How is the atlas organized geographically?

The atlas is split into seven broad regions — Russia, Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Australia and Oceania — matching the site's main navigation. Each region has its own overview page, with individual country or subnational pages added underneath as the atlas grows.

Does every country have its own page yet?

No. The atlas launches with a small set of country and regional pages under each continent, prioritized by relevance to the site's core audience, and expands over time rather than trying to cover all roughly 195 countries at once.

What will I find on a country or regional page?

Each page covers the typical and characteristic species found there, the best places and seasons to go birdwatching, and any notable conservation issues affecting local bird populations.

Bird Atlas

Bird Atlas by Region

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Explore bird life region by region — from Russia's forests and steppe to Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas — with typical species and best places to watch.

A world atlas built region by region

Bird distribution is never uniform — a species common across the birch and spruce forests of central Russia may be entirely absent from the Iberian peninsula, and a wetland specialist that thrives in the Danube delta will not be found on the Mongolian steppe. This section organizes that variation geographically, starting with seven broad regions: Russia, Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Australia and Oceania, mirroring the structure used throughout the site's navigation.

Each region has its own overview page describing the range of habitats it covers, the species most characteristic of it, and the general rhythm of the birdwatching year there. Beneath each region, individual country and subnational pages — starting with a handful of the most relevant ones and growing over time — go into more local detail: specific reserves, migration bottlenecks, and species that are easy to find in one place but rare everywhere else.

Why Russia comes first

Russia receives the deepest initial coverage of any region, with several regional pages — including Moscow Oblast, Leningrad Oblast, Krasnodar Krai, Primorsky Krai, and the Republic of Karelia — published from the start. This reflects both the geographic scale of the country, which spans eleven time zones and habitats from Baltic wetlands to Far Eastern taiga, and the site's core audience. Other regions launch with a smaller set of country pages and expand gradually.

How to use a regional page

A regional or country page is not a full checklist of every species recorded there — that role belongs to specialist ornithological databases. Instead, it highlights the birds most likely to be seen by a visitor or resident during a typical outing: which species are truly resident year-round, which are seasonal migrants passing through at predictable times, and which reserves, parks, or coastlines offer the best concentration of bird activity. Where a species covered here also appears in the species catalogue, the regional page links directly to its full profile.

As the atlas grows, this page will also link to distribution maps that bring together migration routes and seasonal range shifts across all seven regions in one place.