In China, urban ornithological research started as early as the 1980s and developed rapidly with the fast urbanization process. In order to better understand the history and recent trends of urban ornithological research in China, we conducted a systematic review. We used the key words of "urban" and "birds" to search for scientific articles published during 1950-2015 in the "China National Knowledge Infrastructure" database and retrieved 128 articles. Based on our review, we summarized the history and recent trends in publication, main research topics and major findings in urban ornithology studies. The urban ornithology publications increased from an annual average of 0.7 ariticle during 1981-1990 to 11.6 articles during 2011-2015. The research areas include 57 cities located in 29 provinces. The topic of urban ornithology studies includes research of urban avian community structure and distribution, effect of environment factors on urban birds, and practices of urban avian conservation. Major findings include:(1) the urban-rural gradient and different habitat groups would affect avian community structure;(2) environmental factors at different scales had a variety of effects on distribution, breeding, feeding, and physiological conditions of urban birds; and(3) habitat conservation in urban areas and bird attracting measurements, such as setting feeders, contributed to urban avian conservation. However, limited by resources long-term study on urban avian is rare. In addition, very few of studies examined the ecosystem services provided by avian fauna in the urban context. In the future, we suggest researchers pay more attention to(1) the ecological effect of the bird attracting measures,(2)the value of natural experience and environmental education brought by the urban avian fauna, and work with birdwatchers to design long-term urban avian researches.