Tool
Bird Finder
Answer a few questions about the bird you saw. Skip any you are not sure about. You will get a ranked list of candidates to check against each species page.
Presence varies. Results are candidates, not confirmed identifications. Always check field marks on the species page. Bird presence and timing change with location, weather, habitat and migration. Treat this page as a starting point, then check recent local sightings (for example on eBird) before you go.
How the Bird Finder works
The finder asks seven short questions: size, color, habitat, region, season, behavior and bill. Each answer is compared with the entry for every bird in the library. A bird that fits all of your answers is a full match. A bird that misses one answer, or a small share of them, shows up under close matches with the miss spelled out, so you can decide whether that answer was the shaky one.
Tips for better answers
- Size: compare with a bird you know well, such as a sparrow, a robin or a crow. Size is easy to misjudge at a distance.
- Color: pick the colors that cover the most of the bird. Light, shade and wet feathers change how colors look. Females and young birds are often duller than males.
- Region and season: these narrow the list to birds that regularly occur there at that time. Birds do stray outside their usual range, so a bird that does not appear is not impossible.
- Bill and behavior: if you only glimpsed the bird, skip them. A wrong answer hurts more than a skipped one.
What the finder cannot do
Our library has 30 species so far, so the bird you saw may not be in it yet. The finder also cannot account for hybrids, escaped pets or unusual plumage. Use it to build a short list, then read the identification section and the similar-species notes on each page. Our guide to bird identification basics explains how to look at a bird step by step.