Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Saddle-billed Stork
A tall, dramatically colored African stork with a huge black, red, and yellow bill and a yellow frontal shield resembling a saddle.
wading-bird
Spotted Sandpiper
A small, constantly bobbing sandpiper of North American shorelines, easily recognized in breeding plumage by the bold dark spots covering its white underparts.
shorebird
Shoebill
An enormous, prehistoric-looking wading bird of African swamps, famous for its massive shoe-shaped bill and statue-like patience while hunting.
wading-bird
Pied Butcherbird
A bold black-and-white songbird with a hooked bill, celebrated for one of the most beautiful and flute-like songs of any Australian bird.
songbird
Purple Martin
North America's largest swallow, a glossy blue-black aerial insectivore whose eastern population now nests almost entirely in birdhouses provided by people.
songbird
Royal Albatross
A huge white albatross of New Zealand waters, nearly the size of the Wandering Albatross, best known for the mainland colony at Taiaroa Head.
seabird
Sage Thrasher
The smallest thrasher and a sagebrush-obligate songster of the arid interior West, singing long warbling songs from atop shrubs.
songbird
Northern Mockingbird
A slender gray songbird famous for endlessly mimicking the songs and calls of other birds, with bold white wing patches visible in flight.
songbird
Siberian Crane
A critically endangered white crane that breeds on remote Russian Arctic tundra and undertakes one of the longest migrations of any crane to wintering wetlands in China.
wading-bird
Redhead
A round-headed diving duck whose drake has a rounded rusty-red head, gray body, and black breast, and which often nests parasitically in other ducks' nests.
waterfowl
Northern Wheatear
An upright, ground-loving songbird of open country, instantly recognizable in flight by its bold white rump and one of the longest migrations of any small songbird.
songbird
Ruddy Duck
A small, chunky stiff-tailed diving duck; breeding males show a chestnut body, black cap, white cheeks, and a bright blue bill.
waterfowl
Red Grouse
A reddish-brown grouse of British and Irish heather moorland, a distinctive subspecies of the Willow Ptarmigan found nowhere else.
gamebird
Red-breasted Sapsucker
A Pacific coast woodpecker with an entirely crimson-red head and breast that drills neat rows of sap wells in tree bark.
woodpecker
Red Wattlebird
A large, noisy honeyeater with streaky grey-brown plumage, a bright yellow belly patch, and a fleshy pinkish-red wattle hanging below the eye.
songbird
Pine Siskin
A small, heavily streaked brown finch with sharp yellow wing and tail markings, notorious for unpredictable winter irruptions.
songbird
Pionus Parrot
A stocky, short-tailed parrot genus from Central and South America, typified by the Blue-headed Parrot's cobalt-blue head and red undertail coverts.
parrot
Rock Pipit
A dark, streaky pipit found almost exclusively along rocky Atlantic and North Sea coastlines.
songbird
Red-backed Fairywren
The smallest fairywren, with breeding males a striking combination of jet black plumage and a vivid scarlet back patch.
songbird
Satin Bowerbird
A songbird best known for the male's glossy, satiny blue-black plumage, violet eyes, and elaborate stick bower decorated almost exclusively with blue objects to attract a mate.
songbird
Spotted Flycatcher
An unassuming grey-brown songbird best known for its habit of darting from an exposed perch to snap up flying insects and returning to the same spot.
songbird
Sun Conure
A vividly orange-and-yellow Neotropical parakeet of northeastern South America, prized for its striking sunset-colored plumage.
parrot
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
A plain brown swallow that nests in burrows in dirt banks, distinguished from other swallows by its uniform pale throat and lack of a breast band.
songbird
Orange-winged Amazon
A common and widespread Amazon parrot with a blue-and-yellow face and an orange patch visible in the wing during flight.
parrot
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
An elegant pale gray flycatcher with an extraordinarily long, deeply forked tail and salmon-pink flanks, a signature bird of Texas and Oklahoma grasslands.
songbird
Speckled Mousebird
The Speckled Mousebird is a common African bird with a long tail and soft grey-brown plumage that scurries through foliage in acrobatic little flocks, mouse-like.
other
Oak Titmouse
A plain gray-brown, crested songbird tightly tied to oak woodlands of California, notable for its lack of bold field marks.
songbird
Scaled Quail
A bluish-gray desert quail nicknamed "cottontop" for its bushy white crest, with feathers edged to create a distinctive scaly look.
gamebird
Southern Fiscal
A black-and-white shrike of southern Africa known for impaling prey on thorns and barbed wire as a food cache.
songbird
Pacific-slope Flycatcher
A yellowish-toned Empidonax flycatcher of shady Pacific coastal forests, nearly identical to the Cordilleran Flycatcher and best told apart by range and call.
songbird
Purple Honeycreeper
A small tanager relative whose male plumage is a deep, velvety purple set off by black wings and bright yellow legs.
songbird
Song Sparrow
A heavily streaked brown sparrow with a central breast spot, known for its rich, varied song from low perches.
songbird
Ruff
A striking, highly dimorphic sandpiper whose males grow ornate, colorful neck ruffs and head tufts for elaborate communal courtship displays at a lek.
shorebird
Rusty Blackbird
A boreal-breeding blackbird that turns rusty-edged in fall plumage, now one of the most steeply declining songbirds in North America.
songbird
Ring Ouzel
A blackbird of high, wild upland moors and crags, the male distinguished by a striking white crescent across the breast.
songbird
Ocellated Antbird
The largest and most dominant of the Neotropical ant-following antbirds, patterned with scaly chestnut-and-black "ocelli" and bare blue facial skin.
songbird
Northern Flicker
A large, brown, ground-foraging woodpecker with a bold black crescent bib and a flashing white rump patch visible when it flies.
woodpecker
Short-billed Dowitcher
A medium-large sandpiper with a long, straight bill and a distinctive rapid up-and-down probing action likened to a sewing machine, favoring coastal habitats.
shorebird
Pink-backed Pelican
A relatively small, drab greyish pelican of African wetlands, named for a subtle pink tinge on the back that is often difficult to see in the field.
seabird
Pacific Golden-Plover
A slender, long-legged golden-plover that migrates from Siberian and Alaskan tundra to a vast wintering range spanning Pacific islands, coastal Asia, and Australia.
shorebird
Red-naped Sapsucker
A western sapsucker closely resembling the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, distinguished by a red patch extending onto the nape, and closely tied to mountain aspen groves.
woodpecker
Ringneck Dove
A pale, gentle dove marked by a narrow black half-collar on its nape, long domesticated from wild African collared-dove stock and popular in aviculture.
other
Roseate Spoonbill
A vivid pink wading bird with an unmistakable spoon-shaped bill, often mistaken for a flamingo when glimpsed at a distance in coastal marshes.
wading-bird
Raggiana Bird-of-paradise
The national bird of Papua New Guinea, known for the male's spectacular fanned display of orange-red flank plumes.
songbird
Rufous Whistler
A grey-backed, rufous-breasted songbird whose loud, cheerful, far-carrying whistled song is a signature sound of Australian woodlands.
songbird
Slaty-tailed Trogon
A large lowland trogon with a plain slaty undertail, a red belly, and a bright yellow bill in the male.
other
Scaly-breasted Lorikeet
A small, mostly green lorikeet of eastern Australia named for the scalloped yellow "scaly" pattern across its breast.
parrot
Saffron Finch
A bright yellow, open-country finch-like tanager with an orange-tinged crown in males, common in parks, savanna, and grassland across South America.
songbird