for declining Hudsonian Whimbrel populations.

The 2026 federal budget proposes eliminating the USGS Ecosystems Mission Area, threatening bird banding, research, and conservation nationwide, endangering 100+ years of vital ecological data.

Argentine composer Julia Tchira connects birders and musicians through bird-inspired music, highlighting migration, ecology, and collaborations made possible by ABA’s Bird of the Year Program.

Please join us in congratulating the 2025 ABA Young Birders of the Year, Killian Sullivan from Gahanna, OH and Elias Markee-Ratner from New York, NY!

The East Pond Association safeguards Common Loons in East Pond, Maine, through education, nesting rafts, and community action, proving local volunteers can make an impact for bird conservation.

Recent meteorological reports suggest weather patterns have created favorable conditions for large movements of migrating birds across the Midwest and amassing along the Great Lakes.

The authors of a new study believe they have solved one of the world’s great rare bird mysteries: the case of the Nechisar Nightjar, Caprimulgus solala.

Have you seen the sky dance yet? Every year, birders look forward to the return of American Woodcocks, Scolopax minor, to their breeding grounds. Woodcocks begin arriving on territory as early as March, in late winter.

Before yesterday, April 20, there had never been a Cook County, Illinois, record for Mountain Bluebird, Sialia currucoides. But today, April 21, there are three.

As I write, the sun is rising on a nearly perfect spring morning, replete with caroling robins and ravens already on the wing. The day is marred only by the absence of my good friend Victor Emanuel, whose too brief tenure on this planet ended 11 March 2025. But in a very real sense, the spirit of this architect of ecotourism lives on.

The American Birding Association (ABA) is deeply concerned by recent, sudden staff reductions in U.S. federal agencies tasked with the stewardship of American’s lands, waters, and wildlife, including wild birds. These actions have real world implications for the health and wellbeing of wild birds, particularly those on the brink of extinction.

Common Loons look like they have nothing to hide as they float around, seemingly without a care in the world. Or, at least, so I thought. I’ve come to realize there is much, much more to Common Loons than meets the birder’s eye...

The ABA Board of Directors is delighted to share its 2024 recipients of the ABA Awards. The ABA Awards Committee encourages all ABA members to familiarize themselves with the many accomplishments of its awardees.

The Colombia Birdfair is held in the verdant, tropical city of Cali, located in the department of Valle de Cauca. Home to no fewer than 1,000 species of birds, Valle de Cauca provides attendees with a dizzying array of potential field trip options that include sites on the eastern slope of the central Andes, both slopes of the western Andes, and throughout the Cauca River valley.

Please join us in congratulating the 2024 ABA Young Birders of the Year, Chris Henry, from San Jose, CA and Anna Reichenbach from Mechanicsburg, PA!

Imagine, if you will, that you’re a birder in the United States and Canada, and the time period you’re in is before the publication of the first edition of Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds on April 27, 1934. What book would you be using as a field guide?

On February 9, 2024, longtime ABA member and frequent Birding magazine contributor Peter Kaestner reached 10,000 birds on his life list. The ABA heartily congratulates Peter on this momentous achievement.

Multitudes of birders convened from Nov. 27 through Dec. 3, to exchange experiences, train in different workshops, and find lifers in one of the most biodiverse states in Mexico.

Sometime in the second half of 2024, I hope to see a bird. But this one will be different than other birds, although the bird will not know that. This particular bird will belong to a species that I will not have seen before, and it will represent my 10,000th species.

I saw the movie “The Big Year,” and by the time I left the theatre I knew I had finally found my true passion, the one thing that was missing from my life: birding. It was not just everyday birdwatching I craved, but chasing, listing, traveling to see the birds.

In 1968, at the age of 10, I set a goal to see 600 bird species in the U.S. by what then seemed the impossibly old age of 50. At that time, it seemed to me that spotting 600 bird species was akin to a Major League Baseball player hitting 500 career home runs, a goal which only a handful of players had reached. So, seeing 600 bird species was achievable, and certainly very special.

What about the problem of the proliferation of honorific, or patronymic, names on the ABA Checklist? Should all those names–some of them referring to widespread and familiar species commemorating significant historical figures–be scrapped? This commentary addresses that question, and proposes a way forward.

After an extensive search, ABA is excited to announce the appointment of Wayne Klockner as Executive Director. Wayne joins the ABA with an impressive history of nonprofit leadership experience in the conservation field, including a 38-year career with The Nature Conservancy.

ABA Members can view the recording of this webinar here: https://www.aba.org/community/groups/programs-webinars/ The American Birding Association kicks off our Programs and Webinars,[...]

Indigenous Birders, Cattle Ranchers, and Conservation in Latin America
Birding and bird photography have become popular pursuits in Latin America, and, for many, even a career. This development applies also to Indigenous communities, where some people have discovered that they can use birding as a way to protect the area they live in while deriving a livelihood.

Closer to Owls, but in the Right Ways.
Snowy Owls are one of the most recognized and beloved birds in the world. To protect them, it’s essential that birders enjoy these birds ethically.

On behalf of the ABA Board of Directors and staff, the ABA Awards Committee is delighted to announce the winners of the 2022 ABA Awards. This year, the ABA Awards Committee is happy to recognize one recipient of the ABA Lifetime Achievement Award, also called “The Tropicbird,” one recipient of the Award for Conservation and Education, and two recipients of the Award for Distinguished Service. ABA Awards are given to birders who have done exceptional work in promoting the cause of birding.

Listen to the songs mentioned in Stephanie Seymour's interview in the December 2022 issue of Birding magazine from her brilliant album, There Are Birds.

