Passerines

Families and genera in this order

• True songbirds PasseriOver four thousand species with a voice box worked by several pairs of muscles and with songs that young birds have to learn from their neighbours - which is why chaffinches and buntings have local dialects. The group is spread across the whole world, with most of its deepest branches in Australia and its surroundings.
• Crows and allies CorvidesCrows, jays, shrikes, orioles, drongos, birds-of-paradise, vangas and a host of Australasian families. The group is centred on the islands north of Australia; it holds the builders, collectors and mimics among the songbirds - and the birds with the largest brains for their size.
• Orioles Oriolidae 1 speciesOriolus
• Shrikes Laniidae 2 speciesLanius
• Crows and jays Corvidae 7 speciesColoeus · Corvus · Garrulus · Pica
• Sparrows and allies PasseridesThe other half of the songbirds: tits, larks, swallows, warblers, thrushes, flycatchers, starlings, sparrows, finches and buntings. Practically every songbird you see in Europe belongs here; outside Australasia this is by far the most numerous songbird group, across Eurasia, Africa and the Americas.
• Tits, swallows and warblers SylviidaTits and bearded reedlings, larks, swallows, bulbuls, reed, leaf and Sylvia warblers, long-tailed tits, white-eyes and babblers. These are the small, grey-green species you know by song sooner than by plumage - the branch where, for a birder, the ear beats the eye.
• Tits Paridae 6 speciesCyanistes · Lophophanes · Parus · Periparus · Poecile
• Penduline tits Remizidae 1 speciesRemiz
• Larks Alaudidae 3 speciesAlauda · Eremophila · Lullula
• Bearded reedlings Panuridae 1 speciesPanurus
• Cisticolas Cisticolidae 1 speciesCisticola
• Reed warblers Acrocephalidae 7 speciesAcrocephalus · Hippolais
• Grasshopper warblers Locustellidae 2 speciesLocustella
• Swallows and martins Hirundinidae 3 speciesDelichon · Hirundo · Riparia
• Leaf warblers Phylloscopidae 6 speciesPhylloscopus
• Bush warblers Cettiidae 1 speciesCettia
• Long-tailed tits Aegithalidae 1 speciesAegithalos
• Sylvia warblers Sylviidae 4 speciesCurruca · Sylvia
• Thrushes, flycatchers and starlings MuscicapidaThrushes, flycatchers, nightingales and redstarts, starlings, mockingbirds, wrens, nuthatches, treecreepers, dippers and waxwings. These are the songbirds that pick insects off branch, trunk or ground and switch largely to berries in winter - the reason thrushes shift west en masse in a hard winter.
• Wrens Troglodytidae 1 speciesTroglodytes
• Starlings Sturnidae 1 speciesSturnus
• Thrushes Turdidae 6 speciesTurdus
• Chats and flycatchers Muscicapidae 7 speciesErithacus · Ficedula · Luscinia · Muscicapa · Oenanthe · Phoenicurus
• Finches, sparrows and buntings PasseridaSparrows, accentors, wagtails and pipits, weavers, waxbills, finches, buntings and the American warblers and tanagers. This is the branch of the seed-eaters: the conical bill of a chaffinch or bullfinch tells you at a glance what it is for, even though nearly all of them feed their young on insects.
• Finches Fringillidae 2 speciesCarduelis · Fringilla
• Buntings Emberizidae 1 speciesEmberiza