Identify the Bird Quiz — 10 Free Questions

Question 1

This starling-sized black-and-white bird has a bright red patch under the tail, and the male also has red on the back of the head. It climbs tree trunks propped on stiff tail feathers, hammers its beak into bark for grubs, and in spring 'drums' very fast on a dead branch instead of singing.

Question 2

This pigeon-sized bird of the cloud forests of Central America shines metallic green and gold above and deep crimson below, with a rounded bristly crest. In the breeding season the male grows streaming upper tail feathers up to a metre long that ripple behind him in flight. It eats mainly wild avocados.

Question 3

This slender, streaky brown ground bird of the deserts of the south-western United States and Mexico has a long tail, a shaggy crest, and strong legs. It hardly ever flies, preferring to sprint after lizards, snakes and insects at over 30 km/h. It is a member of the cuckoo family.

Question 4

This is one of the largest flying birds in the world, with a wingspan of about 3 metres. It is a black vulture with a ruff of white neck feathers and white wing patches, and a bare head, dull red in the male, who also has a fleshy comb. It soars for hours over the mountains of South America without a single wingbeat.

Question 5

This slim, long-tailed grey bird of Europe and Asia looks a little like a small hawk in flight. The male's simple two-note call, heard in spring, gave its name to a type of clock. The female lays her eggs one at a time in the nests of much smaller songbirds and never raises her own chicks.

Question 6

This stocky, large-headed Australian bird belongs to the kingfisher family but rarely goes near water. It has a brown back, a cream head and underparts, and a heavy beak, and it drops from a perch onto snakes, lizards and large insects. Its call is a loud, rising, cackling chorus like wild human laughter.

Question 7

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 8

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 9

This pale, night-hunting bird has a smooth, heart-shaped white face like a mask, golden-buff upperparts, and white underparts. It flies almost silently on soft-edged wings and finds mice and voles by sound alone. It often roosts in old buildings and church towers, and makes an eerie screech rather than a hoot.

Question 10

This small, fast-flying bird has long pointed wings, a deeply forked tail with thin trailing streamers, glossy blue-black upperparts, a rusty-red forehead and throat, and pale underparts. It catches insects on the wing, skimming low over fields and water, and builds a mud cup on a beam inside a farm shed.

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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.