Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Meadow Pipit
A streaky, unassuming ground bird of open moorland and grassland, often first noticed by its rising, parachuting song-flight or its thin call as it flushes underfoot.
songbird
Lesser Scaup
North America's most abundant diving duck, closely resembling the Greater Scaup but with a peaked crown and a purplish (rather than greenish) head gloss.
waterfowl
Laysan Albatross
A gull-like white albatross of the North Pacific, best known for its enormous breeding colonies on Midway Atoll and other low-lying Hawaiian islands.
seabird
Hepatic Tanager
A dusky, brick-red tanager of southwestern mountain pine-oak forests, named for a rich red color reminiscent of liver tissue, with a distinctive dark gray cheek patch.
songbird
Marbled Godwit
A large, cinnamon-buff shorebird with a long, slightly upturned bicolored bill, breeding on North American prairie wetlands and wintering along coasts.
shorebird
Great Blue Heron
North America's largest and most widespread heron, a tall blue-grey wading bird often seen standing motionless at the water's edge waiting to strike prey.
wading-bird
McCown's Longspur
A thick-billed prairie longspur historically named for a 19th-century army officer; in 2020 the American Ornithological Society officially renamed the species Thick-billed Longspur.
songbird
Little Bunting
A diminutive, chestnut-faced bunting of the far northern taiga, a scarce but regular vagrant to western Europe outside its core Siberian and Asian range.
songbird
Eurasian Wigeon
A Eurasian dabbling duck with a rich chestnut head and creamy forehead, an uncommon but regular visitor to North American coasts among flocks of American Wigeon.
waterfowl
Dickcissel
A grassland songbird resembling a small meadowlark, with breeding males showing a yellow breast, black bib, and a name derived from its buzzy, insect-like song.
songbird
Apostlebird
A dusty grey, ground-foraging Australian bird famous for moving through open woodland in noisy, cooperative family groups traditionally said to number around twelve.
songbird
Bicknell's Thrush
A rare, high-elevation thrush of northeastern mountaintop spruce forests, nearly identical to Gray-cheeked Thrush but with a much smaller, more threatened range.
songbird
Anna's Hummingbird
A common, non-migratory West Coast hummingbird whose males flash an iridescent rose-pink crown and throat and perform a spectacular, chirping high-speed dive display.
hummingbirdCongo Peafowl
A secretive rainforest pheasant endemic to the Congo Basin, notable as the only peafowl species native to Africa and for lacking the elaborate train of its Asian relatives.
gamebird
Wilson's Snipe
A stocky, cryptically patterned North American marsh bird with an extremely long bill, best known for the eerie winnowing sound males make during display flights.
shorebird
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
Yellow-throated Warbler
A gray-backed warbler with a bright yellow throat and bold black-and-white face pattern, well adapted for creeping along bark and probing pine needle clusters and Spanish moss.
songbird
Wood Duck
Widely considered one of the most strikingly colorful ducks in North America, the male wears an iridescent green-and-purple crest, chestnut breast, and bold white facial markings.
waterfowl
Prairie Warbler
A bright yellow, tail-wagging warbler of shrubby old fields and scrub, with bold black facial markings and chestnut streaking on the back despite its misleading name.
songbird
Glaucous-winged Gull
A large, pale gull of the Pacific Northwest coast whose wingtips blend almost seamlessly with its gray mantle, and which frequently hybridizes with the darker Western Gull.
seabird
Dartford Warbler
A small, dark, long-tailed warbler of gorse-covered heathland, notable for its deep wine-red underparts and its unusual habit of staying put year-round rather than migrating.
songbird
Crested Oropendola
A large, glossy black icterid with a chestnut rump, yellow outer tail feathers, and pale blue eyes, famous for its colonial hanging nests and gurgling display song.
songbird
Black Rosy-Finch
The darkest of the three rosy-finches, breeding only in a narrow band of high central Rocky Mountain peaks and considered especially vulnerable to a warming climate.
songbird
Altamira Oriole
The largest oriole in the United States, a bright orange bird found only in the Rio Grande Valley of extreme south Texas, famous for weaving the longest hanging nest of any North American bird.
songbird