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, visit the Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL) website.
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:
- 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.