216 Fun Facts About Birds

Which of these is the largest living bird by mass and height?

The ostrich is the tallest and heaviest living bird, a big male standing about 2.7 m; far too heavy to fly, it outruns danger at about 70 km/h, faster than any other animal on two legs.

Chicks of which Amazon bird hatch with claws on their wings for clambering through branches?

Hoatzin chicks hatch with two claws on each wing; if threatened they drop into the water beneath the nest, then use the claws to climb back up. The claws disappear as the birds mature.

Which bird has the largest wingspan of any living bird?

The wandering albatross's wings span more than three metres, letting it ride the wind for hours without a flap; it comes ashore only to breed and otherwise lives entirely at sea.

Besides aiding in feeding, what is a primary function of a toucan's large, colorful beak?

Releasing excess heat: thermal cameras showed in 2009 that a toco toucan sends more blood into its bill to shed body heat as the air warms, and chokes the flow off again when it is cold.

Which long-legged wading bird feeds with its head upside down, straining its food from the water?

The flamingo lowers its head until the bill points backwards and upside down, then sweeps it from side to side while comb-like plates inside strain small shrimp and algae from the water.

Which bird is often ranked alongside the great apes for reasoning and problem-solving?

The raven is no slow learner: in a 2020 study, young ravens only four months old did about as well as adult chimpanzees and orangutans across a battery of reasoning tests.

What is a male duck called?

A drake is the quieter sex in the best-known ducks: the loud, classic quack belongs to the female, while he gives only a softer, raspier note.

Which large flightless bird of New Guinea and northeastern Australia has a helmet-like casque?

The cassowary's casque is a spongy core under a horny sheath, and its purpose is still debated; a dagger-like claw on each inner toe, driven by a powerful kick, is why it is called the world's most dangerous bird.

The pink colour of flamingos comes from which pigments in their diet?

Carotenoids from the algae and brine shrimp flamingos eat are deposited in feathers and skin; captive birds fed too little carotenoid fade to pale pink even when otherwise well nourished.

What is the lump of fur and bones an owl coughs up called?

A pellet: an owl swallows small prey whole but cannot digest the fur and bones, so hours later it coughs them up in a tight lump, which scientists pick apart to learn exactly what the bird has eaten.

Males of which bird family build and decorate elaborate stick structures purely to impress mates, never to nest in?

The bowerbird male builds his bower of sticks and dresses it with bright objects purely as a stage; a female who picks him mates there, then goes off to build the real nest and raise the chicks alone.

What is the primary material that makes up a bird's feathers?

Keratin, a tougher form of the protein in our hair and nails, builds every feather; and feathers are older than birds, having first appeared on dinosaurs that could not fly.

Which bird holds the record for the longest known non-stop migratory flight?

The bar-tailed godwit: in 2022 a bird just five months old flew 13,560 km from Alaska to Tasmania in 11 days without landing; godwits shrink their internal organs beforehand to make room for more fat.

What bird is widely recognized as the fastest in a hunting dive?

The peregrine falcon climbs to a great height and then plunges in a dive called a stoop at more than 320 km/h, hitting its prey in mid-air with a clenched foot hard enough to kill on impact.

Which flightless bird is the tallest native bird of Australia?

The emu stands up to 1.9 m tall and is hard to beat: in 1932 soldiers sent with two machine guns to cull emus raiding Western Australia's wheat farms withdrew after a week, outrun by birds faster than their trucks.

Males of which New Guinea birds court females with elaborate dances, fanning ornate plumes over their backs?

The bird-of-paradise nearly paid for its beauty with its existence: its plumes became so fashionable on European ladies' hats that skin hunters decimated some species.

What is the scientific term for the study of birds?

Ornithology is one science where amateurs still matter: hobby birdwatchers send in their sightings by the million, and researchers use those records to follow how bird populations are changing.

Which New World scavenger finds dead animals largely by smell, a rare ability among birds?

The turkey vulture has an unusually large smell centre in its brain and finds fresh carcasses by scent; black vultures, poor sniffers themselves, keep an eye on it from above and follow it down to the meal.

Which of these birds lays the largest egg relative to its own size?

The kiwi's egg can be about a fifth of the female's weight, among the biggest for its size of any bird; in the last days before laying it leaves so little room inside her that she has to stop eating.

In which penguin species does the male incubate a single egg for over two months while the female feeds at sea?

The emperor male balances the egg on his feet under a fold of skin for just over two months, fasting, while the female returns to the sea to feed.

The extinct dodo was endemic to which island?

Mauritius had no predators to teach the dodo fear, which made it easy prey for sailors; but the pigs and monkeys that came ashore with them and plundered its nests are now thought to have done even more to wipe it out.

Which bird breaks open large eggs by tossing pebbles onto them?

The Egyptian vulture walks up to an egg too big to carry off, picks up a pebble in its bill and flings it at the shell with a swing of its neck until it cracks, a rare case of tool use by a wild bird.

What are the sharp, curved claws of a bird of prey called?

Talons do the killing for most hawks, eagles and owls, which seize and pierce their prey with their feet; the hooked beak comes into play afterwards, to tear the catch apart.

The only penguin species living at, and just above, the equator is native to which island group?

The Galápagos Islands host the only penguin found at the equator, because the cold, nutrient-rich Humboldt and Cromwell currents keep the surrounding water cool enough for a bird otherwise tied to the southern oceans.

What is a significant part of a Blue Jay's diet, especially during autumn?

Acorns: a blue jay buries many of the ones it gathers to eat later, and the caches it never comes back for are credited with helping oak forests spread after the last ice age.

A woodpecker's tongue is so long that, when drawn in, it is stowed curled around which part of the bird?

Its skull: the tongue can be three times the length of the bill, so at rest it is sheathed up the back of the head and round towards the eyes; shot out, its barbed, sticky tip snags ants and grubs deep in the wood.

What is the primary food source of most finches, for which their stout, conical bills are adapted?

Seeds and nuts: a finch's cone-shaped bill works as a nutcracker, and the hawfinch's is powerful enough to split cherry stones and get at the kernel inside.

