The information about birds now available at eBird is just about all you need to have these days. Whether you want to know what species are found at some location on the planet, or how common a given species is at some time during the year, eBird can give you that information. More comprehensive references are also available in unprecedented quality and detail via bird field guides in analog and digital formats.
But there is one niche that still hasn’t been replaced by technological advances or even more books — the field checklist. This is a list of species found in some particular spot — a national park, a wildlife refuge or any other defined location. Along with the list is typically a notation of how common a given species is during different seasons. So, for example, we would have “common” in “winter” for dark-eyed junco in Boise.
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