About the Club

Mission Statement

The Carolina Bird Club is a non-profit organization that represents and supports the birding community in the Carolinas through its website, publications, meetings, workshops, trips, and partnerships, whose mission is


Join us — Join, Renew, Donate

The Carolina Bird Club, Inc., is a non-profit educational and scientific association open to anyone interested in the study and conservation of wildlife, particularly birds.

The Club meets each winter, spring, and fall at different locations in the Carolinas. Meeting sites are selected to give participants an opportunity to see many different kinds of birds. Guided field trips and informative programs are combined for an exciting weekend of meeting with people who share an enthusiasm and concern for birds.

The Club offers research grants in avian biology for undergraduate and graduate students, and scholarships for young birders.

The Club publishes two print publications (now also available online). The Chat is a quarterly ornithological journal that contains scientific articles, reports of bird records committees and bird counts, and general field notes on bird sightings. CBC Newsletter is published bimonthly and includes birding articles and information about meetings, field trips, and Club news.

The Club provides this website to all for free.

By becoming a member, you support the activities of the Club, receive reduced registration fee for meetings, can participate in bonus field trips, and receive our publications.

Join, Renew, or Donate now!


Other Resources (NOT sponsored by Carolina Bird Club)



Cumulative Index to The Chat

Indexing 46 years (so far), currently covering Volumes 35 (1971)–80 (2016)

Using the index

You can choose a section of the index to view by clicking on one of the letters or letter ranges in the navigation bar on the right, or you can load the full index as a single page—but beware that this is a several megabyte download.

The index entries each display a year and page number(s). They are color-coded into five categories: Articles, Briefs for the Files, General Field Notes, Reports, and all Others.

If you hover the mouse over an index entry, the title of the linked item is displayed in a tool-tip. If you click on an index entry, you open a PDF file containing an entire item (not just the referenced page), opened at the first page. (Note: Online files of The Chat from the two most recent volumes are for CBC members only and you will need to enter a username and password to open them.) Once the file is opened, scroll to the page you were looking for, or use search to find the term you were looking for. Some index entries have been edited and may not actually match the text. For example, some items indexed under Blue-headed Vireo actually contain the name Solitary Vireo.

About the index

This cumulative index was created by merging the annual indices from the covered volumes, with a limited amount of new indexing. I have edited some text for consistency of terminology across years, and in particular have updated most bird names to those currently in use. For volumes 66 and earlier  (2002 and earlier) the indices were scanned and converted to text via Optical Character Recognition. For volumes 67 and later (2003 and later) the indices were taken directly from the original document files.

There are many places where errors could creep into the creation of an index like this. If you find an error, please send me an email. There were four different editors of The Chat during the covered years, and indexing styles varied among them. Any thorough search of The Chat should also include other techniques such as perusing the Tables of Contents, and using Google search via the form below or on the various Index and Table of Contents pages.

History of the index in print

The first index to The Chat was prepared by Thomas Quay for Volumes 1–4 and published in January 1941. The first annual index was prepared for Volume 22 by Kay Sisson in 1958 and an annual index covering each individual volume was published every year through 2013.

In 1964, Eloise Potter, with assistance from Rhett Chamberlain, prepared a 28-page bound Index to The Chat for Volumes 1–25. Ms. Potter published a second 20-page bound Index to The Chat in 1977 covering Volumes 26–40.

Over the years, the size of the annual index grew. The index for Volume 77, published in 2013, was 20 pages long and included over 3,000 entries for 394 species of birds, 907 observers, and 507 locations.

With the advent of the digital age, the need for a printed index has diminished. With current and most past issues available online, and the availability of this online index, coupled with general web search capabilities, a printed index has become superfluous. The Executive Committee of the CBC has therefore voted to suspend the printing of an annual index to save the printing costs. From Volume 78 (2014) forward, the index will be only online.

Online indexing was continued through 2016 (volume 80). Subsequently we rely exclusively on web searching.

Kent Fiala

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