Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
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
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
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
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
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
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
Cedar Waxwing
A sleek, crested, silky-brown songbird with a yellow-tipped tail and waxy red wingtips that travels in nomadic flocks following fruit crops.
songbird
Common Grackle
A large, iridescent blackbird with a long keel-shaped tail and pale yellow eyes, common across eastern and central North America.
songbird
American Tree Sparrow
A rusty-capped sparrow with a bicolored bill and a dark central breast spot, a true winter visitor to much of North America despite its name.
songbird
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
A tiny, plain-faced olive-gray songbird with a bold white eye-ring and a surprisingly loud, rollicking song from a normally hidden red crown.
songbird