Passerines | Passeriformes

Families in this order

• Suboscines | TyranniTyrant flycatchers, antbirds, ovenbirds and, in the Old World, broadbills and pittas - almost all of them South American or from the tropics around the Indian Ocean. Their song is fixed in the genes: they do not learn it from neighbours, and their voice box is controlled by fewer muscles than that of the true songbirds.
• Tityras, becards and allies | Tityridae1 speciesThese are heavily built birds of the canopy along woodland edges, with a large head, a short, broad bill with a small hook at the tip, and a quiet, upright posture. They sit still for long spells, then make a short sally to snatch an insect from a leaf or twig and return; a good deal of fruit is taken too, plucked from the branch while hanging or in flight. The vocal apparatus is more simply built than in most songbirds: the sounds are not learned but innate, and consist of thin, high whistles, nasal complaining notes and a growling burr, without real song. The nest catches the eye sooner than the bird does: a bulky, globular ball of grass, rootlets and plant fibre, sometimes half a metre long, hanging from the tip of a slender branch over a clearing or over water, with the entrance low on one side. Another part of the family nests instead in a tree cavity, which is stuffed with dry leaves and is sometimes taken from its rightful occupants. Male and female differ in colour.
• Tyrant flycatchers and allies | Tyrannidae38 speciesFrom a fixed, open lookout a passing insect is taken with a short sally — sometimes audible as a dry snap of the bill — after which the bird returns to the same perch and waits motionless again. Stiff bristles along the broad, flat bill shield the eyes during the strike. Song in this family is not learned but innate, and consists of a handful of short, sharp phrases; several species with almost identical grey-green plumage can be told apart in the field by voice alone. In the early morning, before it is light, two or three of those phrases are repeated in shifting order for half an hour. Many species carry a concealed patch of colour on the crown that is raised only in excitement. The nest is defended fiercely: an approaching hawk or crow is attacked and pursued well beyond the territory. Besides insects, berries are taken in late summer, often plucked from the bush in flight.
• True songbirds | PasseriWhat sets this group apart within the order is that the song is not fixed but has to be learned: in its first months a young bird takes its model from adult neighbours, so that one species sounds different from district to district. The voice box carries the full number of muscle pairs for the job; some species produce two notes at once, others take whole passages from the sounds around them. Song serves both to mark out a territory and to win a mate, and many species keep a fixed repertoire of dozens of phrases for it. With over four thousand species the group makes up the greater part of the order; it is found across the whole world and is richest in forms in Australia and its surroundings.
• Crows and allies | CorvidesLarge, heavily built birds by songbird standards, with a powerful and often slightly hooked bill, and a diet of whatever is available: insects and fruit, but also eggs, nestlings and carrion. For their size they have the largest brains of any birds, which shows in their memory for places, the way they handle objects and the ease with which they imitate sounds. They are long-lived, often stay with the same partner for years, and live in family parties in which last year's young help to raise a new brood. The clutch is small and the nest a solid cup high in a tree or shrub. The group is centred on Australasia and the islands north of Australia, and most of its species stay in their area all year.
• Shrike-babblers, Erpornis and vireos | Vireonidae15 speciesThe bill is heavier than in most insect-eaters of the same size and ends in a small hook, used to pin a caterpillar against a branch and tear it apart. Foraging is strikingly slow and deliberate: the bird works step by step through the canopy, pausing again and again to peer at the underside of the leaves before striking — that calm, almost hesitant movement gives it away sooner than its colours do. The song is a series of short, slightly burry phrases with a pause between each, kept up for hours, through the middle of the day and late into the summer when other species have fallen silent; when disturbed, a nasal, scolding churr. The nest is a neatly woven cup slung by its rim in a horizontal fork, built of bark strips, grass and spider silk and finished on the outside with lichen or papery flakes. Both parents incubate and sit tight as anyone approaches.
