Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Blackpoll Warbler
A boreal-breeding warbler famous for its extraordinary nonstop transoceanic migration flight from the northeastern U.S. to South America.
songbird
Chimney Swift
A dark, cigar-shaped aerial bird that nests almost exclusively in chimneys across eastern North America, spending nearly its entire life on the wing.
other
Bufflehead
North America's smallest diving duck, the compact drake striking with a large white patch wrapping around an iridescent black-and-purple head.
waterfowl
Buff-banded Rail
A boldly barred, secretive rail with a chestnut nape and buff breast band, found skulking in wetland vegetation across Australia and the Pacific.
wading-bird
Bohemian Waxwing
A sleek, crested, silky-plumaged bird of the northern boreal forest that erupts south in unpredictable, nomadic winter flocks to feast on berries.
songbird
Clay-colored Sparrow
A pale, delicately patterned sparrow with a gray nape and brown-streaked crown, giving its distinctive buzzy insect-like song from prairie shrubs.
songbird
Australian Brushturkey
A large, black-bodied mound-building bird with a bare red head and neck and a yellow throat wattle, well known for the huge leaf-litter mounds it builds to incubate its eggs.
gamebird
Chestnut-headed Oropendola
A colonial-nesting blackbird relative with a rich chestnut head and pale-tipped bill, famous for its long, hanging, woven nests dangling from tall trees.
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
African Jacana
The African Jacana is a striking wetland bird famed for its enormous toes that let it walk across floating lily pads, earning it the nickname "lily-trotter."
shorebird
American Wigeon
A round-headed dabbling duck nicknamed 'baldpate' for the male's creamy white forehead crown that contrasts with an iridescent green eye patch.
waterfowl
Cattle Egret
A stocky, short-necked white egret closely associated with grazing livestock, whose remarkable natural range expansion made it one of the most successful bird colonizations in modern history.
wading-bird
Pyrrhuloxia
A close desert relative of the Northern Cardinal, gray overall with red highlights and a stubby, parrot-like yellow bill, common in arid brushland of the Southwest.
songbird
White Stork
The iconic white-and-black European stork with a long red bill and legs, famous for nesting on rooftops and chimneys and for its folklore association with delivering babies.
wading-bird
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
Village Weaver
A widespread, noisy African weaver whose breeding males show a black hood, a mottled black-and-yellow back, and red eyes, best known for large, busy nesting colonies.
songbird
Red-headed Woodpecker
A striking, boldly patterned woodpecker with an entirely crimson head and a strongly contrasting black-and-white body, now declining across much of its range.
woodpecker
Tropical Kingbird
A common, widespread tropical flycatcher with a gray head, olive back, lemon-yellow belly, and a rapid twittering call, nearly identical to Couch's Kingbird.
songbird
Pileated Woodpecker
North America's largest common woodpecker, a crow-sized, mostly black bird with a flaming red crest, famous for excavating large rectangular holes in dead trees.
woodpecker
Ornate Hawk-Eagle
A powerful, crested forest eagle with a striking black-and-rufous head pattern and boldly barred underparts, a top predator of the Neotropical canopy.
raptor
Red-crowned Crane
A rare, exceptionally elegant East Asian crane with mostly white plumage, a black neck, and a small patch of bare red skin on the crown, revered as a symbol of luck and longevity.
wading-bird
Southern Giant Petrel
A massive, bulky Southern Ocean petrel with a huge pale bill, often seen scavenging carcasses on subantarctic beaches, earning it the nickname "stinker."
seabird
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
Sun Parakeet
A dazzling small parakeet clothed in vivid golden-yellow and orange, with green and blue flight feathers, now endangered in the wild due to trapping for the pet trade.
parrot