Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
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.
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Mexican Jay
A plain blue-and-gray jay of southwestern mountain oak woodlands that lives in cooperative family flocks year-round.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
Gray Vireo
A plain, uniformly gray, tail-flicking vireo of arid pinyon-juniper and chaparral country in the desert Southwest.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Phainopepla
A slim, crested desert songbird; glossy jet-black males and soft gray females that depend heavily on mistletoe berries.
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Long-billed Thrasher
A darker, longer-billed cousin of the Brown Thrasher found in dense brush of south Texas and northeastern Mexico.
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Horned Lark
A ground-loving open-country songbird named for the tiny black feather tufts, or "horns," on its head.
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White-eyed Vireo
A skulking thicket-dweller with a pale eye, yellow spectacles, and a sharp, variable song, more often heard than seen.
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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.
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Black-headed Grosbeak
The western counterpart to the Rose-breasted Grosbeak, with males showing warm cinnamon-orange underparts and a bold black-and-white patterned head.
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Varied Bunting
A desert bunting whose male appears deep purple-blue with a rosy nape patch in good light, but nearly black in shade, found in thorny borderland scrub.
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Couch's Kingbird
A south Texas specialty nearly indistinguishable from Tropical Kingbird in plumage, but recognized by its distinctive burry 'breeer' call.
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Painted Bunting
Often called the most colorful bird in North America, the male Painted Bunting displays an almost impossibly vivid patchwork of blue, green, and red.
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Cassin's Vireo
A western vireo with a subdued gray-green head, white spectacles, and pale yellow flanks, once lumped with Blue-headed and Plumbeous Vireo as the 'Solitary Vireo.'
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Canada Jay
A fluffy, gray-and-white boreal forest jay, officially the current name for the bird long known as the Gray Jay, beloved for its tameness and food-caching habits.
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Colima Warbler
A plain gray-brown warbler famous for breeding in the US only in the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend National Park.
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Florida Scrub-Jay
A crestless blue-and-gray jay found nowhere in the world except Florida's rapidly shrinking scrub-oak habitat.
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Green Jay
A dazzlingly colored jay of south Texas brushlands with a green back, sky-blue head markings, and lemon-yellow outer tail feathers.
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Scarlet Tanager
A brilliant scarlet-and-black canopy songbird of mature eastern forests, whose vivid breeding male molts into olive-yellow plumage for the winter.
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Yellow-throated Vireo
A canopy-dwelling eastern vireo with a bright yellow throat and spectacles, olive back, and a slow, burry song.
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Summer Tanager
The only entirely red bird in North America, the Summer Tanager male is a rosy-red songbird known for specializing in catching and de-stinging bees and wasps.
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Chihuahuan Raven
A desert grassland raven smaller than the Common Raven, named for hidden white feather bases at the base of its neck feathers.
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Warbling Vireo
A plain, nondescript gray-olive vireo best known for its rich, husky, warbled song delivered from high in deciduous trees.
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Northwestern Crow
A small, coastal crow of the Pacific Northwest, closely tied to shorelines where it forages on shellfish and other intertidal food.
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Blue-headed Vireo
A crisply marked eastern vireo with a blue-gray head, bold white spectacles, and a slow, sweet, warbling song.
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Red-eyed Vireo
A tireless singer of eastern and northern forests, nicknamed the 'preacher bird' for its endless repeated phrases, with a gray cap, white eyebrow, and red eye.
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Brown-crested Flycatcher
The largest of the North American Myiarchus flycatchers, a bushy-crested, cavity-nesting bird of desert washes and saguaro country with a rolling 'whit-will-do' call.
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Fish Crow
A smaller coastal cousin of the American Crow, best distinguished by its distinctive nasal, two-note call.
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Black-billed Magpie
A strikingly patterned black-and-white corvid with an extremely long tail, common across open rangeland of the western interior.
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Steller's Jay
A bold, crested, deep blue-and-black jay of western conifer forests, often the loud, curious visitor at mountain campgrounds and feeders.
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American Crow
A highly intelligent, all-black, adaptable corvid found nearly continent-wide, known for its problem-solving skills and complex social behavior.
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Pine Grosbeak
A large, tame finch of northern forests, with rosy-red males and mustard-yellow females that travel in loose flocks feeding on buds and berries.
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Cordilleran Flycatcher
A yellowish interior-mountain flycatcher virtually identical to the Pacific-slope Flycatcher, found in shaded coniferous canyons of the Rockies and Great Basin.
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Clark's Nutcracker
A pale gray mountain corvid with an extraordinary memory, capable of relocating tens of thousands of cached pine seeds months later, playing a crucial role in western pine forest regeneration.
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Hammond's Flycatcher
A small, grayish Empidonax flycatcher of mature western conifer forests, often foraging high in the canopy and best identified by voice.
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Brown-capped Rosy-Finch
A pink-tinged finch of the highest Rocky Mountain peaks, with an entirely brown head lacking the gray patches of its rosy-finch relatives.
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Thick-billed Longspur
A stocky, heavy-billed shortgrass prairie longspur, the current official name (since 2020) for the species formerly called McCown's Longspur.
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Brewer's Blackbird
A glossy, pale-eyed blackbird of open western habitats, common in parking lots, parks, and farmland, with a purple-and-green iridescent sheen.
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Black-capped Vireo
A small vireo of Texas oak scrub with a glossy black cap, bold white spectacles, and a red eye, a conservation success story after habitat restoration and cowbird control.
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Cassin's Finch
A rosy-headed finch of high western forests, closely resembling Purple and House Finch but with a more sharply defined red crown.
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Cave Swallow
A cliff-swallow relative with a buffy forehead and throat that nests colonially under bridges and in caves and culverts across the southern US and Caribbean.
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