• Monarchs and allies | Monarchidae3 speciesIn this region the family is represented by the small, restless forest birds of the Hawaiian islands. They are never still: the tail is carried cocked over the back and spread like a fan, the wings are flicked, and the bird hops from twig to twig picking insects off leaves and bark or snatching them from the air in a short sally, helped by stiff bristles around the base of the bill. They are strikingly inquisitive and will come within a few metres to look a visitor over. The clear, whistled four-syllable call is heard all year and gave the bird its Hawaiian name; anyone choosing a trunk for a canoe watched whether the bird was pecking at it, for that meant the wood was riddled. The nest is a small, deep cup of fibre and moss, finished on the outside with lichen and bound together with spider silk, wedged into a fork; both parents build, incubate and feed, and a pair holds the same territory year after year. Mosquitoes carrying avian malaria now confine these birds largely to the higher forests.
• Shrikes | Laniidae2 speciesThe hooked bill carries a sharp tooth on either side that fits a notch in the lower mandible, used to sever the neck vertebrae of prey. The feet are those of a songbird and too weak to hold anything down while eating, and the answer is to impale the prey on a thorn, a barb of wire or a tight fork of a twig: it is then held fast for tearing apart, and stored at the same time. A territory therefore carries larders of grasshoppers, beetles, mice, lizards and small birds, sometimes for days on end; toxic or foul-tasting prey is left hanging until the substances break down, and the size of the larder counts in the choice of a mate. Hunting is done from a wire, post or bush top with a clear view: the bird drops away at an angle and then sweeps low and undulating up to the next perch. The nest is a bulky, deeply lined cup in a thorn bush. Outside the breeding season male and female each hold a separate winter territory, defended with a rasping call.
• Crows, jays and magpies | Corvidae19 speciesRelative to body size, this family has the largest brain of any bird group, capable of solving novel problems, using tools, and remembering the exact location of hundreds of food caches, sometimes months later. The strong, all-purpose bill serves for hammering and tearing as well as for picking up an object with precision, matching a diet that ranges from seeds and carrion to the eggs and nestlings of other birds. In several species within the family, young from an earlier brood stay with the parent pair to help feed and guard the next clutch, a form of cooperation rare among birds. Their vocal output is unusually varied and includes, alongside their own calls, mimicry of other birds and environmental sounds, contributing to a rich repertoire of social behaviour within groups.
• Sparrows and allies | PasseridesSet against the crow group is the other half of the songbirds: mostly small, lightly built birds with a fine bill, taking insects, seeds and nectar from leaf, twig and ground. They lay larger clutches, often raise two or three broods a year, and build an open cup or a closed nest in cover, in a hole or against a wall. In the north most of them leave as soon as the insects run out, and the territory is claimed again with song in spring. Outside Australasia this is by far the most numerous group of songbirds: practically every songbird you see in Europe belongs here.
• Tits, swallows and warblers | SylviidaSmall insect-eaters with a thin, pointed bill, gathering their food from among leaves and twigs or catching it in the air. The plumage is green, grey or brown, with little difference between male and female and often less still between closely related species - this is the group in which a birder gets more from the ear than from the eye. The nest sits deep in vegetation, in a hole, or as a closed ball among the stems, and the clutch is large for a songbird. Many species winter south of the Sahara or in southern Asia, and outside the breeding season they move through scrub and canopy in mixed parties.
• Penduline tits | Remizidae1 speciesThe most telling structure is one that serves all year: a closed ball of thorny twigs with a narrow side entrance, lined inside with plant down and feathers and anchored firmly in a spiny shrub. A pair builds several a year, and those used only for sleeping have thicker walls than the breeding nest, which saves warmth on cold desert nights. The bill is short, straight and needle-sharp; with it small insects and spiders are picked out of thorn scrub and the base of flowers is pierced to reach the nectar. Free water is barely sought out: moisture comes from prey and fruit, which makes a living possible in low, parched scrub where summer temperatures run high. The voice is sharp and carries far for so small a bird, and the pair defends its ground the year round, outside the breeding season as well.
• Tits, chickadees and titmice | Paridae12 speciesThe feet are short but strong enough to let the bird hang upside down from a twig tip while searching among needles or leaves for insects and seeds. In autumn these birds cache thousands of seeds and insects scattered over a wide area, and a markedly enlarged hippocampus lets them relocate those hiding spots weeks later. The family nests in cavities, usually an abandoned woodpecker hole or a soft, rotten stump excavated into a nest hole by the birds themselves, lined with moss and hair. The familiar, partly innate alarm call encodes in its number of repeated notes how dangerous an approaching predator is judged to be, and outside the breeding season chickadees and titmice often join mixed flocks with other small woodland birds.
