Oct 05 2026
Sometimes all you can see of a bird is its outline. A bird may be perched against a bright morning sky, flying too high overhead for its colors to show, sitting in deep shade, or disappearing into the evening light. Under those conditions, a field guide full of colorful plumage illustrations may not seem very …
Oct 04 2026
A bird’s beak can tell you an extraordinary amount about the bird in front of you. A short, heavy beak may suggest a seed-eater. A sharply hooked beak immediately brings birds of prey to mind. Long probing bills are common among shorebirds, while hummingbirds have slender bills that allow them to feed from flowers. Woodpeckers …
Oct 03 2026
A bird’s tail can be one of its most useful identification features. Some birds have short, square-ended tails. Others have long, flowing tails, deep forks, rounded tips, wedges, notches, or pointed central feathers. A bird may constantly flick its tail, fan it while turning, hold it upright, pump it downward, or barely seem to move …
Oct 02 2026
Sometimes the easiest way to identify a bird is to stop looking at its colors and watch what it is doing. A small bird may be hopping beneath leaves, hanging upside down from a branch, darting into the air after insects, hammering at tree bark, probing mud, diving beneath the water, or hovering beside a …
Oct 01 2026
A bird feeder is one of the easiest places to learn bird identification. Instead of catching a two-second glimpse of a bird disappearing into the trees, you may have several minutes to study it from a window. Birds return to the same perch, feed alongside familiar species, reveal their bills at close range, and often …
Sep 30 2026
A large bird circling high overhead can be one of the most exciting—and frustrating—identification challenges in birdwatching. From hundreds of feet below, the field marks shown so clearly in a guide may disappear. A red tail can look dark. Fine streaking becomes invisible. Even a huge eagle can look surprisingly small when it is far …
Sep 29 2026
A bird of prey flashes across the sky with a hooked bill, powerful wings, and sharp talons. You know you are looking at a raptor, but deciding whether it is a hawk or a falcon can be much more difficult. Hawks and falcons share many features because both are predatory birds, but they belong to …
Jul 03 2026
Few birds command the sky quite like the Peregrine Falcon. Powerful, agile, and extraordinarily fast, this remarkable raptor is famous for its breathtaking hunting dives and its ability to thrive in environments ranging from remote sea cliffs to the tops of downtown skyscrapers. The Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) is found across much of the world …
Jun 19 2026
High among the conifer forests and windswept ridges of western North America lives one of the continent’s most remarkable birds. The Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) may look understated in its gray, black, and white plumage, but behind that modest appearance is an extraordinarily intelligent member of the crow family with a memory capable of keeping …
Jun 19 2026
The Mountain Bluebird (Sialia currucoides) is one of North America’s most striking songbirds. With the male’s brilliant sky-blue plumage and the female’s softer blend of blue and gray-brown, this species brings a splash of color to open country across the western part of the continent. Often associated with grasslands, sagebrush flats, mountain meadows, and fence-lined …
