White-faced Ibis

The White-faced Ibis is a rare migrant to much of the United States. Small populations breed in South Texas and in a couple of places in the Northwest. The picture does not show the white face. It is much more apparent throughout breeding season.

They favor freshwater habitats such as marshes and ponds for breeding. These areas usually give them with a variety of food choices and their diet varies accordingly.

They are average sized wading birds, about two feet tall, with long bills that bend downward.
They are also very shy birds and it is extremely difficult to get even as close as forty feet to them without their flying off.

Least Grebe

The Least Grebe ranges in length from 21–27 cm (approximately 8.25–10.5 inches, depending on the subspecies) and in weight from 112–180 g (3.95–6.35 oz). Like all grebes, its legs are set distant back on its body and it cannot walk well, while it is an excellent swimmer and diver. Small and plump, with a quite short, sharply-pointed beak and bright yellow eyes, it classically appears fairly dark all over.

The breeding adult is brownish grey above with a darker blackish crown and throat. It has a brownish chest and pale underparts. It shows a white wing patch in flight. Non-breeding birds are paler with a pale throat, and immatures are paler and greyer than adults. Unlike all other members of its genus, it lacks any chestnut coloring on its neck.

Warblers

Many different birds are called warblers.

Warblers in the family Parulidae are among the most familiar of the neotropical migrants to the United States.

During the spring relocation, trees across the country become rupture of colors and songs as they travel north to their summer propagation grounds.

They are usually characterized as small, vocal, insectivores. Yellow is a well-liked feather color.

This album covers a lot of common West Coast warblers and other neotropical migrants. Orange Crowned and Yellow-rumped are in the middle of the first arrivals. Tanagers are among the lat arrivals.

Stilt

The Recurvirostridae family of birds is an extremely small one consisting of stilts and avocets.

In the United States there are merely two species of this family present, the American Avocet and the Black-necked stilt. They are found first and foremost in the Western United States and the Gulf Coast.

Shorebirds

Shorebirds are a varied group of birds that include sandpipers, plovers, stilts, avocets, snipes, oystercatchers, turnstones, and phalaropes.

They are traveling and the majority species can be found along coastal areas of the United States throughout spring and fall migration. Some species prefer fresh water habitats and they can be establishing at internal marshes and ponds. Most shorebird species split a characteristic of wading close to shore, poking their bills into the ground in search of food.

Raptor

Bird of prey, also known as a Raptor, a type of bird often characterized by an enthusiastic beak, pointed talons, and eager eyesight. Raptors consist of a varied collection of bird families covering familiar species of eagles, hawks, falcons and owls.

They eat little mammals such as mice and rabbits, fish, snakes, and even additional birds. Some catch and slay their food and others (like vultures) feast on the leftovers other hunters go away at the back.

Most raptors are deliberate indicator species because they live in a peak spot in their ecosystem food chain. The rise and decline of raptor populations regularly coincides with ecosystem changes.

Silky Flycatchers

Silky Flycatchers be tending to be much better and have more split crested head feathers than the Tyrant Flycatchers.

All Silky-flycatchers also eat berries, with mistletoe berries life appearance the berry of choice for the Phainopepla.

Phainopepla are just found in the southern most part of the Southwestern United States. They tear time livelihood in both desert and woodland locale.

From a distance, they might be mistaken for other big, black feathered birds such as crows, ravens or grackles. A close-up look shows the male's characteristic red eyes and black crest. Female Phainopepla contain gray feathers with red eyes.

Pelicans

The Brown pelican and the American white pelican are the two types of pelicans establish in the United States.

The American white pelican, Pelecanus erythrorynchos, is the more ordinary of the two, and it can be found all through a big portion of both the coastal and inland areas of the United States.

It is a big white bird, weighing up to twenty pounds. It also has an orange bill and black feathers on the base of the wings. The wing span can arrive at ten feet.

The Brown pelican is first and foremost a coastal bird, usually smaller than the American white pelican. There are a couple of dissimilar sub-species in the United States.

Mockingbirds & Thrashers

Mockingirds, thrashers and catbirds shape a small family of songbirds (Mimidae), known for their skill to mimic other bird calls.

