One of the most striking and persistent ways humans dominate Earth is by changing land-cover as we settle a region. Much of our ecological understanding about this process comes from studies of birds, yet the existing literature is scattered, dated, and rarely synthesized or standardized. The 27 contributions authored by leaders in the fields of avian and urban ecology present a summary of research on birds in settled environments ranging from wildlands to exurban, rural to urban. Ecologists, land managers, wildlife managers, evolutionary ecologists, urban planners, landscape architects, and conservation biologists should find this information useful as it addresses the conservation and evolutionary implications of urban life from an ecological and planning perspective.