Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Ring-billed Gull
A medium-sized, highly adaptable gull common far from the coast, easily told from larger gulls by its yellow legs and the black ring encircling its bill.
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
Common Gull
A gentle, medium-sized gull widespread across northern Eurasia, closely related to but geographically separate from the North American Mew (Short-billed) Gull.
seabird
Mew Gull
A small, gentle-faced gull of the Pacific Northwest, recently split from the Eurasian Common Gull and now officially known as the Short-billed Gull.
seabird
Heermann's Gull
A strikingly uniform slate-gray gull with a bright red bill, breeding almost entirely on a single island in Mexico's Gulf of California before dispersing north along the Pacific coast.
seabird
Herring Gull
A large, familiar gray-backed gull with pink legs and a yellow bill marked by a red spot, widespread and adaptable across coasts, lakes, and cities.
seabird
Ringed Kingfisher
The largest kingfisher in the Americas, easily recognized by its massive size, heavy bill, and entirely rufous-chestnut underparts.
other
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
Ring-necked Duck
A compact diving duck best identified by the bold white ring on its bill rather than its subtle chestnut neck collar, along with a peaked head shape.
waterfowl
Black-billed Cuckoo
A slim, elusive, all-dark-billed cuckoo of eastern thickets, distinguished from its yellow-billed relative by a red eye-ring and lack of rufous in the wing.
other
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
Yellow-billed Oxpecker
A stocky African bird closely related to the Red-billed Oxpecker, identified by its yellow-based, red-tipped bill and lack of a bright eye-ring.
songbird
Little Gull
The smallest gull in the world, a dainty, tern-like bird best known for its distinctive blackish underwings, unique among gulls.
seabird
Laughing Gull
A common, noisy coastal gull of the eastern and Gulf coasts, named for its raucous, laugh-like call.
seabird
Glaucous Gull
A huge, pale Arctic gull with wingtips lacking black, a formidable predator and scavenger of the far north.
seabird
Western Gull
A large, dark-backed gull restricted almost entirely to the Pacific coast of North America, a common sight on rocky shorelines and piers from Washington to Baja California.
seabird
Sabine's Gull
A strikingly patterned Arctic gull with a bold tricolored wing and forked tail, spending most of the year far out at sea and undertaking one of the longest migrations of any gull.
seabird
Ivory Gull
A striking, pure-white gull of the High Arctic pack ice, closely tied to sea ice and often found scavenging alongside polar bears at seal and whale carcasses.
seabird
Iceland Gull
A pale, gentle-looking Arctic gull, smaller and more delicate than the similar Glaucous Gull, that winters along the North Atlantic coast and Great Lakes.
seabird
Kelp Gull
A widespread Southern Hemisphere gull with a black back and white head, ecologically similar to the Great Black-backed Gull of the north, and a rare vagrant to the Gulf Coast of North America.
seabird
Franklin's Gull
A small, dapper prairie-nesting gull, sometimes called the 'prairie dove,' that undertakes one of the longest migrations of any gull, wintering along the Pacific coast of South America.
seabird
California Gull
A medium-large western gull celebrated in Utah folklore for eating a devastating cricket infestation that threatened early Mormon settlers' crops.
seabird
Glaucous-winged Gull
A large, pale gull of the Pacific Northwest coast whose wingtips blend almost seamlessly with its gray mantle, and which frequently hybridizes with the darker Western Gull.
seabird
Yellow-legged Gull
A large gull of the Mediterranean and western Europe, similar to the Herring Gull but with yellow legs and a darker mantle, and a rare vagrant to eastern North America.
seabird