Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Splendid Fairywren
A small songbird of Australia's dry interior whose breeding males turn an almost impossibly vivid all-over cobalt and violet blue.
songbird
Scarlet Honeyeater
A tiny, brilliant honeyeater in which the male is a vivid scarlet-red with black wings, one of the smallest and most colorful honeyeaters in Australia.
songbird
Straw-necked Ibis
A striking black-and-white Australian ibis famous for forming huge nomadic flocks that follow outbreaks of grasshoppers and locusts.
wading-bird
Red-footed Booby
The smallest and most variably plumaged booby, easily told by its bright red feet and habit of nesting in trees on remote tropical islands.
seabird
Northern Shoveler
A dabbling duck instantly identified by its oversized, spoon-shaped bill, used to filter tiny invertebrates and seeds from shallow water.
waterfowl
Snowy Plover
A pale, delicate plover of Pacific and Gulf Coast beaches and interior salt flats, once considered the same species as the Old World Kentish Plover.
shorebird
Ring-necked Duck
A compact diving duck best identified by the bold white ring on its bill rather than its subtle chestnut neck collar, along with a peaked head shape.
waterfowl
Masked Lapwing
A large, loud Australasian lapwing with prominent yellow facial wattles and a sharp yellow spur on each wing, common in parks, pastures, and wetlands.
shorebird
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
Least Sandpiper
The smallest shorebird in the world, a tiny brown sandpiper best distinguished from its similar relatives by its greenish-yellow legs.
shorebird
Mexican Chickadee
A high-elevation Mexican chickadee that barely reaches the United States in the mountains of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
songbird
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
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