In North America, birders tend to pay closer attention to male birds than females. Though it isn't true for all birds, for sexually dimorphic species (meaning that visually, we can tell the sexes apart), most males are brighter and generally more colorful. For songbirds, it's common in North America for males to be more prolific singers. It's also not entirely infrequent for female-bird ID tips to be left out of field guides entirely!

We want to change our old habits by getting more birders to pay attention to female birds. The Galbatross Project is a crowd-sourcing movement that's gathering information on North American bird species (using the American Birding Association list) to compile the most extensive database of female traits (including behaviors, vocalizations and physical features). Once it's vetted and completed, we'll share it publicly so it can serve as a reference for anyone looking to identify female birds.

Before submitting your own ID tips for female birds, please review the data that's already been compiled (link to spreadsheet). If you want to add more information, even for a species that's already in the spreadsheet, please do so! We will update the spreadsheet daily and remove duplicate information.

Thanks for supporting the Galbatross Project.