Which flightless Atlantic seabird's last confirmed pair was killed on the island of Eldey in 1844?

The great auk was the original 'penguin': the word was first used for this northern bird, and only later passed to the unrelated look-alike birds of the far south.

What is the common term for predatory birds such as hawks, eagles, and falcons?

Raptors: the word comes from the Latin rapere, 'to seize', a nod to how hawks, eagles and falcons grab prey with their feet.

The cave-dwelling oilbird of South America finds its way in total darkness by what means?

Echolocation: the oilbird steers through pitch-dark caves by the echoes of its own sharp clicks, which people can hear; it owes its name to its plump chicks, once boiled down for cooking and lamp oil.

What is the burst of birdsong at first light called?

The dawn chorus still has no settled explanation: a 2025 study in India found no support for the popular idea that song carries further in the still dawn air, and tied the early singing to birds defending territory instead.

Martha, who died in 1914, was the last known member of which once-abundant American bird?

The passenger pigeon once numbered in the billions, in flocks that darkened the sky for days, yet hunting on a commercial scale wiped it out within decades; Martha died at Cincinnati Zoo on 1 September 1914.

The jackass penguin breeds only in Namibia and which other country?

South Africa: besides its island colonies, a few penguins settled on Boulders Beach near Cape Town in the early 1980s, and within about twenty years the colony had grown to several thousand birds.

Which familiar lawn bird, a thrush that tugs up earthworms, has the scientific name Turdus migratorius?

The American robin is a thrush and no robin at all: it was named after the much smaller, unrelated robin of Europe because both have a reddish-orange breast.

Which African bird of prey hunts on foot and kills snakes by stomping on them?

The secretarybird stamps on a snake with a kick five times its own body weight, landed in about 15 thousandths of a second, while thick scales on its long legs guard it against a bite.

The extinct elephant birds, which laid the largest eggs of any known bird, lived on which island?

Madagascar's elephant birds were probably the heaviest birds that ever lived, yet their closest living relatives are not the big flightless birds of nearby Africa but the small, flightless kiwi of far-off New Zealand.

Which bird of prey is the only known vertebrate to live mainly on bone?

The bearded vulture, also called the lammergeier or ossifrage ('bone-breaker'), drops large bones onto rocks to shatter them and swallows the fragments, digesting them with extremely acidic stomach juices.

Which bird can fly backwards?

The hummingbird's wing joins the body only at the shoulder and sweeps a figure of eight, so it gives lift on the upstroke as well as the downstroke; that lets the bird hover, reverse and even fly upside down.

Which of these New Zealand birds is a flightless, nocturnal parrot?

The kakapo, the world's heaviest parrot, was nearly wiped out by the cats, rats and stoats that settlers brought, which it could not outfly; every survivor now lives on a predator-free island or in a fenced sanctuary.

Which bird holds the record for the fastest confirmed level flight, at about 111 km/h (69 mph)?

The swift: a common swift was clocked at 111.6 km/h under its own power in 2010, not on migration but in a 'screaming party', the high-speed chases that swifts fly around their nest sites on summer evenings.

Which bird builds gourd-shaped mud nests in dense colonies under bridges and eaves?

Cliff swallows once plastered their gourd-shaped mud nests only on rock faces; bridges, culverts and buildings gave them new walls, and colonies of hundreds of nests now crowd places where they never used to breed.

What is the smallest bird species in the world?

The bee hummingbird is about 5.5 cm long and weighs some 2 g; a body that small burns energy so fast that a hummingbird has to take in about half its own weight in sugar every day.

Birds share a four-chambered heart with which other animals?

Mammals: as in our own hearts, four chambers keep oxygen-rich blood fully apart from used blood, a double pump that lets a bird fuel the heavy energy demands of flight.

Noah's dove returned to the ark carrying which plant's leaf?

An olive leaf: freshly plucked, it told Noah that the floodwaters were going down at last; early Christians later put a dove with an olive branch on their tombs as a sign of peace.

Which bird undertakes the longest annual migration of any animal?

The Arctic tern breeds in the far north and spends the rest of the year off Antarctica, a round trip of some 60,000 to 80,000 km; as a result it lives through two summers every year and scarcely knows winter.

What is a group of crows commonly called?

A murder of crows began as one of the fanciful 'terms of venery' that became a courtly fashion among English hunters in the late Middle Ages; most of them fell out of real use long ago and survive as wordplay.

Which type of bird is known for building intricate, hanging, pouch-like nests?

The oriole's nest is chiefly the female's work: she weaves plant fibres into a tight hanging pouch and slings it from the slender outer branches of a tall tree.

Which Pacific seabird's courtship has the male showing off his brightly coloured feet in a high-stepping strut?

The blue-footed booby's foot colour comes from its diet, so the bluest feet advertise the best-fed males, and females choose accordingly: the bluer the feet, the more attractive the mate.

Which seabird was shown by brain recordings in 2016 to sleep in mid-flight, often one hemisphere at a time?

The frigatebird cannot rest on the sea, since it does not swim and struggles to take off from water, so on ocean trips lasting weeks it naps on the wing: under an hour a day, mostly half a brain at a time.

Which bird is famous for migrating across the Himalayas at extreme altitudes?

The bar-headed goose crosses the Himalayas twice a year with blood that takes up oxygen unusually well in thin air; it has been reported over the highest peaks, though tracked birds mostly keep to the passes.

What is the term for a bird's self-grooming behavior where it uses its beak to maintain its feathers?

Preening: a bird draws each feather through its bill to zip the separated barbs back together, and it is that tight weave, kept in condition with oil from the preen gland, that makes plumage shed water.

From roughly how far away have racing pigeons flown home in competition?

About 1,500 km: flights of 1,600 km became routine in the sport and one of 1,800 km is on record; the gift comes from the wild rock dove, the racing pigeon's ancestor, which homes to its own nest site.

What is the primary function of a bird's gizzard?

Grinding: birds have no teeth, so the thick-walled gizzard does their chewing, and many swallow grit or small stones that work inside it like millstones.

Which bird is historically associated with delivering babies in European folklore?

