Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Sociable Weaver
A small Kalahari finch-weaver famous for building the largest communal stick nests of any bird, sometimes housing hundreds of pairs.
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
Hill Myna
A glossy black forest myna with vivid yellow head wattles, renowned as one of the most accomplished vocal mimics among wild birds.
songbird
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
Giant Hummingbird
The largest hummingbird species in the world, a grayish-brown Andean bird nearly the size of a swallow with slow, distinctly visible wingbeats.
hummingbird
Common Nightingale
A plain brown bird famed above all for its powerful, richly varied song, often delivered at night as well as by day from dense scrub cover.
songbird
Red-billed Quelea
A small, sparrow-like African weaver famous for forming the largest flocks of any wild bird species, sometimes numbering in the millions.
songbird
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
Northern Mockingbird
A slender gray songbird famous for endlessly mimicking the songs and calls of other birds, with bold white wing patches visible in flight.
songbird
Sarus Crane
The world's tallest flying bird, a grey crane with a bare red head and neck, revered in South Asian culture as a symbol of marital fidelity.
wading-bird
Great Black-backed Gull
The largest gull in the world, an imposing, dark-backed predator of the North Atlantic coast that preys on other birds as readily as it scavenges.
seabird
European Bee-eater
One of Europe's most vividly colored birds, a swallow-shaped hunter of flying insects with chestnut, yellow, and turquoise plumage.
other
Willie Wagtail
A small, confident black-and-white bird constantly wagging its tail from side to side, well known for its cheerful song and bold habit of mobbing much larger birds.
songbird
New Zealand Fantail
A tiny, energetic New Zealand bird best known for its wide, fan-shaped tail and its habit of following walkers through the bush to snap up disturbed insects.
songbird
Greater Rhea
South America's largest bird, a flightless grassland species with shaggy gray-brown plumage resembling a smaller relative of the Ostrich.
other
Great Bustard
One of the heaviest flying birds in the world, a massive steppe and farmland bird famous for the male's elaborate courtship display of inflated white plumes.
other
Common Snipe
The Eurasian counterpart to Wilson's Snipe, a cryptically striped marsh bird with a very long bill, famed for the winnowing sound of its aerial display.
shorebird
Black-faced Antthrush
A plump, ground-dwelling forest bird with a black face and a short cocked tail, more often heard than seen as it walks quietly through leaf litter.
songbird
Tawny Eagle
A variably colored savanna eagle of Africa known for its highly opportunistic feeding, from scavenging carcasses to stealing prey from other birds.
raptor
Sooty Shearwater
A dark, sooty-brown shearwater famous for one of the longest annual migrations of any bird, tracing a huge figure-eight loop across entire ocean basins.
seabird
Roseate Spoonbill
A vivid pink wading bird with an unmistakable spoon-shaped bill, often mistaken for a flamingo when glimpsed at a distance in coastal marshes.
wading-bird
Island Scrub-Jay
A large, deep-blue scrub-jay found only on Santa Cruz Island off the California coast, the most range-restricted bird in the continental United States.
songbird
Goldcrest
One of Europe's smallest birds, a tiny olive-green sprite with a vivid black-bordered crown stripe, constantly flitting through conifer foliage.
songbird
African Grey Parrot
A medium-sized, ash-grey parrot with a striking bright red tail, a white facial patch, and a reputation as one of the most cognitively advanced birds known.
parrot