Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Pale Chanting Goshawk
A pale gray hawk of southern Africa's arid regions, known for its melodious whistled call and habit of hunting alongside mammals that flush prey.
raptor
Waxwing
A crested, silky pinkish-grey bird with a black mask, yellow-tipped tail, and waxy red wingtips, best known for irruptive winter berry-feasting flocks.
songbird
Pine Grosbeak
A large, gentle, slow-moving finch of northern conifer forests, with rosy-red males and mustard-gray females.
songbird
White-winged Chough
A glossy black, red-eyed Australian woodland bird that forages in noisy cooperative flocks and flashes white wing patches in flight.
songbird
Spotted Towhee
The western counterpart to the Eastern Towhee, distinguished by bold white spotting on its black back and wings.
songbird
Whiskered Tern
A marsh tern with dark grey underparts, a black cap, and a crisp white cheek stripe that gives it a distinctive 'whiskered' face pattern.
seabird
Red-and-yellow Barbet
A vividly patterned East African barbet with a scarlet head, black-spotted yellow underparts, and a habit of nesting in termite mounds.
other
Wilson's Plover
A stocky coastal plover named for ornithologist Alexander Wilson, easily told by its oversized, heavy black bill.
shorebird
Northern Harrier
A slim, low-flying hawk of open marshes and fields, identified by its owl-like facial disc and white rump patch.
raptor
Swainson's Hawk
A long-winged prairie hawk famous for one of the longest migrations of any North American raptor, traveling all the way to the pampas of Argentina.
raptor
Oriental Magpie-Robin
A bold black-and-white songster related to robins and chats, prized for its rich, melodious dawn song.
songbird
Swallow Tanager
A short-billed, swallow-shaped tanager, with turquoise-blue males and grass-green females, that hawks insects on the wing and nests in burrows.
songbird
Pied-billed Grebe
A chunky, secretive brown grebe of the Americas, named for its thick, pale bill marked with a black ring in the breeding season.
waterfowl
Rose-ringed Parakeet
A slender bright-green parakeet with a long pointed tail; males sport a narrow black-and-pink neck ring.
parrot
New Holland Honeyeater
A lively black-and-white honeyeater with a bold white eye, yellow flashes in the wings and tail, and a habit of constantly flitting between flowers.
songbird
White-plumed Honeyeater
A small olive-yellow honeyeater with a slender white crescent-shaped plume on the side of the neck, common near inland rivers and eucalypts.
songbird
Sedge Warbler
A streaky wetland warbler with a bold cream eyebrow stripe, known for its fast, chattering, mimicry-rich song often delivered in a brief fluttering song-flight.
songbird
Waved Albatross
The only albatross species found in the tropics, breeding almost exclusively on a single Galapagos island and famous for its elaborate bill-fencing courtship dance.
seabird
Snow Petrel
An entirely pure-white seabird of the Antarctic pack ice, one of only a handful of bird species that breed farther south than almost any other on Earth.
seabird
Red-headed Woodpecker
A striking, boldly patterned woodpecker with an entirely crimson head and a strongly contrasting black-and-white body, now declining across much of its range.
woodpecker
Sanderling
The pale, plump little sandpiper that chases retreating waves on sandy beaches worldwide, running like a wind-up toy to snatch food from the wet sand.
shorebird
Tropical Kingbird
A common, widespread tropical flycatcher with a gray head, olive back, lemon-yellow belly, and a rapid twittering call, nearly identical to Couch's Kingbird.
songbird
Pinyon Jay
A uniformly blue, crestless, highly social jay of pinyon-juniper woodlands that lives in large, noisy flocks year-round.
songbird
Spangled Cotinga
A glittering turquoise-blue cotinga of the Amazonian canopy, males marked with a dark purple throat patch and a scattering of spangled blue feather edges.
songbird
Sora
A secretive, plump little marsh rail with a short yellow bill, black face mask, and gray-brown streaked body.
wading-bird
Painted Bunting
Often called the most colorful bird in North America, the male Painted Bunting displays an almost impossibly vivid patchwork of blue, green, and red.
songbird
Noisy Miner
A grey, black-capped honeyeater that lives in large, highly social, aggressive colonies and often dominates other birds in its territory.
songbird
Southern Lapwing
A bold, noisy lapwing of South American grasslands and wetlands, easily recognized by its black chest markings, red eye-ring, and loud alarm calls.
shorebird
Sedge Wren
A tiny, secretive wren of wet sedge meadows, notable for its erratic breeding movements and finely streaked crown.
songbird
Royal Spoonbill
A large white wading bird of Australasia with a distinctive black, spoon-shaped bill that it sweeps through shallow water to feel for prey.
wading-bird
Rainbow Lorikeet
A brilliantly multicolored Australian parrot with a deep blue head, green wings, and an orange breast band, common in gardens and flowering trees.
parrot
Neotropic Cormorant
The smallest and most widespread cormorant in the Americas outside North America's temperate zone, slender and long-tailed with a thin white border at the base of the bill in breeding plumage.
seabird
Plumbeous Vireo
The grayest member of the former 'Solitary Vireo' complex, an interior western species of pine-oak forest with white spectacles and no olive or yellow tones.
songbird
Sharp-shinned Hawk
North America's smallest accipiter, a compact, forest-dwelling hawk built for quick, agile pursuit of small songbirds.
raptor
Rose-coloured Starling
A striking pink-and-black starling that breeds in huge, irruptive colonies often tied to outbreaks of locusts and grasshoppers.
songbird
Ruddy Shelduck
A warm orange-brown, goose-like duck with a pale head and dark tail, often seen in pairs on open wetlands.
waterfowl
Southern Carmine Bee-eater
A spectacular pink-and-turquoise bee-eater of southern Africa that forms enormous cliffside breeding colonies along major rivers.
other
Southern Boobook
Australia's smallest and most common owl, best known for its distinctive two-note 'boobook' or 'mopoke' call.
owl
Pine Warbler
A softly plumaged, olive-yellow warbler tightly tied to pine forests, notable among warblers for regularly eating seeds and visiting bird feeders.
songbird
Red-bellied Woodpecker
A medium-sized eastern woodpecker with a black-and-white barred back and a red-capped head, whose faint pinkish belly wash is rarely visible in the field.
woodpecker
Sociable Weaver
A small Kalahari finch-weaver famous for building the largest communal stick nests of any bird, sometimes housing hundreds of pairs.
songbird
Short-eared Owl
A pale, ground-nesting owl of open country that hunts by day in low, buoyant, moth-like flight over fields and marshes.
owl
Sooty Tern
A truly pelagic tern with sooty black-brown upperparts and crisp white underparts that spends most of its life on the wing far out over tropical seas.
seabird
Orchard Oriole
The smallest North American oriole, with adult males showing a deep chestnut-and-black plumage rather than the bright orange of most other orioles.
songbird
Screech Owl
A small, well-camouflaged, tufted owl of the Americas known for its distinctive quavering trills rather than an actual screech.
owl
Resplendent Quetzal
A dazzling, iridescent green cloud-forest bird with a crimson breast and, in the male, spectacular tail streamers that can trail well beyond a meter in length.
other
Reed Bunting
A slim bunting of reedbeds and wetlands, with breeding males sporting a bold black head and white collar.
songbird
Spotted Antbird
A small, boldly spotted antbird of Central American and Chocó forests that habitually follows army ant swarms to catch fleeing insects.
songbird