Brown Thrashers, Northern Mockingbirds and Gray Catbirds are the most frequent species found in the United States.

They are all extremely hardy and adaptable birds, often found on lawns looking for insects or around feeder’s contribution suet or fruit.

Physically they split similar features, being medium sized birds with subdued feather colors.

Thrasher species comprise the largest portion of the family. With the exception of the Brown thrasher, the other species live in very incomplete ranges in the West

Kinglets

» Very little, lively bird that often flicks its wings

» Thin bill

» Broken eye ring

» Olive higher parts

» Light olive below parts

» White wing bars

» Male has red scrap in center of crown (not always visible)

» Habitat prefers coniferous forests on breeding grounds. Ordinary in deciduous woods and thickets throughout winter months in the south.

Ruby-crowned Kinglets are one of our negligible birds, measuring only 4.25 inches and weighing concerning one-quarter of an ounce. For their size, they put down one of the main clutches of eggs of any North American songbird, averaging almost 8 eggs per clutch, with as many as 12 eggs recorded in a single nest. Ruby-crowned Kinglets classically build their nests shut to the trunk high in a conifer. The nests are balanced from twigs below a sheltering and concealing horizontal branch. Frequently deeper than they are broad, with thin openings, they conceal the brooding adult so that only the tip of her tail can be seen.

Icterids

Icterids is the common name known to members of the family Icteridae

The majority of the species are neotropical migrants. They winter in the warmer latitudes about the equator and go either north or south (depending on which side of the equator they usually call home) to cooler latitudes for the summer propagation season.

There are approximately one hundred dissimilar species of Icterids, twenty of them common in the United States. The majority people know them through their generic names: blackbirds, grackles, cowbirds, meadowlarks and orioles. The Bobolink is the merely species in its genus.

Common family traits are surface, at best. They are extremely adaptable birds, living in most human occupied areas that provide adequate food, water and shelter. Their diets are diverse consisting of insects, seeds and fruit, and it is comparatively easy to attract them to back yard feeders.).

Humming bird

Hummingbirds are tiny birds with long, thin bills. The bill, mutual with an extendible, bifurcated tongue, allows the bird to provide for upon nectar deep within flowers. The inferior (mandible) can flex downward to make a wider bill opening; this facilitates the imprison of flying insects in the mouth rather than at the tip of the bill.

The Bee Hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) is the smallest bird in the world, weighing 1.8 g (0.06 oz) and measuring concerning 5 cm (2 in). A typical North American hummingbird, such as the Rufous Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus), weighs about 3 g (0.106 ounces) and has a length of 10–12 cm (3.5–4 inches). The largest hummingbird is the Giant Hummingbird (Patagona gigas), with a number of weighing as much as 24 g (0.85 oz) and measuring 21.5 cm (8.5 in).

Most species show conspicuous sexual dimorphism, with males brilliantly colored and females displaying cryptic coloration. Iridescent plumage is there in both sexes of most species, with green being the most frequent color. Highly modified structures within convinced feathers, usually concentrated on the head and breast, create intense metallic iridescence

Heron

Heron Name given to an ordinary large wading bird family, including the bittern and the egret, establish in most temperate areas but most ordinary in tropical and subordinate tropical areas. Unlike their vaguely related cranes and ibises, that fly by means of their heads extensive straight forward, herons necks are folded back on their shoulders as in flight.

There drooping plumage is soft, particularly at breeding and may have extended snowy plumes on the head, and breast, and rear. Herons are typically solitary feeders, patiently stalking their prey (small fish and aquatic animals) in streams marshes and then stabbing them with their sharp jagged bills. Herons roost and nests in large colonies called heronries; others are outgoing only at feeding time; there are some that are completely solitary.

Nests and vary from a rough plat form of twigs most often a balky accumulation of weeds and rushes that are built on the ground in the middle of the marsh reeds. American herons comprise Great and little blue herons, the yellow crowned and the black crowned night herons (the last the is also known as the night quawk, after it its cry), and the Louisiana heron, called by Audubon "the lady of the water's" and the Great White heron of Florida, a small better than 50 in. long than the great blue, is a outstanding bird sometimes perplexed with the American egret.

