Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Blue-and-white Flycatcher
A vivid forest flycatcher; the male is deep blue above with a black face and throat and a clean white belly.
songbird
Common Crane
A tall grey crane widespread across Europe and Asia, known for its bold black-and-white head pattern, red crown patch, and loud bugling calls given during migration.
wading-bird
Common Myna
A brown-bodied, black-headed myna with bright yellow bill, legs, and bare eye patch, one of the world's most successful urban-adapted birds.
songbird
Clark's Nutcracker
A pale gray high-mountain corvid famous for caching tens of thousands of pine seeds each year and for its remarkable spatial memory.
songbird
Black-collared Hawk
A rufous wetland raptor with a pale head and a distinctive black band across the upper breast, specialized for hunting fish over open water.
raptor
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
Black-faced Spoonbill
One of the rarest spoonbills in the world, a white East Asian wading bird with a black spatulate bill that breeds on a handful of small islands off the Korean Peninsula.
wading-bird
Black-billed Cuckoo
A slim, elusive, all-dark-billed cuckoo of eastern thickets, distinguished from its yellow-billed relative by a red eye-ring and lack of rufous in the wing.
other
Ash-throated Flycatcher
A pale, dry-country flycatcher with a whitish-gray throat, soft yellow belly, and rufous tail, common in western deserts and scrub.
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
Black Crowned-Crane
A striking West and Central African crane with a golden crown of bristle feathers, a black neck, and bold red and white facial patches.
wading-bird
Black Swan
A large, entirely black-plumaged swan native to Australia, with a bright red bill and curly white wing feathers revealed in flight.
waterfowl
Cetti's Warbler
A dark, skulking, non-migratory warbler famous for its sudden, explosively loud burst of song erupting from deep within streamside cover.
songbird
Bushtit
A tiny, plain gray-brown songbird that travels in noisy, tumbling flocks and builds an elaborate hanging sock-like nest.
songbird
Black Guillemot
A small all-black auk with striking white wing patches and bright red legs and mouth lining, found along rocky North Atlantic coasts.
seabird
Cliff Swallow
A colonial swallow famous for building gourd-shaped mud nests in dense clusters under bridges, eaves, and cliffs.
songbird
Cassin's Finch
A rosy-crowned montane finch of western conifer forests, closely resembling the Purple Finch but with a more sharply contrasting cap.
songbird
Buff-bellied Hummingbird
A Gulf Coast hummingbird with a warm buffy belly, rufous tail, and a red bill tipped in black.
hummingbird
Bar-headed Goose
A pale gray goose famous for migrating at extreme altitudes over the Himalayas, marked by two black bars on the head.
waterfowl
Black-and-white Warbler
A strikingly striped black-and-white warbler that creeps along tree trunks and branches like a nuthatch, gleaning insects from bark.
songbird
Chestnut-breasted Mannikin
A small, gregarious Australasian finch with a chestnut breast band and black face, often seen feeding in flocks on grass seed heads.
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
Bat Falcon
A small, fast falcon with a black back, orange belly, and a habit of hunting bats and birds at dawn and dusk.
raptor
Bronzed Cowbird
A stocky blackbird with a distinctive ruff of neck feathers and striking red eyes that, like other cowbirds, lays its eggs in the nests of other birds.
songbird
Black-throated Blue Warbler
A strikingly two-toned warbler; males are deep slate-blue above and jet-black below with a white belly, while females are plain brownish-olive with a small white wing spot.
songbird
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
Barn Swallow
The most widespread swallow in the world, easily known by its deeply forked tail, steel-blue back, and rufous throat.
songbird
Blue-throated Mountain-gem
One of the largest North American hummingbirds, identified by its bold white facial stripes and broad white-cornered tail.
hummingbird
Common Tern
A widespread, medium-sized tern found across North America, Europe, and Asia, with a black cap, red-orange bill, and deeply forked tail typical of the group.
seabird
Common Buzzard
A broad-winged, soaring hawk of Europe and Asia with highly variable plumage, commonly seen circling over farmland and woodland edges.
raptor
Crested Barbet
A boldly spotted yellow, red, and black African barbet with a shaggy crest, best known for its long, monotonous trilling call.
other
Common Ringed Plover
A small Eurasian plover with a single black breast band and orange legs, closely resembling its American counterpart, the Semipalmated Plover.
shorebird
Crissal Thrasher
A secretive, unstreaked desert thrasher named for its chestnut undertail patch, usually detected by voice rather than sight.
songbird
Blue-winged Warbler
A bright yellow warbler with blue-gray wings, white wingbars, and a black eyeline, whose expanding range increasingly overlaps and hybridizes with the closely related Golden-winged Warbler.
songbird
Common Eider
A large, bulky sea duck of northern coasts, males boldly patterned black-and-white with a pale green nape and famous for their soft down.
waterfowl
Common Ground Dove
A tiny, scaly-breasted dove of the southeastern and southern US, small enough to be mistaken for a sparrow until it flushes and shows rufous flashes in the wings.
other
Black Kite
A widespread, adaptable brown raptor with a shallowly forked tail, often seen scavenging in large numbers near towns and water.
raptor
Asian Koel
A large, red-eyed cuckoo whose loud, rising 'ko-el' call announces the arrival of spring and summer across South Asian towns.
other
Brewer's Blackbird
A glossy, pale-eyed blackbird of open western habitats, common in parking lots, parks, and farmland, with a purple-and-green iridescent sheen.
songbird
Broad-tailed Hummingbird
A high-elevation hummingbird of the Rocky Mountains whose wings produce a distinctive cricket-like trill in flight.
hummingbird
Asian Brown Flycatcher
A plain, understated grey-brown flycatcher best identified by its upright posture, white eye-ring, and habit of sallying out after insects.
songbird
Common Merganser
A large, sleek fish-eating duck with a slender serrated bill, males strikingly clean white-bodied with a glossy dark green head.
waterfowl
Australasian Swamphen
A large, vividly deep-blue-and-purple waterbird with a red bill and frontal shield, often seen flicking its white tail as it walks.
wading-bird
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
A small, richly colored chickadee of Pacific coastal forests, with a warm chestnut back and flanks.
songbird
Atlantic Canary
A small, streaky yellow-green finch native to the Canary Islands, Azores, and Madeira, and the wild ancestor of the familiar Domestic Canary.
songbird
Curve-billed Thrasher
A common, noisy desert thrasher with a long downcurved bill and orange-red eyes, often seen atop cactus in the Southwest.
songbird
Common Pigeon
The familiar city pigeon, a highly adaptable descendant of the wild Rock Dove, seen worldwide in an enormous variety of plumage colors.
other
Australian White Ibis
A large white ibis with a bare black head, once a rural wetland bird, now an iconic and highly adaptable scavenger in Australian cities.
wading-bird