The stork owes its baby-carrying job to old northern European folklore, made famous by Hans Christian Andersen's tale 'The Storks', in which the birds fetch sleeping babies from a pond for deserving children.

Which Australian songbird's males devote about 70–80% of their vocalisations to imitating other species?

The superb lyrebird's song is mostly mimicry of other birds; females sing too, and the species' imitations are so precise that recorded lyrebirds have copied camera shutters and chainsaws.

What is the largest bird of prey by wingspan?

The Andean condor's wings can span more than three metres, and it hardly needs to beat them: riding rising air off the mountain slopes, it can glide for more than 160 km without a single flap.

Which of Darwin's finches uses a twig or cactus spine as a tool to prise out grubs?

The woodpecker finch has a woodpecker's taste for wood-boring grubs but only a short tongue, so it holds a twig or cactus spine in its bill and levers them out of the bark with that.

What is the process of a bird shedding its old feathers and growing new ones called?

Molting is a necessity, not a habit: a grown feather is dead tissue that cannot repair itself, so as feathers wear out the bird has to shed them and grow new ones.

Which large, mischievous parrot is native to the alpine regions of New Zealand's South Island?

The kea, nicknamed the clown of the mountains, ranges from coastal forest up to the high peaks and investigates whatever people leave about, from boots and backpacks to parked cars, often wrecking it or flying off with the pieces.

Which bird lays its eggs in other species' nests, relying on them to raise its young?

The cuckoo chick hatches early and heaves the host's own eggs out of the nest, then is fed by foster parents it soon dwarfs, and they keep feeding it for a couple of weeks after it has flown.

An owl swivels its head as far as 270 degrees because which body part cannot move?

Eyes: an owl's are long tubes rather than balls, held rigid in the skull, so to shift its gaze the bird has to swing its whole head instead.

What is a young swan called?

A cygnet is no white swan yet: it hatches in grey down and stays grey-brown through its first year, the 'ugly duckling' of Hans Christian Andersen's tale.

What name is given to the lofty nest of an eagle?

An eyrie can grow enormous, because eagles come back to it and keep adding sticks: bald eagle nests have reached a tonne or more, heavy enough to break the branches that hold them.

Which bird gives its name to Guatemala's currency and appears on its flag?

The resplendent quetzal was sacred to the ancient Maya and Aztecs, who linked it with the feathered-serpent god Quetzalcoatl; their rulers wore its long green tail plumes in their headdresses.

Hundreds of macaws gather on Amazon riverbanks almost daily to eat what?

Clay: in the western Amazon macaws and other parrots crowd onto exposed riverbanks almost every day to eat it; researchers still debate why, with a hunger for scarce salt now the leading idea.

Many of a bird's hollow bones are connected to which of its body systems?

The respiratory system: air sacs branching off a bird's breathing apparatus reach into many of its bones, which are braced inside by criss-crossing struts so that the thin walls stay strong.

Which bird is the state bird of several U.S. states and is known for its bright red plumage?

The northern cardinal is the state bird of seven states, more than any other species, yet only the male wears the famous red: the female is a warm brown with just touches of it.

Which bird is known for its impressive vocalizations and mimicry of other birds' songs?

The mockingbird strings other birds' songs into performances that run all day and on into the night; the ones still singing after dark are mostly males that have yet to find a mate.

Which Founding Father called the bald eagle 'a bird of bad moral character'?

Benjamin Franklin wrote it to his daughter, adding that the turkey was 'a much more respectable bird'; the popular tale that he proposed the turkey as the national emblem is a myth.

Where do Atlantic puffins lay their eggs?

In a clifftop burrow: a pair digs a tunnel a metre or more into the turf, or takes over a rabbit's, for its single egg; about six weeks after hatching the chick slips out alone at night and heads for the sea.

Which country is the breeding home of about 60% of the world's Atlantic puffins?

Iceland is where perhaps 60% of the world's Atlantic puffins breed; they come ashore only for spring and summer, and spend the rest of the year far out on the open sea.

What is the main job of a pelican's throat pouch?

Catching prey and draining water: the pouch is a scoop net that holds more than the bird's stomach can, so the pelican tips out the water before it swallows; on hot days it also flutters the pouch to cool off.

In Britain, unmarked mute swans traditionally became the property of whom?

The Crown has been entitled to claim any unmarked mute swan on open water since the 12th century; two livery companies, the Vintners and the Dyers, have shared the Thames swans since the 15th and mark theirs at the yearly Swan Upping.

Nearly every breed of domestic duck is descended from which wild species?

The mallard gave rise to almost every farmyard duck, the Muscovy being the one exception; because they are still one species, escaped farm ducks breed freely with wild birds and blur the wild stock.

The honeyguide leads people to wild bees' nests to feed on which part of them?

Wax: honeyguides are among the few birds that feed on it; honey-hunters in Mozambique summon the bird with a special trilling call, and a 2016 study found that the call greatly raised their chances of being led to a nest.

Which African bird builds huge communal nests, like haystacks in trees, that can house a hundred pairs?

The sociable weaver's thatched 'apartment block' can stay in use for a century; each pair has its own chamber, and on freezing desert nights the birds move to the well-insulated central rooms to keep warm.

The greater roadrunner is the official state bird of which US state?

New Mexico's state bird hunts on foot, running down lizards, mice and snakes, young rattlesnakes among them; it can fly but seldom does, spending most of its time on the ground.

The laughing kookaburra belongs to which bird group?

Kingfishers: the laughing kookaburra is the largest of the family yet rarely eats fish, preferring insects, lizards and snakes; its cackle is a stock 'jungle' sound in films set nowhere near Australia.

The Eurasian magpie is one of few birds shown to recognise itself in what?

A mirror: in a 2008 mark test, Eurasian magpies with a coloured sticker on the throat tried to remove it when shown their reflection, the first such self-recognition seen in a non-mammal.

Which bird's North American population is credited to birds released in Central Park in 1890?

The starling was set loose by Eugene Schieffelin, who led a society for importing foreign species; since he freed about 60 birds that year it has spread across most of the continent.

What is a huge, swirling flock of starlings called?

