Dapperly dressed in black, white, and glacial gray, the Northern Shrike might pass as any other songbird. But don’t be fooled ...

A common seabird off the Atlantic Coast, seldom coming close to shore except during storms. The Great Shearwater often forages in flocks. Commonly feeds around fishing boats, fighting over scraps and ...

A swift-flying seabird, extremely graceful and agile in flight. When swimming, it floats buoyantly, and it takes flight from the water easily. Of the three jaeger species, the Long-tail is the ...

One of the smallest gulls to be found in North America. Delicate in flight, the Bonaparte's Gull suggests a tern more than it does the larger gulls. It differs from large gulls in other ways as well: ...

The Broad-winged Hawk is a small hawk, common in eastern woodlands in summer. Staying around the edges of forest, the Broad-wing Hawk is often not very noticeable during the breeding season, but form ...

This regal bird is the largest of our soaring Buteo hawks, a fitting raptor for the wide skies and windswept plains of the west. It soars with its broad wings held in a shallow V, and swoops down to ...

The strident laughing calls of the well-named Laughing Gull are among the most characteristic sounds around tidewater along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, especially in summer. It seems to be mostly a ...

This slim and graceful hawk is a common sight over grasslands of the Great Plains and the west, but only in summer: every autumn, most individuals migrate to southern South America. Although ...

Not a bird of open prairies, the Prairie Warbler nests mainly in young second growth scrub and densely overgrown fields in eastern North America. Such habitats are often temporary, and colonies may ...

Cowboys sometimes called these owls 'howdy birds,' because they seemed to nod in greeting from the entrances to their burrows in prairie-dog towns. Colorful fiction once held that owls, prairie-dogs, ...

Widespread on Pacific Coast from Alaska to California, but more local in the east, being found mainly off eastern Canada. This large auk sits upright on sea cliffs, looking like a northern version of ...

One of our tiniest birds, the Golden-crowned Kinglet is remarkable in its ability to survive in cold climates. Nesting in northern forest, wintering throughout much of the continent, it is usually in ...