Submission Guidelines

Bird Watcher’s Digest is a bimonthly (six issues a year), digest-sized magazine devoted to providing entertaining, informative, and engaging content to its readers and subscribers. Each issue of BWD reaches tens of thousands of people worldwide. It is the oldest popular magazine in North America for birders, founded in 1978 in the living room of the Thompson family of Marietta, Ohio. It is the only independently owned and operated wild-bird magazine in North America. It is also the only bird-watching magazine created by bird watchers, for bird watchers. Think you have something to contribute, such as artwork, a great story, or photography? Read on!

Guidelines for Artists

BWD is unique among birding periodicals for using illustrations, not photography, on the cover of each issue. The cover art, however, is the only art/illustration we use in the magazine. We do not commission new artwork and do not purchase art. We are deeply grateful that so many bird artists consider it to be an honor for their art to appear on the cover of Bird Watcher’s Digest.

Details here.

Guidelines for Photographers

Bird Watcher’s Digest has been publishing beautiful bird photography since 1978. Many of our photos come from freelance photographers. We use images to augment our magazine’s content, and rarely run standalone photos or photo galleries in print. We rarely, if ever, consider unsolicited photos for publication.

Details here.

Guidelines for Writers

Each issue of BWD comprises a wide array of interesting, informative, helpful, fun, and inspiring reading material aimed at bird watchers and birders at all levels of interest and ability.

Details here.

Featured Freebie
Tips for Easy Bird Identification
Tips for Easy Bird Identification
Identifying birds is at the very heart of bird watching. Each bird encountered is like a little puzzle or mystery to solve, because, while birds of a single species all share a certain set of physical traits, no two individual birds, like no two individual humans, are exactly alike.

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