Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Townsend's Warbler
A boldly patterned warbler of Pacific Northwest conifer forests, with a black-and-yellow face pattern, dark cheek patch, and streaked yellow breast.
songbird
House Sparrow
A stocky, chunky-billed sparrow closely tied to human settlements, with males showing a gray crown, chestnut nape, and black bib.
songbird
Bushtit
A tiny, plain gray-brown songbird that travels in noisy, tumbling flocks and builds an elaborate hanging sock-like nest.
songbird
Downy Woodpecker
North America's smallest woodpecker, a friendly black-and-white bird with a small bill, common at backyard feeders across the continent.
woodpecker
Gray Catbird
A slate-gray songbird with a neat black cap and a rusty patch under the tail, named for its distinctive cat-like mewing call.
songbird
Bufflehead
A tiny, energetic diving duck of North America, recognized by the male's striking white wedge on his oversized, iridescent head.
waterfowl
Turkey Vulture
A large, dark scavenger with a naked red head and a distinctive tilting, V-shaped soaring flight, famed for its exceptional sense of smell.
raptor
Chukar
A rocky-terrain partridge with a bold black facial necklace and boldly barred flanks, introduced to the arid American West from Eurasia.
gamebird
Bronzed Cowbird
A stocky blackbird with a distinctive ruff of neck feathers and striking red eyes that, like other cowbirds, lays its eggs in the nests of other birds.
songbird
Canada Jay
The official current name for the Gray Jay, a fluffy, remarkably tame boreal-forest corvid famous for hoarding food and visiting campsites.
songbird
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
Eastern Phoebe
A plain grayish-brown flycatcher that pumps its tail while perched and famously nests on bridges, eaves, and other man-made structures.
songbird
Dusky Grouse
A large, sooty gray mountain grouse of the interior Rockies, named for the male's low hooting display and yellow-orange inflatable neck sac.
gamebird
Wild Turkey
North America's largest gamebird, an iridescent bronze-and-green forest turkey famous for the male's fan-tailed strut and gobbling call.
gamebird
Mexican Chickadee
A high-elevation Mexican chickadee that barely reaches the United States in the mountains of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
songbird
Rusty Blackbird
A boreal-breeding blackbird that turns rusty-edged in fall plumage, now one of the most steeply declining songbirds in 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
Gray-cheeked Thrush
A cold gray-toned northern thrush that breeds in remote subarctic forest and passes through the US mainly as an inconspicuous migrant.
songbird
Olive Warbler
A pine-forest specialist with a tawny-orange head and black mask, now classified in its own unique family separate from true warblers.
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
Swainson's Thrush
A buffy-faced forest thrush known for its upward-spiraling flute-like song and heavy nocturnal migration through much of North America.
songbird
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
Vesper Sparrow
A streaky grassland sparrow with a white eye-ring, chestnut shoulder patch, and white outer tail feathers, named for its evening song.
songbird
Pine Siskin
A small, heavily streaked brown finch with sharp yellow wing and tail markings, notorious for unpredictable winter irruptions.
songbird