A murmuration forms over the roost at dusk; each starling simply copies the twists of its closest neighbours, and the dense, shifting cloud that results is thought to baffle hunting birds of prey.

Which bird is the national bird of India?

The peacock has been revered in India for centuries: the Hindu war god Kartikeya rides one, and Krishna is shown with a peacock feather in his crown.

The word 'nightingale' combines 'night' with an Old English word meaning what?

To sing: Old English nihtegale joins 'night' with galan, 'to sing'; the birds heard after dark are mostly unpaired males, singing on into the night probably to attract a mate.

Canaries were once carried into coal mines as living detectors of which odourless gas?

Carbon monoxide fells a canary well before a miner feels it, so John Scott Haldane proposed the birds as an alarm in the 1890s; some cages were built to revive the bird, and British pits kept canaries until 1986.

Which small Australian parrot, green and yellow in the wild, is a cage bird kept worldwide?

The budgerigar lives wild in nomadic flocks that roam inland Australia, seldom far from water; the blues, whites and greys of pet-shop birds do not occur in nature and were all bred in captivity.

A peacock's 'train' is made up of which elongated feathers?

Upper-tail coverts: the peacock's train is made of greatly elongated covert feathers tipped with eyespots, raised and fanned by the short true tail feathers hidden beneath them.

Chickens are the domesticated form of which wild bird?

The red junglefowl of Southeast Asia is the chicken's wild ancestor; the first tame birds may have been kept for cockfighting rather than the pot, with eggs and meat an afterthought.

Which is the most numerous bird on Earth, at over 25 billion in 2023?

The chicken: more than 26 billion were alive in 2023, over three for every person on Earth, and since most are raised for meat, over 50 billion are produced each year.

What colour is a rock ptarmigan's plumage in winter?

White: the rock ptarmigan vanishes against the snow and walks on it with feathered feet; in spring the male stays white for weeks after the female has turned brown, a beacon on the bare tundra.

Which bird of Eurasian conifer forests is the largest living grouse?

The western capercaillie is the largest living grouse, a cock weighing about twice as much as a hen; in spring the cocks fan their tails and strut to win the watching hens.

Which widespread bird of prey lives almost entirely on fish, which it catches by plunging feet first?

The osprey grips its slippery catch with barbed pads and a reversible outer toe, then turns it head first in flight to cut wind resistance.

The 'windhover' is an archaic name for which bird of prey?

The kestrel, the 'windhover' of Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem, hangs in one spot facing the wind, head fixed and tail fanned, then drops on a vole.

The snowy owl's breeding success is tied to the availability of which prey?

Lemmings: snowy owls cannot breed in numbers unless lemmings are plentiful on the tundra, and in years when the rodents crash many pairs do not nest at all.

What shape is a barn owl's face?

Heart-shaped: the barn owl's pale facial disc funnels sound to its asymmetrically placed ears, so it can pinpoint and catch a mouse in complete darkness.

Non-breeding common swifts may stay in continuous flight for up to how long?

Ten months: a 2016 tracking study found that some common swifts never landed in the ten months between breeding seasons, so they feed and, it seems, even sleep on the wing.

Which is the most widespread swallow species in the world?

The barn swallow became the world's most widespread swallow by moving in with people: it once nested in caves but now builds almost only on man-made structures.

What name is given to the seabird droppings once mined on islands off Peru as a prized fertiliser?

Guano was prized enough that in 1856 the United States passed a law letting its citizens claim any unoccupied island where they found deposits.

Which flight technique lets albatrosses cover vast distances with minimal exertion?

Dynamic soaring: albatrosses repeatedly climb into faster wind above the waves and dive downwind, harvesting energy from the wind gradient so they can glide for hours without flapping.

Which Scottish islet hosts the world's largest northern gannet colony?

Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth held about 75,000 gannet nest sites in 2014, the most of any colony, before bird flu in 2022 cut the number by about 30%.

How do northern gannets catch fish?

By plunging from the air: a northern gannet drops from as much as 40 m with wings swept back and hits the sea at about 100 km/h, its nostrils sealed away inside the bill.

The common loon is the official state bird of which US state?

Minnesota adopted the common loon as its state bird in 1961; in Canada the same bird on the one-dollar coin gave the coin its nickname, the loonie.

The takahē, a flightless New Zealand relative of coots and moorhens, is the largest living member of which bird family?

Rails: the takahē was presumed extinct for half a century until a search party found it alive in the remote Murchison Mountains in 1948.

Which songbirds store their kills by impaling insects, lizards and mice on thorns or barbed wire?

Shrikes come back to these larders to eat later, and a well-stocked one also helps a male win a mate; the habit earned them the name 'butcher birds'.

Which North American songbird, named for its call, adds extra notes to that call the more dangerous a predator is?

The chickadee tacks more 'dee' notes onto its call as the threat rises: a small, agile pygmy owl, deadly to a bird its size, once drew 23 of them.

Which flightless bird of the South American pampas is known in Spanish as the ñandú?

The rhea leaves child-rearing to the male: he builds the nest, incubates the eggs that several females lay in it and guards the chicks himself.

What is the vocal organ of birds called?

The syrinx, unlike a mammal's larynx, sits where the trachea forks into the bronchi, and because each side can be controlled separately some songbirds sing two notes at once.

Where on a bird's body is the oil-producing uropygial gland located?

At the base of the tail: the gland sits in the fleshy nub that cooks call the parson's nose, and a bird rubs it with its bill to pick up oil for its feathers.

What does the Latin word 'furcula', for a bird's wishbone, literally mean?

Little fork: furcula is the diminutive of the Latin furca, 'fork'; the fused clavicles act as a strut between the shoulders and flex like a spring with every wingbeat.

What is the temporary projection on a chick's bill, used to break out of the shell, called?

The egg tooth lets a chick chip a ring of holes round the blunt end of the shell as it turns inside; afterwards the tooth falls off or is absorbed into the bill.

Which African bird's male may be the heaviest living animal capable of flight?

The kori bustard: a male can weigh 18 kg, so heavy that the bird prefers not to fly and spends its days walking the savanna.

Great bustards have been reintroduced to England on which military training area?

