Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Inca Dove
A tiny, pale dove of the desert Southwest whose feathers appear scalloped like fish scales and whose flight flashes rusty wing patches.
other
Royal Tern
A large, orange-billed tern of sandy beaches and estuaries, second in size only to the Caspian Tern, often seen with a shaggy black crest streaming in the wind.
seabird
Little Tern
A tiny, fast-flying tern with a black-tipped yellow bill and white forehead patch that hovers before plunge-diving for small fish along sandy coastlines.
seabird
Forster's Tern
A medium-sized tern that breeds almost entirely within North America, distinguished from the similar Common Tern by its pale, silvery wingtips and orange legs.
seabird
Bridled Tern
A pelagic tropical tern, browner and paler than its close relative the Sooty Tern, with a thin white 'bridle' line extending behind the eye.
seabird
Caspian Tern
The largest tern in the world, a gull-sized bird with a massive coral-red bill and a harsh, crow-like call, found on coasts and large lakes across every continent except Antarctica.
seabird
Black Tern
A small, buoyant marsh tern that turns almost entirely sooty black in breeding plumage and feeds by dipping to the water surface rather than plunge-diving.
seabird
Common Tern
A widespread, medium-sized tern found across North America, Europe, and Asia, with a black cap, red-orange bill, and deeply forked tail typical of the group.
seabird
White Tern
An entirely white, ethereal tern with large dark eyes that famously balances its single egg on a bare tree branch without building any nest at all.
seabird
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
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
Roseate Tern
A slender, pale tern with very long tail streamers and a faint rosy blush on the breast, prized by birders for its elegant, almost ghostly flight.
seabird
Sandwich Tern
A slender, crested tern easily told from relatives by its long black bill with a distinctive yellow tip, named for the English town of Sandwich, Kent.
seabird
Least Tern
The smallest tern in North America, a fast, energetic flier that nests in open sand and gravel and is especially vulnerable to disturbance and habitat loss.
seabird
Elegant Tern
A slender crested tern with a long, drooping orange bill, concentrated in enormous colonies on just a handful of islands in the Gulf of California.
seabird
Arctic Tern
A slender, graceful tern famous for undertaking the longest migration of any animal, traveling from Arctic breeding grounds to Antarctic waters and back each year.
seabird
Gull-billed Tern
A stocky, gull-billed tern with a stout black bill, pale plumage, and an unusual habit of hawking insects over dry land far from water.
seabird
Green Jay
A dazzlingly colored jay of south Texas brushlands with a green back, sky-blue head markings, and lemon-yellow outer tail feathers.
songbird
Bonaparte's Gull
A small, tern-like gull with a delicate black bill that is unusual among gulls for nesting in trees in the boreal forest.
seabird
Little Gull
The smallest gull in the world, a dainty, tern-like bird best known for its distinctive blackish underwings, unique among gulls.
seabird
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
Tennessee Warbler
A plain, energetic warbler with a gray head, white eyebrow stripe, and olive back, named for a stray specimen collected in Tennessee though it neither breeds nor regularly winters there.
songbird
Clark's Nutcracker
A pale gray high-mountain corvid famous for caching tens of thousands of pine seeds each year and for its remarkable spatial memory.
songbird