1888 in birding and ornithology

• Birds described in 1888 include bare-headed laughingthrush, Bolivian warbling finch, Borneo thrush, Damara red-billed hornbill, emperor bird-of-paradise, friendly bush warbler, Golden-backed weaver, Herald petrel, Jankowski's bunting, Palawan flycatcher, Somali bunting, Whitehead's broadbill,

• Joseph Jackson Lister serves as volunteer naturalist on the surveying voyage of HMS Egeria to the Indian Ocean.
• Death of Hermann von Rosenberg

• George Ernest Shelley On the Hornbills of the Ethiopian Region Ibis 1888: 47-70 online
• Richard Bowdler Sharpe Further Descriptions of new Species of Birds dkcovered by Mr. John Whitehead on the Mounts of Kina Balu, Northern Borneo Ibis 1888 :383-396
• Edward Bartlett "Monograph of the Weaver Birds (Ploceidae) and Arboreal and Terrestrial Finches " five parts published in 1888–89

Ongoing events

• Osbert Salvin and Frederick DuCane Godman 1879–1904. Biologia Centrali-Americana . Aves
• Richard Bowdler Sharpe Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum London,1874-98.
• Anton Reichenow, Jean Cabanis, and other members of the German Ornithologists' Society in Journal für Ornithologie online BHL
• Ornis; internationale Zeitschrift für die gesammte Ornithologie.Vienna 1885-1905online BHL
• The Auk online BHL
• The Ibis