Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Montezuma Quail
A round, secretive southwestern quail with a bold black-and-white harlequin facial pattern that renders it nearly invisible in grass.
gamebird
Guianan Toucanet
A small toucan of the Guiana Shield forests, with males showing a black head and a mostly greenish bill, and females bearing a rich chestnut cap.
other
Marsh Wren
A small, energetic wren of cattail marshes, known for its loud, gurgling song and the male's habit of building multiple decoy nests.
songbird
Narcissus Flycatcher
A small, brilliantly colored flycatcher; the male combines black upperparts with a vivid yellow-orange throat, breast, and rump.
songbird
Harlequin Duck
A small, compact sea duck with intricately patterned slate-blue, chestnut, and white plumage, at home in whitewater rivers and pounding surf.
waterfowl
Mexican Chickadee
A high-elevation Mexican chickadee that barely reaches the United States in the mountains of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
songbird
Green Heron
A small, stocky, secretive heron with a dark greenish back, chestnut neck, and a reputation as one of the few birds known to use tools to catch fish.
wading-bird
Great-tailed Grackle
A large, glossy, long-tailed blackbird with a loud, varied voice that has rapidly expanded across urban and agricultural North America.
songbird
Mourning Warbler
A skulking gray-hooded warbler of dense northern thickets, whose breeding males show a dark, mourning-veil-like patch on the throat and breast.
songbird
Magnolia Warbler
A boldly patterned warbler with a black-streaked yellow breast and a distinctive black-and-white tail band, best identified from below in flight.
songbird
Hairy Woodpecker
A medium-sized black-and-white woodpecker closely resembling the smaller Downy Woodpecker but with a proportionally much longer, chisel-like bill.
woodpecker
Lesser Flamingo
The smallest and most numerous flamingo in the world, famous for the vast pink flocks that gather on East Africa's Rift Valley soda lakes.
wading-bird
Intermediate Egret
A medium-sized white egret of Africa, Asia, and Australia whose size and proportions fall neatly between the larger Great Egret and smaller Little Egret.
wading-bird
Hooded Oriole
A slender, long-tailed oriole strongly associated with palm trees, with males showing bright orange-yellow plumage and a black face and bib.
songbird
Lewis's Woodpecker
An unusually crow-like woodpecker with iridescent greenish-black plumage, a pink belly, and a habit of catching insects on the wing.
woodpecker
Lappet-faced Vulture
Africa's largest vulture, instantly recognizable by its massive bill and bare pink-red head draped with fleshy folds of skin.
raptor
Little Bee-eater
A tiny, brilliantly colored African bee-eater with a green back, yellow throat, and black gorget, often seen perched low over grassland.
other
Guanay Cormorant
A black-and-white cormorant of the Humboldt Current whose massive colonies historically produced the guano that gave the bird its name.
seabird
Malleefowl
A ground-dwelling mound-building bird of arid mallee scrub, camouflaged in intricately mottled grey, brown, black, and chestnut plumage.
gamebird
Hooded Vulture
A small, drab, bare-faced vulture of Africa that scavenges close to towns and villages and has suffered catastrophic population declines.
raptor
Killdeer
A widespread shorebird recognized by its double black breast bands and its dramatic 'broken-wing' display to lure predators from the nest.
shorebird
Green Jay
A dazzlingly colored jay of south Texas brushlands with a green back, sky-blue head markings, and lemon-yellow outer tail feathers.
songbird
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
A small desert woodpecker with a finely barred black-and-white 'ladder' back pattern, well adapted to arid scrub, mesquite, and cactus habitat.
woodpecker
Lesser Rhea
A large flightless bird of the southern South American steppe, smaller and paler than the Greater Rhea, with grayish-brown plumage flecked with white.
other