Salisbury Plain: the Great Bustard Group began releasing birds on the army training area in 2004, and a species hunted out of Britain in the 19th century now breeds there in the wild.

Which African bird was sucked into a jet engine at 11,300 m in 1973?

Rüppell's vulture: the strike over Abidjan, Ivory Coast, is the highest bird flight ever confirmed; its haemoglobin binds oxygen so readily that it can fly in air that thin.

Fishermen in China and Japan have long trained which diving birds to catch river fish for them?

Cormorants do the diving while a loose snare at the base of the throat stops them swallowing the bigger fish, which the fisherman takes from the gullet.

Which penguin is the fastest swimmer, reaching about 36 km/h in short bursts?

The gentoo is the fastest penguin in the water and a jealous builder on land: its nest is a ring of stones, and a male can win a female's favour by offering her a choice one.

Which African bird is regarded as the most numerous undomesticated bird on Earth?

The red-billed quelea, a small weaver, descends on grain fields in flocks so vast that it has earned nicknames such as 'Africa's feathered locust'.

Wisdom, recognised in 2025 as the world's oldest known wild bird, is what species?

Wisdom is a Laysan albatross, first banded at Midway Atoll in 1956 while already sitting on an egg; she has worn out several leg bands since and was still incubating in 2025.

The extinct seabird Pelagornis sandersi holds which record among all known birds?

The widest wingspan: Pelagornis sandersi, unearthed in South Carolina in the 1980s, spread an estimated 6.1 to 7.4 m, and those long, slender wings made it a powerful glider.

John James Audubon was born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, now which country?

Haiti: Audubon was born at Les Cayes, the son of a French planter, and at 18 was sent to the United States to avoid conscription.

Which WWI homing pigeon is credited with helping save the 'Lost Battalion'?

Cher Ami is credited with carrying the Lost Battalion's message in October 1918 despite a breast wound and a shattered leg, and was awarded the French Croix de Guerre.

Every known fossil of which feathered Jurassic animal comes from Bavarian limestone?

Archaeopteryx, long regarded as the oldest known bird: the fine lime mud of a shallow lagoon, now the Solnhofen limestone, preserved even the impressions of its feathers, starting with finds made in 1861.

The Christmas Bird Count began in 1900 as an alternative to which holiday tradition?

A competitive bird hunt: in the Christmas 'side hunt' teams vied to shoot the biggest pile of birds, and Frank Chapman proposed counting them instead; 27 birders joined the first count.

More than half of all bird species belong to which group?

Passerines, the perching birds, make up about 60% of all species; a tendon tightens their toes round a twig whenever the leg bends, so they can sleep on a perch without falling off.

The world's smallest penguin, the little penguin, is also named for which colour?

Blue: the little or fairy penguin, kororā in Māori, is also called the blue penguin for its slate-blue back, and it waits until dusk to come ashore to its burrow.

The Adélie penguin is named after Adélie Land, itself named for whom?

An explorer's wife: Jules Dumont d'Urville sighted the coast in 1840 and named it for his wife Adèle; twenty years earlier he had helped France acquire the Venus de Milo.

Which penguin is said to be named after the flashy 18th-century dandies of 'Yankee Doodle'?

The macaroni penguin's yellow crest is thought to have reminded English sailors of 'macaronis', young men who flaunted showy foreign fashions, the sense the word has in 'Yankee Doodle'.

Why is the African penguin also known as the jackass penguin?

Its donkey-like bray: the loud call attracts a mate; by 2023 the species had fallen below 10,000 breeding pairs, and in 2024 it was listed as Critically Endangered.

The grey crowned crane is the national bird of which country?

Uganda: the British chose the grey crowned crane for the colonial badge because it belonged to no single kingdom's emblems, and it stayed on the flag at independence in 1962.

In Japanese folklore, which bird is said to live for a thousand years?

The red-crowned crane's fabled thousand-year life made it a symbol of luck and longevity, which is why strings of a thousand folded paper cranes are given to wish someone well.

About a quarter of the world's white storks are concentrated in which country?

Poland: about one in four of the world's white storks nests there, and each autumn they skirt the Mediterranean rather than cross it, because the thermals they soar on do not form over water.

The shoebill, a tall grey bird with a clog-shaped bill, lives in the swamps of which region?

Tropical East Africa: the shoebill haunts papyrus swamps from South Sudan to Zambia, standing motionless for long spells before lunging at a lungfish, the slippery prey its bill is shaped to hold.

Which African stork is nicknamed the 'undertaker bird'?

The marabou stork, nicknamed the undertaker bird, is a bare-headed scavenger that now gathers at landfills near towns, where it has come to rely on human rubbish.

On which caustic Tanzanian lake do most lesser flamingos breed?

Lake Natron: its caustic, soda-rich water keeps predators away from the mud nests the birds build out in the lake, making it the one regular breeding site for East Africa's lesser flamingos.

The scarlet ibis is a national bird of which country?

Trinidad and Tobago: the scarlet ibis stands for Trinidad on the coat of arms beside the cocrico for Tobago, and each evening flocks fly in to roost in the mangroves of Caroni Swamp.

The African sacred ibis was linked to which ancient Egyptian god?

Thoth, god of writing and learning, was shown with an ibis's head, and Egyptians mummified an estimated eight million of the birds as offerings to him; by 1850 the ibis itself had vanished from Egypt.

Which bird's last wild individual was taken into captivity in 1987?

The California condor: after the last wild bird was caught in 1987, zoo-hatched chicks were released within five years, and condors now fly free again over California, Arizona, Utah and Baja California.

Which accidentally introduced predator wiped out most of Guam's native birds?

The brown tree snake ate most of Guam's native birds out of existence; the flightless ko'ko' survived only in captivity and has since been released on the nearby islands of Rota and Cocos.

Which extinct parrot's flocks returned to their fallen companions, letting hunters shoot whole flocks?

The Carolina parakeet, a green bird with a yellow head, raided grain and other crops across the eastern United States, so farmers shot it as a pest.

Which woodpecker's last universally accepted US sighting came in a Louisiana forest in 1944?

