We encourage the birdwatcher and birdbander community to share their photos on the site.
After registration you’ll be able to upload photos. Our admin team will edit and cut the photos and add it to the right place in the gallery.
Please upload
good quality images of the species if possible.
Specifically we are looking for the following photos:
1. All plumages in relevant postures
The ideal number of images of a species depends on the difficulty of its ID.
Difficult species - more photos; easy species - fewer photos.
If it’s a tricky or variegated species (eg. Ring-billed Gull, Herring Gull, Ruff, Little Stint, Booted Eagle dark morph, etc.), more photos are welcome for the same morph/subspecies/age/plumage/sex/posture, but for easy species fewer photos are enough.
For Example, in the case of White Stork 4 photos should cover the whole species (juv. and ad. standing and in flight), but in the case of the tricky Ring-billed Gull, many more could show all of its characteristics.
Or to present a gull more photos are necessary (in flight from above and below, standing), but for a wren no photos in flight needed.
2. Morphs, Subspecies, Hybrids, Aberrant/unusual birds
3. Species specific characteristics
Depends on the species. Eg. tail pattern of Isabelline Wheatear and Northern Wheatear, open wing or tertials of Pied Flycatcher.
4. Photo with similar species or if it's a WP rarity, photos with species of the same habitat/behavior
The best would be photos of birds that can be easily confused together. Or if it’s a WP rarity with a somewhat similar species common in WP. Eg. Baird’s Sandpiper with White-rumped Sandpiper/Dunlin or Lesser Yellowlegs with Wood Sandpiper.
5. Look on field
Difficult category, but this is to depict how a bird looks from a distance that helps ID. Eg sleeping Sociable Lapwing with Golden Plovers or Lapwings, some songbirds’s supercilium is more brighter from distance, some raptors have special wing postures
6. ID in hand
Ageing, sexing, species: characteristics visible mostly in hand, mostly songbirds.
Before uploading photos,
please check what kind of photos are available on the site of the species in your photo.
If there are many, especially of the same type (ssp., morph, age, plumage, sex, posture), please consider if your photo would
add a plus to the website. Sometimes less is more.
Please don’t be upset if your photo was not chosen to be added to the gallery.
It’s important that our only and primary focus is identification so only those photos will be added to the gallery that have additional value (characteristics/plumage/age/posture that were not covered before).
If there is a characteristic that is not mentioned under the photo, but it’s important, or there is an error, please login, go to
Species accounts,
click on "Comment image" below the photos and leave a comment describing what is wrong or missing. An admin will check it soon and update the image description if necessary.
Please share the idea of the Community bird ID and the site if you know someone who could upload photos of the above categories that we don’t have yet.
Or just share the site if you find it useful.