Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Eastern Towhee
A striking sparrow relative with a black hood, rufous flanks, and white belly, known for its 'drink-your-tea' song and rustling leaf-litter foraging.
songbird
Vesper Sparrow
A streaky grassland sparrow with a white eye-ring, chestnut shoulder patch, and white outer tail feathers, named for its evening song.
songbird
Pine Siskin
A small, heavily streaked brown finch with sharp yellow wing and tail markings, notorious for unpredictable winter irruptions.
songbird
Cedar Waxwing
A sleek, crested, silky-brown songbird with a yellow-tipped tail and waxy red wingtips that travels in nomadic flocks following fruit crops.
songbird
Common Grackle
A large, iridescent blackbird with a long keel-shaped tail and pale yellow eyes, common across eastern and central North America.
songbird
Nelson's Sparrow
A secretive marsh sparrow with an orange face triangle and soft, blurry streaking, breeding in both interior prairie marshes and coastal salt marsh.
songbird
American Tree Sparrow
A rusty-capped sparrow with a bicolored bill and a dark central breast spot, a true winter visitor to much of North America despite its name.
songbird
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
A tiny, plain-faced olive-gray songbird with a bold white eye-ring and a surprisingly loud, rollicking song from a normally hidden red crown.
songbird
Magnolia Warbler
A boldly patterned warbler with a black-streaked yellow breast and a distinctive black-and-white tail band, best identified from below in flight.
songbird
Black-throated Green Warbler
A bright yellow-faced warbler with an olive-green back and a black throat and bib on breeding males, common in northern conifer and hemlock forests.
songbird
Lesser Scaup
A small to medium-sized diving duck with a distinctive peaked crown, commonly seen in massive wintering rafts on inland lakes and bays.
waterfowl
Lucifer Hummingbird
A striking desert hummingbird known for the male's brilliant magenta-purple gorget, deeply forked tail, and distinctly curved bill.
hummingbird
Eurasian Wigeon
A medium-sized dabbling duck recognized by the male's striking chestnut head, cream-colored crown, and diagnostic whistling call.
waterfowl
Blue-throated Mountain-gem
One of North America's largest hummingbirds, renowned for its brilliant blue throat, bold facial stripes, and loud, squeaky calls.
hummingbird
Hermit Warbler
A plain-faced, bright yellow-headed warbler of Pacific mountain conifer forests, with a black throat and gray, unstreaked back, that hybridizes with the closely related Townsend's Warbler.
songbird
Plumbeous Vireo
The grayest member of the former 'Solitary Vireo' complex, an interior western species of pine-oak forest with white spectacles and no olive or yellow tones.
songbird
Hutton's Vireo
A plain, year-round resident vireo of western oak woodlands, easily confused with the Ruby-crowned Kinglet, with a broken white eye-ring and two wing bars.
songbird
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.
songbird
Common Ground Dove
North America's smallest dove, a tiny, scaly-patterned bird of the southern states that scurries on the ground and flashes rufous in its wings when it flies.
other
Red-breasted Merganser
A slender, crested fish-eating duck with a thin serrated bill, breeding males show a shaggy dark green head, white collar, and rusty streaked breast.
waterfowl
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
Greater Prairie-Chicken
A heavily barred prairie grouse famous for the male's booming courtship display with orange air sacs and long neck pinnae feathers.
gamebird
Cassin's Kingbird
A chunky gray-headed flycatcher of southwestern oak country, best told from the similar Western Kingbird by its darker chest and raspy voice.
songbird
Lapland Longspur
A circumpolar Arctic breeder that winters in large flocks across open fields, with striking black-faced breeding males and rusty-naped winter birds.
songbird