The ivory-billed woodpecker was last seen for certain on the Singer tract in April 1944, just as loggers finished felling the old-growth forest it needed; later reports remain disputed.

Spix's macaw, declared extinct in the wild in 2019, is native to which country?

Brazil: Spix's macaw lived along gallery woodland in the caatinga of Bahia; captive-bred birds were released back there from June 2022, and the species inspired the film Rio.

The Philippines' national bird, Pithecophaga jefferyi, was originally known by what name?

The monkey-eating eagle: villagers on Samar said in 1896 that it ate only monkeys, but it also takes flying lemurs, civets and bats, and a 1978 proclamation renamed it the Philippine eagle.

Which is typically the heaviest eagle in the world, at 5 to 10 kg?

Steller's sea eagle: females can reach 9 kg; one stray bird, first seen in Alaska in 2020, went on to wander the continent from Texas to Maine and Newfoundland.

Which scavenging bird of prey, found from Europe to Australia, is thought to be the most abundant member of the hawk family?

The black kite is thought to outnumber every other hawk; in northern Australia kites are reported to carry burning sticks to spread fires and flush out prey, earning the name 'firehawks'.

Which small woodland bird is known for climbing down tree trunks head first?

The nuthatch can walk head first down a trunk, the only bird in Britain able to, and can hang upside down beneath a branch to search the bark for insects.

Which is the longest parrot species, at about one metre?

The hyacinth macaw measures about one metre from the top of its head to its tail tip, longer than any other parrot; its looks cost it dearly, with some 10,000 trapped for the pet trade in the 1980s.

The sword-billed hummingbird's bill is longer than its body, so how does it groom its feathers?

With its feet: no other bird has a bill longer than the rest of its body, so this hummingbird scratches itself clean and even perches with the bill tilted upward to ease the strain.

Which crested bird was chosen as Israel's national bird in 2008?

The hoopoe, with its fan-shaped crest, was chosen in May 2008 by a national poll of about 155,000 Israelis, organised by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.

What is the common poorwill of the American West the only bird known to do in winter?

Hibernate: the common poorwill can lie torpid among rocks for weeks on end; the Hopi called it 'the sleeping one' long before a biologist confirmed the habit in the Chuckwalla Mountains in 1946.

Folklore once held that the nightjar suckled milk at night from which animal?

Goats: the myth gave the nightjar its old English name 'goatsucker' and its genus name Caprimulgus, Latin for 'goat-milker'; the bird actually hunts insects stirred up around the herds.

Where do acorn woodpeckers store their acorns?

In holes drilled in 'granary' trees: a family group may riddle one trunk with up to 50,000 holes, and as the acorns dry and shrink the birds move them to tighter ones.

Woody Woodpecker's appearance is thought to be based on which species?

Pileated: Woody's red crest matches the pileated woodpecker, though Walter Lantz liked to credit a noisy acorn woodpecker at his honeymoon cabin, a tale that postdates Woody's first cartoon.

The northern flicker, nicknamed the yellowhammer, is the state bird of which state?

Alabama: 'yellowhammer' began as a Civil War nickname for the state's Confederate soldiers and then stuck to the state itself, which took the flicker of that name as its bird.

Alex, the famous grey parrot, was studied for 30 years by which psychologist?

Irene Pepperberg bought Alex from a pet shop in 1977 and worked with him for thirty years; his name stood for 'avian learning experiment', and his last words to her were 'You be good.'

Which crow species is a model for studying tool use in birds?

The New Caledonian crow tears barbed strips from pandanus leaves and shapes twigs into hooks to pull grubs from crevices; a captive bird named Betty even bent a straight wire into a hook.

Haast's eagle, the largest eagle ever known, preyed mainly on what?

Moa: Haast's eagle struck flightless birds more than ten times its own weight, and it died out in the 15th century, as Māori hunters wiped out the moa.

Where are a kiwi's nostrils located?

At the tip of its beak, uniquely among birds, which lets the kiwi sniff out prey underground before it sees it.

Some ruby-throated hummingbirds migrate non-stop across which body of water?

The Gulf of Mexico: some ruby-throated hummingbirds fatten up and cross it in one non-stop flight, while many others take the long way round by the Texas coast.

Which songbird is the state bird of six US states, from Oregon to Kansas?

The western meadowlark is the emblem of six states; Audubon named it neglecta, claiming that explorers and settlers since Lewis and Clark had overlooked so common a bird.

The zunzuncito, the world's smallest bird, is native to which Caribbean island?

Cuba: the zunzuncito lives on the main island and the nearby Isla de la Juventud, where the female weaves a cup nest from bark and cobwebs for eggs no bigger than a coffee bean.

Which is the heaviest living bird native to North America?

The trumpeter swan is the continent's heaviest native bird; by 1933 fewer than 70 were known in the wild, until aerial surveys found several thousand more around Alaska's Copper River.

The whooper swan has been the national bird of which country since 1981?

Finland made the whooper swan its national bird in 1981; by the 1950s fewer than twenty pairs bred there, but as the face of the young conservation movement it has recovered to several thousand.

What kind of nest does Africa's hamerkop build?

A giant roofed dome of sticks: a pair piles up thousands of sticks into a nest that can be more than 1.5 m across and strong enough to bear a man's weight, with a side entrance and a mud-lined chamber.

The rhinoceros hornbill of Borneo's rainforests is the national bird of which country?

Malaysia: when rhinoceros hornbills nest, the female is sealed inside a tree hole with mud, and the male passes food to her through a narrow slit.

What is unusual about the helmeted hornbill's casque, which carvers prize as a kind of ivory?

It is almost solid: unlike any other hornbill's, the casque makes up about 11% of the bird's weight, and males use it to ram each other head to head.

The wryneck deters predators by twisting its neck like which animal?

A snake: the wryneck sways and twists its head to scare off predators, earning it the old name 'snake bird'; it was once used in witchcraft, which may be where the word 'jinx' comes from.

The extinct huia of New Zealand was remarkable for what difference between the sexes?

Bill shape: the female huia's bill was long, thin and curved, the male's short and stout like a crow's; he chiselled into rotting wood while she probed deeper, the most extreme such difference in any bird.

