Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
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
Gray Jay
A fluffy, tame boreal-forest jay, officially renamed Canada Jay, known for its curiosity around campsites and its habit of hoarding food year-round.
songbird
Cape May Warbler
A boldly patterned boreal warbler with a chestnut cheek patch and tiger-striped breast, whose populations boom and bust with spruce budworm outbreaks.
songbird
California Towhee
A plain, uniformly brown towhee with a rusty undertail, common in California backyards and known for its sharp metallic chip call.
songbird
MacGillivray's Warbler
The western counterpart of the Mourning Warbler, a gray-hooded skulker distinguished by bold broken white eye-crescents above and below the eye.
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
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
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
Blue Grosbeak
A stocky, deep-blue finch-like bird with rich chestnut wingbars and a heavy silver bill, favoring brushy fields across the southern and central United States.
songbird
Whiskered Screech-Owl
A small, gray, ear-tufted owl of southwestern oak canyons, best distinguished from the similar Western Screech-Owl by its distinctive irregular-rhythm song.
owl
Kentucky Warbler
A ground-loving, skulking warbler of southeastern forests, olive above and bright yellow below, with bold black "sideburns" framing yellow spectacles.
songbird
Dark-eyed Junco
A small, highly variable sparrow-relative often called a "snowbird," typically dark gray or brown above with a contrasting white belly and pink bill.
songbird
Louisiana Waterthrush
A large, thrush-like ground warbler tied closely to clear, fast-moving forest streams, constantly bobbing its tail as it walks along the water's edge.
songbird
Indigo Bunting
A small finch-like songbird whose breeding male appears brilliant all-over blue, produced entirely by feather structure rather than blue pigment.
songbird
Scaled Quail
A distinctive desert quail of the American Southwest, instantly recognized by its scaly gray plumage and prominent, white-tipped crest.
gamebird
Smith's Longspur
A warmly buff-colored longspur with an unusual multi-male mating system, wintering in a very restricted range of south-central US grasslands.
songbird
Red-bellied Woodpecker
A medium-sized eastern woodpecker with a black-and-white barred back and a red-capped head, whose faint pinkish belly wash is rarely visible in the field.
woodpecker
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.
songbird
Grace's Warbler
A gray-backed warbler of southwestern pine forests with a yellow throat and supercilium, resembling a smaller-scale Yellow-throated Warbler adapted to high pine canopy.
songbird
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
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
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
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
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