Join the FLOCK at Oregon State University!
Imagine going to college to study what you REALLY love: birds!
Whether you consider yourself a birder or simply love to watch birds live their lives, you can earn your Bachelor’s degree at OSU, get the best training in ornithology, and prepare yourself for a career working with birds.
We focus on what makes studying birds so great: experiential learning by hands-on, in-the-field and in-the-lab, active learning opportunities.
What makes OSU the best place to study birds?
We have more PhD-level ornithologists than nearly anyplace in the country, which means lots of internship opportunities focused on a wide variety of amazing species and in a diverse array of places (from Oregon to Alaska to the Antarctic to tropical rainforests).
Students can take bird classes EVERY year they are at college. We offer more bird classes than anywhere, including Ornithology, Systematics of Birds, Avian Conservation and Management, Bird Banding, Ecology of Marine and Estuarine Birds, and Introduction to Marine Mammals and Birds. And more new classes are on the way!
OSU has a great ornithology and birding community!
We have active undergraduate clubs, the OSU Bird Nerds and the Fish and Wildlife Club, that seem to have field trips nearly every week.
Plus, the Corvallis area has a very active eBirding community, so there is always someone to talk birds or go birding with.
Our home county, Benton, is one of the top eBirding counties in the entire country with over 100,000 eBird checklists contributed and 330 species reported. Oregon has 8 major biomes from ocean (just 50 minutes drive from Corvallis) to sagebrush desert and everything in between, which supports more than 535 species of birds.
Are you a nerd for birds? So are we.
OSU Bird Nerds is a student-run ornithological club at OSU. Our mission is to provide OSU students with an opportunity to learn more about the amazing world of birds through bird-related activities, resumé-building experiences, speakers from the ornithological community, species identification workshops, and field trips, and to share the knowledge gained from these activities with the Corvallis birding community through volunteer, education, and conservation involvement.
Have questions about the flock?
Contact our director!
Professor Douglas Robinson // douglas.robinson@oregonstate.edu