Cold knowledge of 20 most beautiful species of the most common birds in North America

 

1/Northern Cardinal

A perennial favorite among people, the Northern Cardinal is the state bird of seven states.

by macaulaylibrary/the CornellLab

• Backyard Tips

Nearly any bird feeder you put out ought to attract Northern Cardinals (as long as you live within their range), but they particularly seem to use sunflower seeds. Leave undergrowth in your backyard or around the edges, and you may have cardinals nesting on your property

• Range map

by allaboutbirds/the CornellLab

 

 

2/Common Redpoll

As energetic as their electric zapping call notes would suggest, Common Redpolls are active foragers that travel in busy flocks. Look for them feeding on catkins in birch trees or visiting feeders in winter.During winter, some Common Redpolls tunnel into the snow to stay warm during the night. Tunnels may be more than a foot long and 4 inches under the insulating snow.

 

by macaulaylibrary/the CornellLab

• Backyard Tips

Common Redpolls eat seeds of a size to match their small bills. They’re particularly likely to come to thistle or nyjer feeders, though they may also take black oil sunflower or scavenge opened seeds left behind by larger-billed birds.

 

• Range map

 

3/Purple Finch

The Purple Finch is the bird that Roger Tory Peterson famously described as a “sparrow dipped in raspberry juice.” For many of us, they’re irregular winter visitors to our feeders.

 

• Backyard Tips

Purple Finches have large, seed-cracking beaks, and they seem to like black oil sunflower seeds best. A seed preference study determined that they choose thinner sunflower seeds over wider ones. Coniferous trees in your backyard may encourage Purple Finches to visit.

• Range map

 

by allaboutbirds/the CornellLab 

4/Mourning Dove

Mourning Doves perch on telephone wires and forage for seeds on the ground; their flight is fast and bullet straight. Their soft, drawn-out calls sound like laments. When taking off, their wings make a sharp whistling or whinnying.

 

by macaulaylibrary/the CornellLab 

• Backyard Tips

Scatter seeds, particularly millet, on the ground or on platform feeders. Plant dense shrubs or evergreen trees in your yard to provide nesting sites. Keep your cats inside - birds that spend much of their time on the ground are particularly vulnerable to prowling cats. 

• Range map

 

5/Blue Jay

Blue Jays are known for their intelligence and complex social systems with tight family bonds. Their fondness for acorns is credited with helping spread oak trees after the last glacial period.

• Backyard Tips

Blue Jays prefer tray feeders or hopper feeders on a post rather than hanging feeders, and they prefer peanuts, sunflower seeds, and suet. Planting oak trees will make acorns available for jays of the future. Blue Jays often take drinks from birdbaths.

• Range map

 

 by allaboutbirds/the CornellLab

 

 

 

 

6/American Robin

The quintessential early bird, American Robins are common sights on lawns across North America, where you often see them tugging earthworms out of the ground. Robins are popular birds for their warm orange breast, cheery song, and early appearance at the end of winter. 

by macaulaylibrary/the CornellLab

• Backyard Tips

American robins eat a lot of invertebrates and fruits. Especially in spring and summer, they eat a lot of earthworms, insects and some snails. Robins also eat a wide variety of fruits, including bitter cherries, hawthorn, dogwood and sumac, as well as juniper berries.

Robbins eats different types of food according to the time of day: eat more earthworms in the morning and more fruit in the evening.

• Range map

by allaboutbirds/the CornellLab 

7/Mountain Bluebird

Historically, the Mountain Bluebird depended for nest sites on forest tree cavities excavated by woodpeckers. Today, many Mountain Bluebirds breed in artificial nest boxes, which tend to be situated in more open areas and have smaller openings to keep out marauders and bad weather. Most of what we know about Mountain Bluebirds comes from studies of these human-made nesting sites.

• Backyard Tips

Mountain Bluebirds take readily to nest boxes. If you live in suitably open habitat within their range, consider putting up a nest box to attract a breeding pair. Make sure you put it up well before breeding season. Nest boxes should be located away from buildings, areas of heavy pesticide use, and dense woods, ideally in open rural country with scattered clumps of trees or low shrubs.

• Range map

 

 

8/Ruby-throated Hummingbird   

A flash of green and red, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird is eastern North America’s sole breeding hummingbird. These brilliant, tiny, precision-flying creatures glitter like jewels in the full sun, then vanish with a zip toward the next nectar source.Scientists place hummingbirds and swifts in the same taxonomic order, the Apodiformes. The name means “without feet,” which is certainly how these birds look most of the time.

 

• Backyard Tips

You can attract Ruby-throated Hummingbirds to your backyard by bird feeders or by planting tubular flowers. Make sugar water mixtures with about one-quarter cup of sugar per cup of water. Food coloring is unnecessary; table sugar is the best choice. Change the water before it grows cloudy or discolored and remember that during hot weather, sugar water ferments rapidly to produce toxic alcohol. Be careful about where you put your hummingbird feeders, as some cats have learned to lie in wait to catch visiting hummingbirds.

• Range map

9/Indigo Bunting

The all-blue male Indigo Bunting sings with cheerful gusto and looks like a scrap of sky with wings. Indigo Buntings migrate at night, guided by the stars. Like all other blue birds, the indigo bunting has no blue pigment. Their jewel-like color comes from the microstructure in the feathers that refracts and reflects blue light, just like particles in the air make the sky look blue.

