Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Blue-winged Teal
A small, long-distance migrant dabbling duck whose drake shows a bold white crescent before the eye and a powder-blue wing patch in flight.
waterfowl
Bateleur
A distinctive short-tailed African eagle famous for its rocking, tightrope-walker flight and vivid red face and legs.
raptor
Australasian Gannet
A large white seabird with black wingtips and black central tail feathers that nests in dense colonies around Australia and New Zealand.
seabird
Common Teal
The smallest common dabbling duck of Eurasia, with breeding males showing a chestnut head and an iridescent green eye patch.
waterfowl
Black-necked Swan
A striking South American swan with a snow-white body, jet-black head and neck, and a bright red knob at the base of its bill.
waterfowl
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
Black Tern
A small, buoyant marsh tern that turns almost entirely sooty black in breeding plumage and feeds by dipping to the water surface rather than plunge-diving.
seabird
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-headed Grosbeak
The western counterpart to the Rose-breasted Grosbeak, with males showing warm cinnamon-orange underparts and a bold black-and-white patterned head.
songbird
Broad-tailed Hummingbird
A high-elevation hummingbird of the Rocky Mountains whose wings produce a distinctive cricket-like trill in flight.
hummingbird
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
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
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
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
Crissal Thrasher
A secretive, unstreaked desert thrasher named for its chestnut undertail patch, usually detected by voice rather than sight.
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
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
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
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
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
Cape Glossy Starling
A stocky southern African starling whose plumage shimmers with brilliant iridescent blue-green in the sun.
songbird
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
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
A small, richly colored chickadee of Pacific coastal forests, with a warm chestnut back and flanks.
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
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
Barn Swallow
The most widespread swallow in the world, easily known by its deeply forked tail, steel-blue back, and rufous throat.
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 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
Blue-throated Mountain-gem
One of the largest North American hummingbirds, identified by its bold white facial stripes and broad white-cornered tail.
hummingbird
Crested Tit
A distinctive small tit with a spiky black-and-white speckled crest, closely tied to mature coniferous forest.
songbird
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
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
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
Black Kite
A widespread, adaptable brown raptor with a shallowly forked tail, often seen scavenging in large numbers near towns and water.
raptor
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
Budgerigar
A small, nomadic Australian parrot; the wild form is bright green and yellow with fine black scalloping across the back and wings.
parrot
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
Bushtit
A tiny, plain gray-brown songbird that travels in noisy, tumbling flocks and builds an elaborate hanging sock-like nest.
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
Buff-bellied Hummingbird
A Gulf Coast hummingbird with a warm buffy belly, rufous tail, and a red bill tipped in black.
hummingbird
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
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
Black Grouse
A dramatic grouse famous for its communal spring "lek" displays, males glossy blue-black with a lyre-shaped tail, females mottled brown.
gamebird
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
Crowned Eagle
A powerful African forest eagle with short, rounded wings for maneuvering below the canopy, the Crowned Eagle is considered pound-for-pound one of the continent's most formidable raptors and a leading predator of monkeys.
raptor
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
Cliff Swallow
A colonial swallow famous for building gourd-shaped mud nests in dense clusters under bridges, eaves, and cliffs.
songbird