A fashion for which birds' plumes on women's hats nearly wiped them out in the United States by the 1890s?

Egrets were still being shot for their plumes when, in 1896, Boston socialites Harriet Hemenway and Minna Hall held tea parties urging women to give up feathered hats, the start of the Massachusetts Audubon Society.

Which bird is the closest living relative of the extinct dodo?

The Nicobar pigeon, a bird of Southeast Asian islands, is placed by DNA studies since 2002 as the dodo's nearest living kin; the dodo, once given a family of its own, was a giant flightless pigeon.

The extinct elephant birds have been suggested as the inspiration for which legendary giant bird?

The roc: Marco Polo told of a bird strong enough to carry off an elephant, and the huge eggs of the extinct elephant birds have long been suggested as the seed of the tale, though that is disputed.

Which plump songbird of fast-flowing streams hunts by walking and 'flying' underwater?

The dipper wades into rushing water and walks along the stream bed, even 'flying' underwater with its wings, to probe under stones for insect larvae; no other songbird dives and swims as it does.

Sage grouse males gather each spring on display grounds known as what?

Leks: each spring the males strut with tails fanned and chests ballooning while the hens look on, and only one or two of them are picked by most of the females.

The pied kingfisher is the kingfisher best known for doing what before it dives?

Hovering: the pied kingfisher hangs in place over the water to spot its prey, a skill that lets it fish offshore, far from any perch, as no other kingfisher does.

Ibises share their family, the Threskiornithidae, with which other wading birds?

Spoonbills are ibis kin that feed by touch: they sweep the part-open bill from side to side through shallow water and snap it shut the instant prey brushes the inside.

Which North American plover is famous for its 'broken-wing display' to lure predators from its nest?

The killdeer runs from its ground nest calling, then droops a wing and fans its tail to draw a predator away; against grazing animals it instead charges in an 'ungulate display'.

Which hormone, the same one that drives milk production in mammals, triggers 'crop milk' in pigeons?

Prolactin: it makes the crop lining of both parents, father as well as mother, shed a cheese-like 'milk' that is the chicks' first food.

Many birds can see which kind of light that is invisible to humans?

Ultraviolet: most birds have a fourth type of cone cell, so plumage that looks alike to us can differ to them; a male blue tit's crown shines brighter in ultraviolet than a female's.

Which Eurasian wading bird's far-back eyes give it a full 360-degree field of view?

The woodcock's eyes sit so far back that it can watch for danger all round while it probes for earthworms with a long, sensitive bill that opens at the tip like forceps.

Which composer kept a pet starling that could sing a theme from one of his own piano concertos?

Mozart bought the starling in 1784 and wrote down its version of a tune from his Piano Concerto No. 17, wrong note included. When the bird died three years later, he buried it in his garden with a funeral poem.

Which North American bird of prey has a hoarse scream routinely dubbed over other species on screen?

The red-tailed hawk has a rasping two-to-three-second scream that slurs downward, and it has become the stock cry for almost any soaring hunter. Viewers often hear it when a quite different bird is on screen.

Which North American owl's hooting is remembered by birders with the phrase 'Who cooks for you'?

The barred owl gives eight accented hoots in two phrases, which is why it is also nicknamed the eight-hooter. Courting pairs often call back and forth together.

Which European owl's famous 'twit-twoo' is really a duet between a calling female and a hooting male?

The tawny owl female gives a shrill 'kew-wick' and the male answers with a wavering hoot, so the classic call takes two birds. Shakespeare worked the sound into a song in Love's Labour's Lost.

Woodpeckers drum fast rolls on resonant wood mainly for which purpose, the job song does for other birds?

Claiming territory is the main job of drumming, a reverberating signal that can be heard at some distance. The rolls also help woodpeckers recognise their own species and play a part in courtship.

Which bird that sings while hovering high above open fields is the subject of a famous ode by Shelley?

Skylark males sing in hovering flight from 50 to 100 metres up, often just a dot against the sky. Shelley's 'To a Skylark' is one of many tributes, alongside Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending.

Which secretive reedbed bird's foghorn-like boom carries up to three miles on a calm spring night?

The Eurasian bittern makes its boom by forcing air out of its gullet with the powerful muscles around it. Old folk names for the well-hidden bird include bog-bull and butter bump.

Which British garden bird is recognised by its habit of repeating each musical phrase two to four times?

The song thrush repeats its loud, clear phrases so reliably that Robert Browning described the habit in his 1845 poem Home Thoughts, from Abroad. It also weaves in mimicry, even of ringing telephones.

Which of the common loon's four main calls is a long, complex sound made only by the male?

The yodel belongs to male loons alone, and its pitch tells rivals how heavy the caller is. A male taking over a new lake appears to change his yodel so that it differs from the previous owner's.

Which Amazonian bird is believed to be the world's loudest, with calls measured at up to 125 decibels?

The white bellbird took the record from the screaming piha, which had been measured at 116 decibels. Males call with a long black wattle dangling from the bill, and females have none.

A songbird's voice box sits in which spot, unlike the human larynx at the top of the throat?

Where the windpipe forks toward the lungs is the spot, and the organ there works without mammal-style vocal folds. Muscles on its left and right branches act independently, so some songbirds produce two sounds at once.

The common snipe's eerie 'drumming' during display dives is produced by which part of its body?

Tail feathers do it: two of them are held out at right angles so that the rushing air sets them vibrating as the bird dives. The bleating sound earned the snipe the Scottish folk name heather-bleater.

Which North American songbird's whistle is remembered with phrases about 'Sam Peabody' or 'sweet Canada'?

The white-throated sparrow whistles a clear opening followed by repeated triplets that fit either phrase. A newer version ending in doublets appeared in British Columbia and then spread east.

Which North American bird's song is commonly remembered by a phrase urging the listener to drink tea?

The eastern towhee sings a one-second phrase that sounds like 'drink your tea', the last note drawn out into a trill. Its name is an imitation too, copying a two-part call also written as chewink.

Which songbird, the state bird of Georgia, has a documented repertoire of more than 1,000 song types?

