For information on choosing the best gear for your new hobby, check out Alabama Audubon’s Gear for Beginning Birders. For a list of birding resources, click here. For the official field checklist for Alabama’s birds, you can download it on the Alabama Ornithological Society’s website here.
To report a rare bird sighting, contact the Alabama Ornithological Society’s Rare Bird Alert hotline at (256) 773-8560, or visit their website.
To report a banded bird with a federal band, visit the Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL) website. To report a banded shorebird, visit bandedbirds.org.
If you find an injured or orphaned bird, the best thing to do is contact your local wildlife rehabilitation facility. There are several throughout the state that will take injured birds, listed below. You can also download the free Animal Help Now smartphone app here.
- Central Alabama: The Alabama Wildlife Center is located at Oak Mountain State Park in Pelham.
- Eastern Alabama: The Southeastern Raptor Center is located in Auburn.
- Southeast Alabama: The Big Bend Wildlife Sanctuary is located in Enterprise.
- Coastal Alabama: The Orange Beach Wildlife Center is located in Orange Beach and the Environmental Studies Center is in Mobile.
If you suspect federally-protected birds are being killed, you can report it to the US Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement here.
If you suspect house sparrows, an invasive, aggressive species, are nesting in your bluebird boxes or killing native birds in your yard, here is a helpful fact sheet from the North American Bluebird Society about what to look for and what to do.