Ornithological research classified as topographic shared certain characteristics, including location type descriptions, full species lists of breeding birds for each location type, and usually at least a relative estimate of each species' abundance. Bird topographic research was inspired by the Finnish plant topographers, most notably J. P. Norrlin, and was presented as an explicit research programme by J. A. Palman in 1885. We investigated the structure of and concepts used by 30 bird topographic studies published before 1930. The first clearly bird topographic study was published in 1886 (C. Brander), and since the 1920s topographic studies were gradually replaced by modern-type quantitative bird censuses. Terminology used in topographic studies varied. A commonly used concept was standort. In our material, the term "biotope" was first used in 1928. The term "topography" was occasionally used by Finnish ornithologists until the 1960s. The topographic approach improved the quality of faunistic reports, inspired later quantitative field censuses of birds, and even contributed to the study of habitat selection by birds.