diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index b93f280..3c78b6b 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -7,3 +7,11 @@ A reimplementation of [auk](https://github.com/CornellLabofOrnithology/auk) in P
 Note that this is *not* a direct port: aukpy does not use `awk` to access data. Instead it provides a similar API, but uses sqlite to index and query the dataset.
 
 For detailed usage, [see the full documentation](https://aukpy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)
+
+## Usage
+To load and filter a set of eBird observations stored in `observations.txt`:
+```
+from aukpy import db, queries
+db_conn = db.build_db_pandas('observations.txt')
+df = queries.species('Sturnus vulgaris').run(db_conn)
+```