Every Bird Species in North America in a Single Poster

The infographic whiz kids at Pop Chart Lab love to shove as much visual information as humanly possible into a single image, so it’s only natural they chose to map out an entire class of animals for their latest graphic. Following up on last month’s butterfly compendium, they’ve gone even deeper into naturalist illustrations with their Birds of North America poster. 

In what the prolific designers describe as their “most ambitious taxonomical undertaking yet,” the poster is an exhaustive field guide to every bird species found on the North American continent—all 730 of them, some indigenous to the continent and some introduced,* drawn to scale. The poster is largely of birds that currently live in North America, but also includes one extinct species, the Carolina parakeet, which was exterminated by the 1920s.

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The grand ornithological undertaking took 400 hours of illustration time. The birds are sorted by species and family, grouping together starlings with starlings, owls with owls, and sparrows with sparrows. Learn to identify every diurnal bird of prey in North America, or admire how many different types of gulls the continent is home to. 

If you’ve got a bird lover in your life, copies of the poster are $38.

All images courtesy of Pop Chart Lab*Pop Chart Lab originally listed this poster as depicting birds native to North America, but as some readers have pointed out, a few of the birds shown are not indigenous, but introduced to the continent. We have reached out to the company about the issue. Thanks to Martha Harbison for the tip.