Look at the bill: a Dunnock's is thin and pointed, a House Sparrow's short and chunky. A Dunnock also has a grey head and breast and creeps about alone or in pairs, while House Sparrows go about in ...

In Christian art the Goldfinch stands for Christ's Passion, and it appears in hundreds of devotional pictures, Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch among them. Here is what it meant, where those ...

A Goldfinch sounds tinkling: a quick two- or three-note call and a fast, liquid song of twitters, trills and buzzes. Listen to recordings of the song, calls and young birds, and learn when, where and ...

The Oregon Junco, the Slate-colored Junco and four other forms are all one species, the Dark-eyed Junco. How to recognize each one, male and female, where each lives, the Guadalupe Junco, and how ...

Identify any bird by photo, sound, or description — then learn what it eats, how to attract it, and when it's near you. From ...

The birds people mix up most, side by side, with the one feature that settles each pair: Kestrel or Sparrowhawk, Raven or ...

A chunky, bull-necked finch with a bill powerful enough to crack seeds that defeat every other finch in its range, the Evening Grosbeak is one of North America's most striking winter visitors — and ...

Peer into a dense alder thicket in June and you might catch a glimpse of one of North America's most confounding birds — a small, upright flycatcher that is virtually impossible to identify by sight ...

A bright rufous cap, a razor-clean white eyebrow, and a bold black eye-stripe make the breeding Chipping Sparrow one of the most crisply marked small birds in North America. Once the most common city ...

Egg-yolk yellow from crown to tail tip, the Northern Yellow Warbler is the brightest warbler across its vast North American range. Males carry reddish-chestnut streaks down the breast that double as a ...

Alone among North American shorebirds, the Solitary Sandpiper nests in trees — borrowing the abandoned nests of robins and waxwings high in boreal spruces rather than scraping a hollow in the ground.

Few small terns undergo a more dramatic seasonal transformation than the White-winged Tern — in breeding plumage, its jet-black body contrasts with brilliant white wings and rump in a pattern unlike ...