Functional traits database for North American birds

Estimation of functional diversity in biological communities requires extensive and complete data on numerous functional traits of species or even individuals. When estimating functional diversity at large scales, this fact possesses an issue that may be hard to overcome: for many species, there might not be sufficient data on their functional traits. In such cases, even if there is missing information on functional trait value for one species in a community, this makes the trait impossible to use for the estimation of the functional diversity of a community. On the other hand, there are available datasets on the functional traits of all extant species within certain lineages across the world, but such datasets are often limited to very few functional traits, missing some dimensions of species' ecological niches. In this dataset, I compiled the available data from various sources that describe 23 functional traits of 703 bird species that occur in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. These functional traits include the following: diet type, diurnal and nocturnal feeding, diet items, feeding methods, feeding substrate, nest type, nest substrates, breeding system, chick development at hatching, nest aggregation, clutch size, first breeding age, number of clutches a year, breeding success, adult annual survival, mean biomass, maximum lifespan, hand-wing index, kleptoparasitism, nest parasitism, and the extent of dependency on other species for building a nest.