Submit a photograph
The photographs in this guide are freely licensed and show free-living wild birds. Anyone with such a photograph can offer it here.
Each species has one main photograph and, below it, additions: the other sex, winter plumage, a young bird, a chick. A submitted photograph is considered if it shows a plumage or a stage the page still lacks, or is clearly better than what is there. The author judges every submission himself; nothing goes on the site automatically. Replies are sent by e-mail.
What a photograph must meet
- A free, living, wild bird in the field — no cage, mesh, fence, aviary, zoo or breeding centre.
- No bird in a bander's hand and no bird on a feeding table or picnic table in a park. The kookaburra, the galah and the kea are tame in such pictures, and then show precisely not how the species is to be recognised in the field.
- No ring or transmitter in view, no hand, no mounted specimen, no dead bird. Only for a species that no longer exists without management — the hihi is the example — is a ringed bird allowed, because no unringed photographs of such a species exist.
- No abnormally coloured bird — an albino or leucistic individual shows precisely not what the species is recognised by.
- A photograph, not a print, drawing or screenshot; without a watermark, caption or logo in the image.
- Landscape or square, sharp, and at least 1600 pixels on the long side. JPEG or PNG, up to 20 MB.
- Your own: you are the photographer and you release it under one of the three licences below.
Where the guide still lacks a photograph
For these species no freely licensed photograph of a living wild bird exists:
- North Island Brown Kiwi Apteryx mantelli
- Swinhoe's Snipe Gallinago megala
- Matsudaira's Storm Petrel Hydrobates matsudairae
- Slender-billed Prion Pachyptila belcheri
- South Georgia Diving Petrel Pelecanoides georgicus
- Common Diving Petrel Pelecanoides urinatrix
- Tahiti Petrel Pseudobulweria rostrata
- Barau's Petrel Pterodroma baraui
- Grey Falcon Falco hypoleucos
- Chatham Islands Parakeet Cyanoramphus forbesi
- Papuan Eclectus Eclectus polychloros
- Naretha Bluebonnet Northiella narethae
- Grey Grasswren Amytornis barbatus
- Pilbara Grasswren Amytornis whitei
- Western Thornbill Acanthiza inornata
- Slender-billed Thornbill Acanthiza iredalei
- Slaty-backed Thornbill Acanthiza robustirostris
- Banded Whiteface Aphelocephala nigricincta
- Chestnut-breasted Whiteface Aphelocephala pectoralis
- Atherton Scrubwren Sericornis keri
- Western Wattlebird Anthochaera lunulata
- Pied Honeyeater Certhionyx variegatus
- Yellow Chat Epthianura crocea
- Black-eared Miner Manorina melanotis
- Red-headed Myzomela Myzomela erythrocephala
- Tawny-breasted Honeyeater Xanthotis flaviventer
The form
What happens with the data: the photograph is reduced to 2048 pixels and stored without the location data a camera adds. Name, place and date go with the photograph; the e-mail address does not. A photograph that is not taken up is deleted.