American Golfinch

The American Goldfinch is the state bird of Washington. It is widespread throughout the lowlands of Washington, frequently coming to bird feeders. The male in breeding plumage is bright yellow with a black forehead, wings, and tail. He has one white wing-bar on every wing and white on his tail. Outside of the breeding season, the male is dull brown with hints of yellow and white wing-bars. In both breeding and non-breeding plumage, he has white under tail coverts complementary with the yellow under tail coverts of the Lesser Goldfinch.

The female in breeding plumage is yellowish-gray-brown on top and varies in color from bright yellow to dull yellow under. She has two light wing-bars on every wing and a light-colored bill. Her tail is black with white outer tips. Exterior of the breeding season, she is gray above and below, and has less separate wing-bars and a darker bill.

Tyrant Flycatchers in the United States

Depending on which list you appear at, the The United States Geological Survey (USGS) lists thirty four or thirty six different Tyrannidae species general in the United States.
Their list not only includes the species with the official flycatcher names, but also includes phoebes, kingbirds, kiskadees and pewees.

The species that inhabit the United States are first and foremost migratory forest birds. While there are a big number of species in the United States, in some given location merely a handful of species are typically present because so many have in nature limited ranges. For example, there are western and eastern species of kingbirds and pewees.

Species in the Tyrant Flycatcher family are also known as new world birds, sense they are inhabitant to South, Central and North American forested lands.There are about four hundred different species in the family. The huge majority live south of the United States southern border.

Cormorants

Cormorants (family Phalacrocoracidae) are the huge, social, fish eating birds, found in both fresh and salty water locations around the United States.

If you've seen one, you have most probable seen hundreds or thousands in a colony throughout breeding season.

All six cormorant species originate in the United States (Double-crested Cormorant; Great Cormorant; Neotropic Cormorant, Brandt's Cormorant, Pelagic Cormorant, and Red-faced Cormorant) split similar bodily features from the head down. They have dark feathers, slender bodies, webbed feet and a medium-sized set of rigid tail feathers.

Eye color is one more distinguishing field identification mark for cormorants. Often if you photograph cormorants in good light conditions, eye color is highlighted.

Cormorants are known as the water birds with no waterproof feathers. They extend their wings in the sun to dry.

Double-creasted Cormorants are the most extensive species in the United States. Their population levels have augmented over the past thirty years, to the point of argument. Some interest groups such as aquaculture farmers and sports fisherman think them as their fishing competitors.

Bushtits

Bushtits are the merely North American members of the long-tailed tit family, Aegithalidae.

They are very tiny, social birds that live and provide for in flocks in many West Coast habitats. Their diet consists of insects, spiders and seeds.

Their bodies are a combination of gray and brown color. Naturally their tail measures about half the size of their body.

Male adult bushtits contain black eyes and female adult bushtits contain a white ring around the iris. Since fledglings take time to expand eye characteristics, the gender of the bird in the picture is hard to determine.

Nests are usually woven from twigs, grass, spider webs and lined with feathers and other native materials, and they are hung from branch’s above the ground.

American Dipper

The American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus), the lone member of the family Cinclidae establish in the United States, as well holds the title as the only aquatic songbird in the country. Dippers are found all through the West, where you find fast moving, cold streams and rivers.

They feel evenly at home in elevated elevation Rocky Mountains Rivers and low height coastal streams, as extensive as the water is clean. Their diet consists first and foremost of aquatic insects, though they will also eat small fish and salmon eggs when they are obtainable.

The picture of the dipper on the left, for example, was in use at a salmon spawning watercourse close to the coast. Like a lot of the diving ducks, dippers jump into the water and forage for their meals. In shallow streams they be inclined to wade along the stream bed pecking for food alike to shorebirds.

American Dippers are average sized birds with dull color feathers. When you watch them for any period of time, you also perceive sound them singing. Both sexes sing freely, for a diversity of reasons, counting marking territory and attracting mates.

Most dippers exist in year round in their favored streams. What little relocation they might practice typically consists of moving up or down stream, depending on climate and food conditions.

