Identify the Bird Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

This crested songbird of eastern North America comes in a brilliant all-over red male, with a black mask around a stout orange-pink seed-cracking beak, and a warm buff-brown female with red touches. It does not migrate, and both sexes sing loudly, often a clear 'cheer-cheer-cheer' or 'birdy-birdy'.

Question 2

This tall, elegant African wetland bird is mostly slate-grey with white-and-gold wing patches, a bare white-and-red face, a black cap, and a striking halo of stiff golden bristles fanning straight up from the top of the head. Pairs perform bouncing, bowing, wing-flapping dances together year-round.

Question 3

This very large parrot of Central and South American rainforests is brilliant red, with bands of bright yellow and blue on the wings, a bare white face, and a long tapering tail. It has a huge hooked beak strong enough to crack hard nuts, screeches loudly in flight, and stays with one mate for life.

Question 4

This is the tallest and heaviest of the flightless, black-and-white, upright seabirds. It breeds in the depth of winter on the open sea ice around Antarctica, in temperatures below minus 40 C, huddling in tight groups for warmth. The male keeps the single egg on his feet for about two months, eating nothing.

Question 5

This is the largest member of the crow family, entirely glossy black, with a heavy beak, shaggy throat feathers and a wedge-shaped tail seen in flight. Very intelligent, it can solve puzzles and copy sounds, it rolls and tumbles in the air seemingly for fun, and it features in the myths of many peoples.

Question 6

This tiny, dumpy riverside bird is a dazzling electric blue above and orange below, with a long dagger-like black beak and short red legs. It sits still on a low branch over clear water, then dives straight in to grab a small fish, which it beats against the perch before swallowing head-first.

Question 7

This slim, brilliantly coloured bird of southern Europe, western Asia and Africa has a chestnut-and-gold back, a yellow throat, blue-green underparts, and a long, thin, slightly curved black beak. It catches flying insects, especially bees and wasps, in mid-air, then rubs the sting end against a branch before eating.

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About Identify the Bird

Can you name the bird? Each question shows a photograph of a bird and gives three short, easy sentences about it: what it looks like, where it lives, and how it feeds or behaves, without ever saying its name. You then pick it from four choices, and the answer tells you more.

The birds are drawn from all over the world and from every main group. There are birds of prey and owls; huge flightless runners and swimmers like the ostrich and the penguin; water birds such as swans, ducks, flamingos and pelicans; tiny hoverers and singers; tropical show-offs like toucans and macaws; and the everyday birds of streets and gardens, from pigeons and sparrows to robins and crows.

Part of the fun is learning to read a bird from a few features. How big is it, roughly? What shape is the beak -- a hook for tearing, a chisel for hammering, a spear for fishing, a fine tube for nectar, a broad sieve for filtering? What are the legs and feet like, and where does it live: open sea, reed bed, rainforest, city ledge? A handful of clues like these will usually get you close.

Many of these birds carry a bigger story. Some are national symbols. Some were nearly wiped out by hunting or pesticides and have since recovered, while a few common ones are now quietly disappearing. Some have startling abilities: a bird that smells its food underground, one that can fly backwards, one that plans ahead and solves puzzles, one that survives the Antarctic winter standing still on the ice.

The clues never name the bird or use a word that would give it away at once, so getting the answer means recognising the shape and the description rather than reading a caption. Every photograph is a freely licensed image from Wikimedia Commons, chosen from public-domain or Creative Commons sources so there is no copyright question, and every fact has been checked. The wording is kept simple, so the quiz plays the same for a keen birdwatcher and for someone who has never owned a pair of binoculars.