This photographic database has been created by Bird Explorers in collaboration with the African Bird Club (ABC) and Birding Africa to bring together quality photographs of as many bird species from the African continent and associated islands as possible. This has been done in a concerted effort to promote awareness and conservation of the colourful and varied birdlife of Africa.

The database covers the same region as the African Bird Club and the 'Threatened Birds of Africa and related islands',

• Continental Africa
• Indian Ocean islands west of 80° East, including Madagascar and the Mascarene islands
• Atlantic Ocean on or east of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, e.g. the Tristan de Cunha group, Azores and Canaries.

About a quarter of the world's bird species, more than 2,400, have been recorded in this region, with about 332 included on Birdlife International’s red data list for 2008, the most recent summary of the world's threatened and near-threatened species. The list of species recorded in this region, the taxonomic sequence and the naming conventions are those of the ABC Checklist.

Users of the site are expected to be tourists, birdwatchers, ornithologists, researchers and anyone with a general interest in the birds of the region. Whatever your own particular interest, we hope that you will enjoy the site, find it of value and visit it frequently.

With an easy to use interface, the site has been developed so that anyone can readily see a wonderful collection of photographs. Users can see the most recent images or search for families or individual species. Detailed instructions are not necessary but should you have difficulties in using the site or have suggestions for improvement, please contact us on the above link.

Photographers can upload their own African bird photos and details. However, if you have images which you would like to display, but don't have the resources to edit them, add text or upload, we would be only too pleased to help if you contact us on the above link.

All photographs should be of genuinely wild birds taken within the African region as defined above. We may include photographs of birds held in the hand if they have been mist-netted by fully qualified bird ringers. We will not include:

• photographs from zoos or other collections;
• photographs taken outside of Africa;
• photographs where we feel that the bird has been caught illegally or harmed in some way.

If you have photographs which you would like to include on the site, we ask you to complete a simple registration process which you can access by following the link above. You will be informed by email when your registration has been activated but this should normally be within 24 hours. After your registration has been confirmed, you will be able to upload your images. However, we are required to validate them before they are exhibited in public which gives us the opportunity to correct text and check the identification.

The hosting space is fairly limited so image files should be smaller than 100 kb in jpg format, and no wider or higher than 600 pixels (at a resolution of 72 dots per inch). Please try to put each species in its correct category. If images of a common species type or plumage already exist on AFBID, e.g. Laughing Dove, we suggest that you do not include too many repeats otherwise we will soon reach the hosting space limit. If you have an image of a species type or plumage not already represented such as female, male in non-breeding attire or a different subspecies, or shots of other interesting behaviour and nest activity, please do upload those.

You may also wish to use the comprehensive search facilities of AFBID which are all available on the home page. The quick species search allows the entry and search of free form text in English or French. For example, a search on sparrow or moineau will show all results from the database of the data string sparrow or moineau respectively. This quick species search is available on all AFBID pages for rapid use. In addition, a more comprehensive search capability is available on the home page only. This provides the capability for a user to search on family, species, country and combinations of these. Examples of searches using this capability are passeridae; passer griseus northern grey sparrow; any; passeridae; passer griseus northern grey sparrow; Tanzania; and passeridae; passer griseus northern grey sparrow; Tanzania and Kenya. These will show all images of Northern Grey Sparrow; all images of Northern Grey Sparrow in Tanzania and all images of Northern Grey Sparrow in Kenya and Tanzania respectively. The final search can be achieved by clicking on Kenya and then pressing the control key on your keyboard and clicking on Tanzania. Finally, the search any; any; Burkina Faso for example will show images of all species taken in Burkina Faso.

All images in this database have been provided by the photographers free-of-charge in furtherance of the aims of bird conservation in Africa. However, the photographers retain the copyright to their images. If you wish to use these photos for any purpose, you must obtain their permission first. In order to do this, click on photographers on the home page and then the first letter of the surname of the photographer. For example, you have seen a photograph taken by John Caddick and you would like his permission to use it. Click on ‘C’ and then ‘Caddick, John’. You will see John’s e-mail address as ‘john at caddick dot com’ written this way to deter spammers. Replace the at with @ and dot with . for the normal form of the address.

Bird Explorers have the final decision on the inclusion of images and the identification of species.

This is not a permanent archive and Bird Explorers reserve the right to delete older images from the database as newer and higher quality images become available.

AFBID was patterned originally on the Oriental Bird Images Database of the Oriental Bird Club (OBC) which covers East and South Asia and the Australasian Bird Image Database (ABID) which covers Australia and Oceania. Together these three databases cover over half of the world's bird biodiversity. We would like to thank the owners and originators of these excellent databases for providing the benchmark in quality to which we have aspired. .

The technical creator of all 3 databases is Avtar Singh of Web Development. We would all like to thank Avtar for his dedication, time and patience in putting this database together. We would also like to thank Phil Atkinson, Callan Cohen, Claire Spottiswoode and Tom Tarrant for their help and advice throughout the development process.

The technical work of development and maintenance has been carried out since mid 2008 by Duc Tran of Tran Corp Online based in Australia. Recent developments carried out by Duc Tran include the addition of French species names; the facility to add country at the time of adding a new image and the comprehensive search facilities described above.

Finally we would like to thank all the photographers, for without their contributions this site would not have been possible.

The management of AFBID will be undertaken by Kevin Vang and Wojciech Dabrowka of Bird Explorers and John Caddick of the African Bird Club. Please feel free to contact us on the above link if you have any questions or comments.

Latest page update 8th April 2009