Yellow Hammer

The yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella is a member of the bunting family and a characteristic res ident species of lowland arable and mixed farmland. It is most obvious in spring and summer when the male has a bright yellow head and breast and perches, singing, on the tops of tall bushes, trees and telegraph wires. The nest is close to ground level in dense grass, field margins, ditch vegetation, at the base of thick low hedgerows or in thick scrub (Donaghy, 1998). It can produce up to three broods in a year, nesting until the end of August (Harrison, 1975).

Yellowhammers feed on grain, weed seed and the seeds of large grasses in winter, foraging in cereals, cereal stubbles and crop margins (Donaghy, 1998). In spring and summer adults and chicks feed mainly on invertebrates. In Northern Ireland the range is largely dependant on the presence of cereal fields and the range is fragmented with a stronghold in eastern Co. Down. In the rest of Ireland, yellowhammers are concentrated in the east and south and are generally absent in the west (Coombes et al., 2002). The yellowhammer is largely sedentary (annual range < 5 km) with some local movement in winter in search of food when it may visit farms and villages. In Ireland the annual dispersal range of individuals may be greater due to a shortage of ideal habitat (Lack, 1986).

The yellowhammer was considered to be one of the most common birds in Britain and Ireland in the 19th century (Holloway, 1996). The Atlas of Breeding Birds (Sharrock, 1976) showed that they were still well distributed in the British Isles but had shown some range contraction.

The current estimated population in Northern Ireland is 5,000 pairs (RSPB, pers. comm.). However, extrapolation of winter counts in the late 1990s estimate that the population could be a low as 1,000 territories (G. Henderson, pers. comm.).

Phalacrocorax

Birds (class Aves) are bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), vertebrate animals that lay eggs. There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Birds range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) Bee Hummingbird to the 2.7 m (9 ft) Ostrich. The fossil record indicates that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic period, around 150–200 Ma (million years ago), and the earliest known bird is the Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx, c 155–150 Ma. Most paleontologists regard birds as the only clade of dinosaurs that survived the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event approximately 65.5 Ma.

Many species are of economic importance, mostly as sources of food acquired through hunting or farming. Some species, particularly songbirds and parrots, are popular as pets. Other uses include the harvesting of guano (droppings) for use as fertilizers. Birds figure prominently in all aspects of human culture from religion to poetry to popular music. About 120–130 species have become extinct as a result of human activity since the 17th century, and hundreds more before then. Currently about 1,200 species of birds are threatened with extinction by human activities, though efforts are underway to protect them.

Bird Emu

The word emu comes from the Portuguese word 'ema', which means 'large bird'. Standing up to 2 m tall, adult male emus are Australia's largest birds. In size, they are second only to ostriches in the world. Their powerful legs give them great speed, some running up to 50 km per hour. At full pace, an emu's stride can measure up to 3 m.

The emu belongs to a group of flightless running birds with flat breastbones known as ratites. Ratites are the oldest of modern bird families. They include kiwis, ostriches and cassowaries. The emu's feathers are very primitive and look like a form of coarse hair. The special nature of these feathers enables emus to cope with extreme changes in weather.

The emu's tracheal pouch, which is part of its windpipe, is used for communication. It is over 30 cm long and very thin-walled, and it allows the bird to produce deep guttural grunts. This pouch develops fully during the breeding season and is most frequently used during courtship.

White -Tailed Eagle

The white-tailed eagle - also known as the sea eagle or white-tailed sea eagle - is a huge bird with broad wings up to 245 cm (over 8 feet) wide. White-tailed eagles became extinct in Britain in the early 1900s and despite a lengthy re-introduction scheme, their numbers in Scotland are still very low. The work to reintroduce the species has been hampered by the theft of eggs. This has led to local initiatives, such as Mull Eagle Watch, to help protect eagle nests.

The adult white-tailed eagle's huge size, relatively large pale buff coloured head, huge bill and short, wedge-shaped and pure white tail are very distinctive. Newly fledged young are much darker, gradually gaining adult plumage over 5 - 6 years. White-tailed eagle are quite vocal and call far more often than golden eagles. The call is a mixture of a bark and a yelp, and sounds rather strange coming from such an impressive bird.