The brown thrasher may have the largest song repertoire of any North American bird. Males are also fierce defenders of the nest, known to strike people and animals that come too close.

Which small Australian bird is the dominant laboratory model for studying how songbirds learn to sing?

The zebra finch is so easy to keep and breed that it became the world's most studied captive songbird. Young males copy the song of an adult tutor, usually their father, during a short sensitive period.

Which French composer notated wild birdsong worldwide and built it into works such as Catalogue d'oiseaux?

Olivier Messiaen found birdsong fascinating and wrote several works with birds as both title and subject. Catalogue d'oiseaux, completed in 1958, is a set of 13 piano pieces.

The ruffed grouse's thumping 'drumming' display, usually staged on a log, is produced by what?

Rapid wingbeats make the sound: the male fans the air faster and faster, and the log is only a stage that he never strikes. Even in thick woods the thumping can be heard a quarter-mile away.

Which 18th-century naturalist's Systema Naturae sorted the birds then known into just six orders?

Carl Linnaeus gave 554 bird species two-part Latin names in his 1758 edition, grouping them largely by bill and feet. Working in Sweden without a large collection, he knew many of them only from other people's books.

Strigiformes, an order of more than 200 species, is made up entirely of which birds of prey?

Owls fill the whole order, divided into just two families: the typical kinds and the barn and bay group. Feathers adapted for silent flight are a shared trademark.

DNA studies split which birds of prey from the hawks and eagles, placing them closer to songbirds?

Falcons turn out to be only distant relatives of the other daytime hunters. They also kill differently, biting with a notch-edged bill where hawks rely on their feet.

Anseriformes, the order of ducks and swans, takes its name from anser, the Latin word for which bird?

Goose is the meaning of anser, a name first attached to the greylag, the wild ancestor of most farmyard breeds. The order also takes in the screamers, three noisy marsh birds of South America.

Which process explains why New World and Old World vultures look alike despite not being close relatives?

Convergent evolution gave the two groups similar looks and habits, yet they do not form a single branch of the family tree. The Old World kinds sit in the same family as eagles and kites.

The loons of North America, the order Gaviiformes, are known by which name in Britain and Ireland?

Divers is the European name, earned by the birds' habit of swimming calmly along the surface and then abruptly plunging under. The common loon of North American lakes is the great northern diver there.

Sandpipers and plovers are 'waders' in Europe but are usually called what in North America?

Shorebirds is the American term, because 'wader' there may instead mean long-legged birds such as herons. Most of the group feed by probing mud and sand for small invertebrates.

Genetic evidence shows that the closest living relatives of flamingos are which diving waterbirds?

Grebes and flamingos look nothing alike, yet both lay eggs coated in the same chalky mineral layer. The pairing has been named Mirandornithes, meaning 'miraculous birds'.

South America's seriemas are thought to be the closest living relatives of which extinct giant predators?

Terror birds were mostly flightless meat-eaters up to three metres tall, known from fossils in South and North America. Seriemas keep a hint of the family style: a sharply curved, extensible claw on the second toe.

Chickens, turkeys and pheasants belong to which order, named from the Latin word for a rooster?

Galliformes comes from gallus, and its heavy-bodied ground dwellers also include grouse, quail and guineafowl. Most are reluctant flyers that escape danger by running, though none has lost flight altogether.

Toucans, barbets and woodpeckers all belong to which order, named from the Latin word for a woodpecker?

Piciformes covers nine families of mostly tree-dwelling birds, from tiny piculets to the big-billed toco toucan. Nearly all have two toes pointing forward and two back, a grip suited to life on tree trunks.

The order name Apodiformes, given to some of the most aerial of all birds, comes from Greek for what?

Footless is an exaggeration, but the legs of these birds are so small that they are of little use except for perching. Their feet are even covered with bare skin instead of the usual scales.

The name 'ratite', for flightless birds with a flat breastbone, comes from the Latin word for which vessel?

Raft fits because a raft has no keel, and neither does the breastbone of these birds. Flying birds need that ridge of bone as an anchor for their wing muscles.

Albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters share an order whose common name refers to which feature of the bill?

Tube-shaped nostrils run along the bill in this order, earning its members the nickname tubenoses. Because the birds drink seawater, excess salt leaves the body as a strong brine that drips from those tubes.

Anatomy and DNA both show that chickens, pheasants and their kin are most closely related to which birds?

Ducks and geese and the landfowl together make up a group simply called fowl. The two lines look so different largely because the water-loving side adapted to filter-feeding.

Africa's turacos belong to the family Musophagidae, a scientific name that translates as what?

Banana-eaters is the literal meaning, and the family also includes the go-away-birds. Green turacos get their colour from turacoverdin, one of the very few true green pigments known in birds.

Which ground-dwelling birds of Central and South America are the only living palaeognaths able to fly?

Tinamous can fly but would rather hide or run. DNA places them well inside the family tree of the big flightless birds, which implies that flight was lost several separate times.

Which gregarious African fruit-eaters with soft, hairlike feathers make up the small order Coliiformes?

Mousebirds scurry through the leaves like rodents in bands of about twenty. Fossils show the group once ranged across Europe and North America, which is why the six survivors are sometimes called living fossils.

The palaeognaths, the branch of living birds that includes the ratites, have a Greek name meaning what?

Old jaws refers to the bones of the palate, which early anatomists judged more primitive than those of other birds. Every other living bird belongs to the neognaths, the 'new jaws'.

Which secretive European meadow bird has the scientific name Crex crex, an imitation of its rasping call?

Corncrake males rasp out a loud 'krek krek' with the head held almost vertical and the bill wide open. The Greek word behind the name was itself an imitation of the sound.

Gulls, auks and sandpipers all belong to which order of about 390 mostly waterside species?

Charadriiformes spans 19 families in three suborders, with members in every part of the world. The auks, for all their odd build, sit closest to the gulls: their shape is an adaptation for diving.

Birds of the genus Buteo are called hawks in North America but are known by which name in Europe?

Buzzards is the Old World name, and Buteo itself was the Latin name for the common buzzard. The largest of the genus is Asia's upland buzzard, with a wingspan of about a metre and a half.