How to search

Simple search

Type a species name, author, title word, publication or place in the search box. This searches titles, keywords, scientific names, author surnames, publications and abstracts together, and shows the best matches first.

• Capitals and accents don't matter: Nilgiri and NILGIRI give the same results, and so do Jerdon and Jérdon.
• Words are matched as typed: owl does not find owls. To match the start of words, use a field search with starts with (below).
• Put words in double quotes to find them together as a phrase: "great indian bustard".
• Use or to accept either word: vulture or kite. It joins only the two words next to it, so birds kerala or nepal finds records about birds in Kerala or in Nepal.
• Put a minus sign before a word to leave it out: owl -barn.

Field-specific search

On the search page, choose a field and how to match it, then type your term.

• Author matches the surname alone or the full name in either order: Ali, Ali, Salim and Salim Ali all work. Accents are optional.
• Title and Publication match any part of the title or journal name.
• Year takes a single year (1994) or a range (1990-2000). The range includes both years.
• Keyword finds records indexed under that keyword, for example CHECKLIST or MIGRATION.
• Location finds records indexed under a country or region, for example NEPAL or KERALA.
• Family finds records indexed under a bird family, for example STRIGIDAE.

Each field can be matched in three ways:

• contains: the term appears anywhere in the field. The default for Author, Title and Publication.
• is: the field is exactly the term. The default for Scientific name, Keyword, Location, Family and Year. For an author, is means the exact full name.
• starts with: the field begins with the term. For an author, this matches the beginning of the surname.

Combining criteria

Use Add another criterion to search more than one field. Records must match all the criteria (AND). For example, Author Gaston with Year 1990-2000 finds Gaston's papers from those years. You can add the same field twice, for example two keywords.

After searching, the filters beside the results (item type, decade, country, family, publication) narrow the results further. Results are sorted by relevance, then author, then year. You can sort by year, author, title or publication instead.

Scientific names

A scientific name search finds records indexed under that species, family or order. Capitals, accents and extra spaces are ignored: Asio flammeus, ASIO FLAMMEUS and asio flammeus give the same results.

Use starts with to find a whole genus: Scientific name starts with Gyps finds every Gyps species.

Sharing a search

Every search has its own web address that includes all criteria, filters, sorting and the page you are on. Bookmark it, or copy it from the address bar to share it. For example: /search?scientific_name=Asio+flammeus&year=1990-2000.

Every record also has a permanent address, shown on its page, and a ready-made citation in Indian BIRDS style.

Data sources

The records come from the bibliography's Zotero group library. Scientific names and place names among the keywords are recognised with the help of:

• Clements, J. F., P. C. Rasmussen, T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, A. Spencer, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, M. Smith, and C. L. Wood. 2025. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2025.
• GeoNames geographical database, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Privacy

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Questions. For any question about privacy, please contact editors.indianbirds@gmail.com.