Maleo

The maleo is a large, black and white bird with a high-flying medium-length tail. As its different name, maleo megapode suggests, it has normally large feet. This striking bird has a individual bony, dark casque on its crown, a yellowish face, and a naked pale bill . The thighs are black, and the belly white, with pink hues on the breast . This unusual bird is usually silent but, particularly around nesting sites, it can emit quite strange noises. These include loud braying and, when in disputes, a duck-like quacking

Jackdaw

The jackdaw typically takes food from the ground but does get some food in trees. It eats insects and other invertebrates, weed seeds and particle, scraps of human food in towns, trapped fish on the shore, and will more eagerly take food from bird tables than other Corvus species.The Jackdaw is a small, black, gray-naped Eurasian crow. The 1984 records were among the first of a number of occurrences in eastern North America, obviously representing a natural, transoceanic vagrancy (Smith 1985).

In some cultures, a jackdaw on the top is said to expect a new arrival; otherwise, a jackdaw settling on the roof of a house is an omen of death and coming across one is measured a bad premonition.

Mallard

The mallard is 56–65 cm long, has a wingspan of 81–98 cm, and weighs 750–1,000 g. The procreation male is distinctive, with a green head, black rear end and a yellow bill tipped with black. The female Mallard is light brown, like most female dabbling ducks. However, both the female and male Mallards have dissimilar blue speculum edged with white, important in flight or at rest. In non-breeding (eclipse) plumage the drake becomes drab, looking more like the female, but still noticeable by its yellow bill and reddish breast.

The Mallard is a rare model of both Allen's Rule and Bergmann's Rule in birds. Bergmann's Rule, which states that polar forms tend to be bigger than related ones from warmer climates, has many examples in birds. Allen's Rule says that appendages like ears lean to be smaller in polar forms to diminish heat loss, and larger in steamy and desert equivalents to ease heat dispersion, and that the polar taxa are stockier overall. Examples of this rule in birds are rare, as they lack exterior ears. However, the bill of ducks is very well supplied with blood vessels and is defenseless to cold.

Golden Eagle

The Golden Eagle is one of the best known birds of victim in the Northern Hemisphere. Like all eagles, it belongs to the family Accipitridae. Once general across the Holarctic, it has disappeared from many of the more greatly populated areas. It has a wingspan averaging over 2 m (7 ft) and up to 1 m (3 ft) in body length.

Adult Golden Eagles range generally in size across their range. The largest subspecies are among the largest eagles of the type Aquila. Length may vary from 66 to 100 cm (26–40 in), wingspan can range from 150 to 240 cm (59–95 in), and weight is from 2.5 to 7 kg (5.5–15.4 lb). As with many Falconiformes, females are noticeably larger than males, in the case of the Golden Eagle they weigh one-fourth to one-third again as much as male birds.

The plumage colours range from black-brown to dark brown, with a striking golden-buff crown and nape, which give the bird its name. The upper wings also have an uneven lighter area. Adolescent birds resemble adults, but have a duller more mottled exterior. Also they have a white-banded tail and a white scrap at the carpal joint, that regularly disappear with every moult until full adult plumage is reached in the fifth year.

Peregrine Falcon

The Peregrine Falcon, also known purely as the Peregrine, and in history also as "Duck Hawk" in North America, is a sophisticated bird of victim in the family Falconidae. It is a large falcon, about the size of a large crow, with the female being larger than the male, and with a blue-gray back, barred white underneath, and a black head and "mustache". About seventeen species are predictable, which vary in exterior and range.

The breeding range includes land regions from the Arctic tundra to the Tropics. Basically, this species can be found everywhere on Earth, except in the polar regions, on very high mountains, in deserts, and most tropical rainforests making it the world's most widespread falcon, and in fact the most extensive bird of prey. The only major ice-free landmass from where it is completely absent is New Zealand. Both the English and scientific names of this species mean "wandering falcon" and refer to the traveling habits of some populations of this widespread species.

It feeds almost exclusively on medium-sized birds, but will infrequently hunt small mammals. It reaches sexual adulthood at one year, and mates for life. It nests in a scrape, normally on precipice edges or, in recent times on tall man-made structures. The Peregrine Falcon became an endangered species due to the use of pesticides, specially DDT. Since the ban on DDT from the beginning of the 1970s onwards, the populations healthier, supported by large scale protection of nesting places and releases to the wild.