Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Mountain Quail
The largest North American quail, known for its long, straight, dagger-like head plume and chestnut throat patch.
gamebird
Great Kiskadee
A big, boldly patterned flycatcher named for its loud 'kis-ka-dee' call, often seen near water snatching insects, small fish, and fruit.
songbird
Pinyon Jay
A short-tailed, uniformly blue, highly social corvid closely bound to pinyon pine woodlands, living in large flocks and caching tens of thousands of seeds each year.
songbird
Mexican Jay
A plain blue-and-gray jay of southwestern mountain oak woodlands that lives in cooperative family flocks year-round.
songbird
Gray Jay
A fluffy, gray-and-white boreal forest jay famous for its boldness around campers and hikers and its habit of storing food with sticky saliva for winter survival.
songbird
Common Eider
A large, heavy-bodied sea duck of northern coasts, breeding males are strikingly patterned in black and white with a pale green nape, while females are finely barred brown.
waterfowl
Hooded Merganser
A small, striking fish-eating duck with a large fan-shaped crest, breeding males show a bold black-and-white head patch that they can raise or flatten at will.
waterfowl
Red-cockaded Woodpecker
A rare, cooperatively breeding woodpecker that excavates its nest exclusively in living old-growth pines and depends on fire-maintained open forest.
woodpecker
Rock Pigeon
The familiar city pigeon, descended from wild cliff-dwelling birds of Eurasia and North Africa, now found in urban centers worldwide in a huge range of colors and patterns.
other
Mourning Dove
A slender, soft-brown dove with a long pointed tail, one of the most abundant and widespread birds in North America, known for its mournful cooing call.
other
Willow Ptarmigan
A tundra grouse that turns pure white in winter and rich rufous-brown in summer, the most widespread ptarmigan species and the official bird of Alaska.
gamebird
Lesser Prairie-Chicken
A small, pale prairie grouse of the southern Great Plains, closely related to the Greater Prairie-Chicken but adapted to drier shortgrass and shrub-steppe habitat.
gamebird
Sooty Grouse
A large, dark mountain grouse of the Pacific coast ranges, closely related to the Dusky Grouse and known for the male's deep hooting courtship display.
gamebird
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
A zebra-backed Texas woodpecker with a small patch of golden-orange on its nape, closely related to the Gila Woodpecker of the desert Southwest.
woodpecker
Williamson's Sapsucker
A western mountain woodpecker so strikingly different between the sexes that males and females were once thought to be separate species.
woodpecker
Red-naped Sapsucker
A western relative of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, distinguished by a red patch on the nape as well as the forehead, and closely tied to aspen forests.
woodpecker
White-winged Dove
A stocky desert dove with a bold white wing stripe visible even at rest, a key pollinator and seed disperser of saguaro cactus in the Sonoran Desert.
other
Eurasian Collared-Dove
A pale, sandy-gray dove with a thin black half-collar on the neck, native to Eurasia and now widely established across North America after a rapid range expansion.
other
Sharp-tailed Grouse
A grassland grouse with a pointed tail and a spring courtship dance featuring purple neck sacs, rapid foot-stamping, and rattling tail feathers.
gamebird
Ring-necked Pheasant
A large, long-tailed introduced pheasant whose iridescent copper-and-green males are a familiar sight in farm country.
gamebird
Spruce Grouse
A dark, tame grouse of northern conifer forests, nicknamed the 'fool hen' for its remarkable tolerance of close approach by people.
gamebird
Ruffed Grouse
A mottled brown forest grouse famous for the male's drumming display, a rapid low thumping made by beating the wings rather than any vocal sound.
gamebird
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher
The brightest and most yellow of the eastern Empidonax flycatchers, breeding in boggy boreal forest and giving a soft, plaintive whistled call.
songbird
Sage Grouse
The largest grouse in North America, an obligate sagebrush specialist famous for the male's booming lek display with inflated yellow air sacs.
gamebird
Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay
A duller, interior counterpart to the California Scrub-Jay, closely tied to pinyon-juniper woodland across the Great Basin and southern Rockies.
songbird
Greater Sage-Grouse
North America's largest grouse, an iconic sagebrush specialist known for the male's elaborate booming lek display with inflated yellow air sacs.
gamebird
Yellow-billed Magpie
A California endemic magpie found nowhere else on Earth, nearly identical to the Black-billed Magpie but with a distinctive yellow bill.
songbird
Red-bellied Woodpecker
A common eastern woodpecker with a zebra-striped back and a red cap or nape, whose faint reddish belly wash is rarely the easiest field mark to see.
woodpecker
Northern Flicker
A large, brown, ground-foraging woodpecker with a spotted breast and a white rump patch flashing bright yellow or red under the wings in flight.
woodpecker
Gunnison Sage-Grouse
A small, range-restricted sage-grouse endemic to sagebrush country around the Gunnison Basin, formally recognized as separate from the Greater Sage-Grouse in 2000.
gamebird
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
The only hummingbird that regularly breeds in eastern North America, with males showing a brilliant iridescent ruby-red throat that can flash black in poor light.
hummingbird
Rock Ptarmigan
A circumpolar tundra grouse of barren rocky ground, distinguished from the similar Willow Ptarmigan by the male's black eye-stripe in winter plumage.
gamebird
Black Vulture
A stocky, black scavenger with a bare gray head, short tail, and whitish wingtip patches, often seen in social groups.
raptor
Vaux's Swift
The western counterpart of the Chimney Swift, a tiny, cigar-shaped aerial bird that nests in hollow old-growth trees and large chimneys.
other
Gray Vireo
A plain, uniformly gray, tail-flicking vireo of arid pinyon-juniper and chaparral country in the desert Southwest.
songbird
Arizona Woodpecker
The only brown-backed woodpecker in the United States, found in the oak canyons of southeastern Arizona and named for its restricted U.S. range.
woodpecker
White-throated Swift
A fast, boldly black-and-white patterned swift of western cliffs and canyons, among the fastest fliers of any North American bird.
other
Black Swift
The largest North American swift, an all-dark bird that nests almost exclusively on cliff ledges behind or near waterfalls and in coastal sea caves.
other
Violet-green Swallow
A shimmering western swallow with an iridescent green back, violet rump, and white patches that nearly wrap around the face and flanks.
songbird
Bank Swallow
The smallest North American swallow, brown above and white below with a crisp brown breast band, nesting colonially in burrows dug into sandy banks.
songbird
Philadelphia Vireo
The smallest eastern vireo, with a yellow-washed underside and dark eye line, breeding in northern second-growth woodlands and often confused with Warbling Vireo and Tennessee Warbler.
songbird
Phainopepla
A slim, crested desert songbird; glossy jet-black males and soft gray females that depend heavily on mistletoe berries.
songbird
Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl
A tiny, reddish desert owl that hunts boldly by day and mobs prey much larger than itself.
owl
Great Gray Owl
North America's tallest owl, with an enormous facial disk marked by concentric rings that helps it hunt rodents hidden beneath snow.
owl
Long-billed Thrasher
A darker, longer-billed cousin of the Brown Thrasher found in dense brush of south Texas and northeastern Mexico.
songbird
Horned Lark
A ground-loving open-country songbird named for the tiny black feather tufts, or "horns," on its head.
songbird
White-eyed Vireo
A skulking thicket-dweller with a pale eye, yellow spectacles, and a sharp, variable song, more often heard than seen.
songbird
Cedar Waxwing
A sleek, crested, silky-brown songbird with a black mask and red waxy wingtip markings that travels in nomadic flocks following fruiting trees.
songbird