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EnglishWhat is Illinois Bird Records?
Updated
Illinois Bird Records (illinoisbirdrecords.org) is a digital archive of bird occurrence data for the state of Illinois, maintained by the Illinois Ornithological Records Committee (IORC). It is the place to go if you want to look up verified rare bird records dating back to 1857, submit a sighting of a Review List species for committee evaluation, or browse historical birding journals. It is a records and documentation resource, not a general field guide or a casual sightings log.
What the site contains
The archive is organized around three main bodies of material:
- Rare bird records — accepted records of species that have occurred in Illinois from the 1800s to the present, searchable and filterable.
- The IORC database — reports, media, and the committee's voting decisions on submitted records.
- Historical journal archives — two publications covering decades of Illinois birding.
The site reports the following figures for its holdings:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Accepted records in the archive | > 2,500 |
| Total records reviewed | ~ 4,000 |
| Earliest year with a record | 1857 |
| Year of digital archive creation | 2026 |
Browsing rare bird records
The records section is built for lookup rather than browsing by chance: you search and filter the archive to find accepted records of rare species. Each record carries an identifier and documentation details. Examples shown on the site include:
- Black-throated Sparrow (1980-010), photographed by David B. Johnson on 10 Jan. 1980 in Cook County
- Boreal Owl (1997-002), photographed by Ginny Schmidt on 9 Feb. 2007 in Winnebago County
- Band-tailed Pigeon (1996-060), photographed by Dennis Oehmke on 28 Dec. 1996 in Sangamon County
The record number format (year-sequence) is the key you can use to pull up a specific accepted record.
Reporting a sighting
If you have seen a species on the Review List of Illinois Birds, the site accepts documentation for committee review. The workflow is: check whether your species is on the Review List, then submit your documentation to the IORC. Records that pass review become part of the accepted archive. This is the mechanism by which the archive has grown since the committee's founding.
Who runs it
The IORC is a volunteer group of regional experts founded in 1985. Its stated focus is documenting and maintaining details on rare bird occurrences in Illinois going back to 1857. The committee issues reports and voting decisions on each record, which is why the database includes not just accepted sightings but the review history behind them.
Historical journal archives
Two publications are available to browse:
- Illinois Birds and Birding — published by the Illinois Audubon Society and compiled by Vern Kleen. It ran from January 1985 to December 1991, covering the 1984 Summer through 1991 Spring seasons.
- The Meadowlark — the quarterly magazine of the Illinois Ornithological Society, spanning 1992 to 2026. It covered the 1991 Summer through 2024–2025 Winter seasons and includes field notes, seasonal highlights, technical papers on avian studies in Illinois and the Midwest, photos, original drawings, and joy-of-birding essays.
When to use this site
Use Illinois Bird Records when you need to:
- Verify whether a rare species has been accepted in Illinois and when.
- Find the documentation or committee decision behind a specific record.
- Submit your own sighting of a Review List species.
- Research historical occurrence patterns or read back issues of state birding journals.
It is not the right tool for identifying common backyard birds or for logging everyday sightings — its scope is rare and reviewable occurrences, documented and vetted.