• Backyard Tips

You can attract Indigo Buntings to your yard with feeders, particularly with small seeds such as thistle or nyjer. Indigo Buntings also eat many insects, so live mealworms may attract them as well.

• Range map

 

10/Red-headed Woodpecker

The gorgeous Red-headed Woodpecker is so boldly patterned it’s been called a “flying checkerboard,” with an entirely crimson head, a snow-white body, and half white, half inky black wings. These birds don’t act quite like most other woodpeckers: they’re adept at catching insects in the air, and they eat lots of acorns and beech nuts, often hiding away extra food in tree crevices for later.

• Backyard Tips

Red-headed Woodpeckers occasionally visit feeders in winter, especially suet. They will eat seeds, corn, acorns, beechnuts, pecans, and many kinds of fruits (including apples, pears, cherries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, grapes, mulberries, and poison ivy fruits).

• Range map

11/Violet-green Swallow

• Backyard Tips

12/Elegant Trogon

Trogon is a Greek word that means "chewer", referring to its insectivorous diet and big hook mouth. Many types of trogons live in tropical forests, but only one type frequently occurs in North America. The elegant Trogons are easily recognizable due to their metallic greens and rose reds, as well as their unusual sturdy, square-tailed silhouettes. They are a prized attraction for birdwatchers visiting southeastern Arizona.

• Range map

13/Bohemian Waxwing

Bohemian Waxwings have an uncanny ability to find fruit nearly everywhere, almost like they have a GPS tracker for berries. Flocks sometimes turn up in desert areas, find an isolated shrub, devour its fruit in minutes, and move on.Unlike many songbirds, Bohemian wax wings have no breeding grounds and no real singing. Bohemian waxwing birds make shrill calls when they wander around in groups looking for fruit.

by BN Signh

• Backyard Tips

The nomadic nature of Bohemian wax wings makes it difficult to predict if and when they will appear in your yard. But they are fruit connoisseurs, so planting a native tree or shrub that can bear fruit in late autumn and winter may bring anyone who passes through your area.

• Range map

14/Scarlet Tanager

The male scarlet tanager is one of the most dazzling birds in the eastern forest in summer. Its blood-red body is set off by its dark wings and tail. They are also one of the most frustrating and hard to find because they stand high in the forest canopy and sing rich and rough songs.

By Peter Brannon

• Backyard Tips

Scarlet Tanagers visit many kinds of berry plants, including blackberries, raspberries, huckleberries, juneberries, serviceberries, mulberries, strawberries, and chokeberries.

• Range map

 provided by Birds of the World

15/Painted Bunting

With the vivid fusion of blue, green, yellow and red, the male bunting bunting seems to fly directly from the child's picture book. They are often illegally caught and sold as cage birds, especially in Mexico and the Caribbean. The western population of Painted Buntings began to migrate in autumn before molting, molted in the staging area of northern Mexico, and then continued to migrate south

By Tim J.Hopwood

• Backyard Tips

Painted Buntings eat seeds, particularly after the breeding season is over, starting in midsummer. They’re more likely to visit a bird feeder in a yard with low, dense vegetation.

• Range map

 provided by Birds of the World

16/Wood Duck

The wood duck is the most beautiful of all waterfowl. The male is a rainbow of maroon and green, with gorgeous patterns on almost every feather; elegant females have unique outlines and delicate white patterns around the eyes.

Wood ducks build nests on trees near the water, sometimes directly on the water. There are few natural burrows for nesting. Wood ducks can easily use the nest boxes provided for them. If the nest boxes are placed too close, many females will lay eggs in the nests of other females.

• Backyard Tips

Consider putting up a nest box to attract a breeding pair. Make sure you put it up well before breeding season. Attach a guard to keep predators from raiding eggs and young. 

• Range map

17/Hooded Merganser

They are the only merganser that is restricted to North America. "Hooded" is a bit of an understatement for the little duck with a crown. Hooded Merganser are quite common in small ponds and rivers, where they dive in search of fish, crayfish and other food, and catch them with their elongated serrated beaks. They build nests in tree holes; when ducklings are only one day old, they will boldly leap to the forest floor.

by Noah Frade

• Backyard Tips 

If you live near the appropriate habitat for mergansers, consider putting up a nest box to attract a breeding pair. Make sure you put it up well before breeding season. Attach a guard to keep predators from raiding eggs and young. If your box does not have nest material from a previous resident, you can add wood shavings to entice a new resident.

• Range map

 provided by Birds of the World

18/Northern Flicker

Northern Flickers is a large brown woodpecker with a gentle expression and beautiful black scallop feathers. Don’t be surprised if you start one from the ground while walking. This is not the place where you expect to find woodpeckers, but shimmering woodpeckers mainly eat ants and beetles. In winter, the shimmering north of their range moves south, although some individuals often stay quite far north.

by Todd Steckel

• Backyard Tips

 Consider putting up a nest box to attract a breeding pair. Make sure you put it up well before breeding season. Attach a guard to keep predators from raiding eggs and young.

• Range map

 provided by Birds of the World