Advance Screening #2: Life History, Sounds, and Video

On Tuesday we showed you a first look at our new All About Birds species pages, which will go live just under two weeks from now, on April 16. We put a lot of work into identification tips and photos this time around, so we started you out with a look at just the ID tab.

But we’ve done plenty more work to upgrade these accounts. We’ve fleshed out the Life History section and made it easier to scan, by displaying basic information in the form of icons. These also work as links to take you to fuller descriptions of habitat, diet, nests, and general behavior, farther down the page. Get to them by going here and clicking on the Life History tab just after the introductory paragraph.

What’s that you say? What are these Sound and Video tabs? Well, just click on them to find out. We’ve put together a few sound clips and a few video clips for each species. You can hear that famous Red-tailed Hawk scream, as well as a few other calls, and you can watch a red-tail pointed into the wind and hovering, among other sights. Have fun!

When the site goes live, we’ll have expanded accounts for 51 of North America’s most commonly seen species. For the remaining species, we’ve ported over information, photos, and sound from the existing All About Birds site. We’ll be rolling out new, upgraded species accounts on a regular basis after our site launch. We’ve already got a prioritized to-do list for the next 200 species (remember when you helped us make that list?) – but if there’s anything you’d like to suggest, we’re all ears.