Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
White Wagtail
A slim, long-tailed black, white, and grey bird, constantly wagging its tail as it darts about open ground catching insects, equally at home in farmland or city centres.
songbird
Southern Ground Hornbill
A large, mostly ground-dwelling African hornbill with black plumage, vivid red facial skin, and deep, booming dawn calls, walking savannas in tight-knit family groups.
other
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
Ring-billed Gull
A medium-sized, highly adaptable gull common far from the coast, easily told from larger gulls by its yellow legs and the black ring encircling its bill.
seabird
Stitchbird
A small, striking New Zealand honeyeater-like bird, the male boldly patterned in black, yellow, and white, now surviving only on predator-free islands and in reintroduced mainland sanctuaries.
songbird
Tufted Duck
A compact Eurasian diving duck with a drooping head tuft, the drake strikingly patterned in black and white and occasionally found among scaup flocks in North America.
waterfowl
Western Tanager
A vivid yellow-and-black tanager of western coniferous forests, with breeding males showing a striking orange-red head produced from a diet-derived pigment.
songbird
Wattled Jacana
A chestnut-and-black marsh bird with extraordinarily long toes that let it walk across floating lily pads, notable for its role-reversed breeding system.
wading-bird
Snowy Egret
A small, brilliant white egret of the Americas known for its black bill and legs paired with striking bright yellow feet, nicknamed its 'golden slippers.'
wading-bird
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
Sandwich Tern
A slender, crested tern easily told from relatives by its long black bill with a distinctive yellow tip, named for the English town of Sandwich, Kent.
seabird
Pied Wagtail
The black-backed British and Irish form of the White Wagtail, a familiar sight bobbing its long tail across car parks, farmyards, and riverside paths.
songbird
Sunbittern
A cryptically patterned streamside bird that, when it spreads its wings, reveals stunning chestnut, black, and white "sunburst" eye-spots used in dramatic display.
wading-bird
Java Sparrow
A sleek grey-and-white estrildid finch with a bold black head, white cheek patch, and a large pink bill, native to Indonesia and widely introduced elsewhere.
songbird
Gull-billed Tern
A stocky, gull-billed tern with a stout black bill, pale plumage, and an unusual habit of hawking insects over dry land far from water.
seabird
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
D'Arnaud's Barbet
An East African ground barbet with black-and-white speckled plumage, a yellow face, and a bubbling duet call, often seen bobbing near termite mounds.
other
Pelagic Cormorant
A slim, iridescent black-green cormorant of rugged North Pacific coastlines, showing a thin bill and small head crests in breeding plumage, nesting precariously on narrow sea cliff ledges.
seabird
Montezuma Oropendola
A large Central American icterid with a chestnut body, black head, orange-tipped bill, and bare blue-and-pink facial skin, known for colonial hanging nests and loud gurgling calls.
songbird
Worm-eating Warbler
A plain buffy warbler with bold black head stripes, best known for its habit of probing curled dead leaves for caterpillars rather than eating earthworms.
songbird
Variegated Fairywren
A small, colorful fairywren whose breeding males combine blue, black, and a bright chestnut shoulder patch, found widely across mainland Australia's scrub and woodland.
songbird
Whooping Crane
North America's tallest bird, a rare, snow-white crane with black wingtips that has become a flagship symbol of wildlife conservation after nearly going extinct.
wading-bird
Waxwing
A crested, silky pinkish-grey bird with a black mask, yellow-tipped tail, and waxy red wingtips, best known for irruptive winter berry-feasting flocks.
songbird
Sooty Tern
A truly pelagic tern with sooty black-brown upperparts and crisp white underparts that spends most of its life on the wing far out over tropical seas.
seabird