Go To ABA Community >> We're delighted to welcome ABA members to our newest project: ABA Community. This online platform was inspired by[...]

Birds inspire art in many ways: writing, painting, photography, film. Not least of the art forms that birds frequently move people to create is music. The work of composer and violinist Julia Tchira has been heavily influenced by the wonder of birds, including a recent piece she wrote about the ABA’s 2022 Bird of the Year, the Burrowing Owl.

Holy freakin’ cow! I have uttered those words quite regularly, and rarely quietly, from the moment I unpacked my new Olympus M.Zuiko 150–400mm F4.5 TC 1.25x IS PRO. So what does the TC 1.25x in the name stand for? That’s another fun capability of this lens . . . it has a 1.25x teleconverter built in. Just flipping a switch multiplies your focal length by 25%, so the 300–800mm equivalent focal length becomes a 375–1,000mm f5.6 super telephoto birding lens.

As part of its celebration of the third Black Birders Week, please enjoy the ABA's two-part session of the prerecorded panel "Black Birders: Embracing the Beauty Within." The panel explores such topics as childhood experiences with birds, how to pass on generational knowledge of birds, and whether things have changed since the first Black Birders Week.

Delaware City, Delaware – Rebecca Minardi has been hired as Birding magazine’s new Book and Media Reviews Editor. Rebecca is an experienced[...]

On behalf of the ABA Board of Directors and staff, we are delighted to share our two 2021 recipients of the ABA Lifetime Achievement Award, also called “The Tropicbird”: J. Drew Lanham and Jen Brumfield. ABA Lifetime Achievement Awards are given to birders who have completed a lifetime’s worth of...

If you’ve had experiences with access in the outdoors, we would appreciate knowing about them.

Spend any amount of time at all in the company of birders, and you quickly discover their proclivity for places that[...]

The ABA's 2022 Bird of the Year is the Burrowing Owl, arguably the world's most charismatic bird species!

In 2004, Mark Obmascik suddenly burst onto the birding scene with the release of his first book, The Big Year—and his fame escalated when Hollywood made it into a movie in 2011.

The American Birding Association is happy to announce a re-envisioned, complete make-over of our tried-and-true staple: ABA Birding News 2021.

The ABA is proud that the Pileated Woodpecker, emblem of both the wild woods and the adaptability of birds to anthropogenically altered spaces, is our 2021 Bird of the Year.

December 31, 2020 As 2020 draws to a close, we have the following updates on efforts and progress towards equity, diversity, and[...]

It turned out that I didn’t know what kinds of noises Northern Saw-whet Owls made in fall and early winter! Now I do, and it’s changed everything.

Here is a concise update on our progress toward equity, diversity, and inclusion over the last three months. As always, we welcome your input, support, and participation in these worthy and long-term efforts.

The Tale of an Epic Big Sit in a Tiny Back Yard

Stuck at home for the entire spring migration, Greg Neise documents the birds flying through, around, and over his 35-foot-by-25-foot brick patio. Even if you're confined to a small urban swelling during this time of COVID-19, there is still birding to be had.

The American Birding Association presents this summary of its recent and ongoing efforts to make our birding community more equitable, diverse, and inclusive.[...]

Like so many in the birding community, American Birding Association staff and board were inspired by last week’s #BlackBirdersWeek, and greatly appreciate the effort to not only celebrate Black faces and voices in birding, but to draw attention to the unique difficulties birding can pose to Black people in terms of accessibility, safety, and community. 

"Please don’t tell a person of color you don’t see color. That’s insulting. After all, most birders spend lots of time seeing color—otherwise a Red-winged Blackbird and a Snow Bunting wouldn’t be so beautifully different. So, see the color. Respect the face. Get to know me inside. The rest will fall into place."

The whole world seems to have started to notice birds, a phenomenon that has been widely reported in major newspapers, on network news, and at online information sites.

This spring is a historic one. For us birders and nature-lovers, sheltering in place during spring migration is a tough pill to swallow. You might have had a calendar chock full of group tours, road trips, or bird club meetings. For your own safety and the safety of others, you’re staying home… but now what?

American Birding Association Guidelines on Birding and Social Distancing The basic principles of “quarantine” birding are already well covered in the ABA Code of Birding Ethics:

Here’s the deal: We’re all sheltering in place, we’re all staying at home, and we’re all, frankly, looking for ways to take our minds off the COVID-19 crisis, if even for a short while. And birding, it turns out, is a superb activity if you can’t get out of the neighborhood, if you can’t even get out of the house.

With this update, we’re going to let you know what’s been going on at the ABA in the past week (lots!), how you can continue to help (not just financially), and how we can help you (we really do mean that).

Dear ABA Members and Friends, The past week has been unlike anything any of us have ever experienced. As is the case[...]

Hey, everyone! My name is Hannah Floyd, and I am a ninth-grader in Colorado. Like many of you reading this, I am on an extended break due to the coronavirus. What does one do in a situation like this? Go outside and explore, of course!

First things first. We at the ABA are taking this seriously. The COVID-19 emergency is affecting all of us in ways[...]

May 29, 2019 How many bird species are on the official list of your state or province? If you’re an ABA member,[...]

Now we faced another long haul … but this was into unknown territory for us. The drive to Meredosia was quiet. We were in the mid-170s, the day was running out and we couldn’t see a clear path to 188. Jeff was becoming irritated. It’s the unspoken part of doing a big day. We hear all about the awesome sightings, the strategy and so on … but the grunt-work: the driving (especially, and Jeff is an especially gifted driver), and staying on-your-game when you’ve been up and going at it for 18 hours—with another day’s-worth of work ahead of you—takes a toll.