• Larks | Alaudidae2 speciesOn the back of the tarsus these birds carry separate scales along a rounded ridge, where other songbirds have a single smooth horny plate. The plumage is finely streaked in sand, earth and grey tones and disappears completely against bare ground; a bird lost from view is found again only once it moves. Breeding takes place in a scrape in open, low or unvegetated terrain, and beside the cup a pavement of small stones or clods of earth is often laid, on the side the wind comes from. The young creep away from that scrape days before they can fly and scatter on foot across the ground, which lowers the chance that a single discovery costs the whole brood. Song is delivered high in the air and runs on without a pause, in some species for minutes at a time, with imitations of other birds worked into it. In winter loose flocks move over stubble, road verges and wind-swept snow, and the diet shifts largely from insects to seeds.
• Reed warblers and allies | Acrocephalidae1 speciesThe bill is long, flat and broad at the base, the forehead runs level into it, and the legs are heavy with long toes: with these an upright stem is gripped and the bird climbs up and down with its feet clamped around two stems at once. The plumage is plain brown to olive, without markings that make the species easy to tell apart. The nest is a deep cylindrical basket woven around several stems; that depth keeps the eggs in place when the stems sway in the wind. The song is loud, grating and repetitive, with phrases repeated two or three times in a row, often at night as well. On one remote island in this region lives a species that does not migrate and keeps to low dry scrub rather than reeds, feeding mainly on moths; that island covers less than a square kilometre, and a second population has been established on a neighbouring island so that survival does not hang on the one place.
• Swallows | Hirundinidae8 speciesInsects are not taken from a perch but caught in long, banking sweeps low over water, pasture or road surface, often just behind grazing cattle or a mower that flushes the prey; unlike other aerial hunters, these birds do settle readily on wires and thin branches. There are three ways of nesting: a tunnel dug with bill and feet into a steep sandy bank, a cavity or nest box lined with feathers, and a cup or a closed, flask-shaped structure of mud pellets carried in one by one and plastered against a beam, bridge pier or rock overhang — sometimes hundreds of nests side by side. The voice is a liquid, chattering babble; one sharp alarm call brings a whole colony into the air at once. After fledging the young are fed on the wing for days, and towards migration large flocks gather in reed beds at dusk.
• Tit-warblers, bushtits and long-tailed tits | Aegithalidae1 speciesThe nest is a hanging, purse-shaped bag of moss, lichen and spider silk, camouflaged on the outside and lined inside with hundreds of small feathers; it takes weeks to build, the fabric stretches as the young grow, and the whole family sleeps in it at night, including after the young have fledged. The entrance sits high in one side. Outside the breeding season these birds move through scrub and treetops in groups of ten to a few dozen as one unbroken string: one after another they hop the same route, while a constant fine ticking holds the party together. There is no true song. At the nest the parents are regularly helped by extra adults that bring food, and a pair disturbed while building leaves the half-finished structure and starts again elsewhere. Male and female are hard to tell apart, except by the colour of the iris.
• Bush warblers and allies | Cettiidae1 speciesThe family does not belong here by nature: on the island group in the Pacific a species was released in the 1920s and has since spread across almost all the main islands, from gardens and plantations up into mountain forest. These are inconspicuous brown birds of dense low scrub, with short rounded wings and a long graduated tail that carries ten feathers instead of the usual twelve. They stay in cover almost all the time and are heard far more often than seen. The song is extraordinarily loud for so small a bird: a long drawn high whistle followed by a short, bursting closing phrase, and it carries through thick greenery far enough to mark out a large territory. A male mates with several females; the female builds the nest alone, a deep cup low in the foliage, and raises the young by herself.
• Leaf warblers | Phylloscopidae2 speciesThese are small, slender birds in plain olive, grey and brown tones, with a thin pointed bill, a pale eyebrow stripe and, in some, one or two pale wingbars; male and female look alike. The species resemble one another so closely that in the field they are separated mainly by sound: each has its own, usually simply built song and a characteristic call, while the differences in plumage come down to the length of the eyebrow stripe and the colour of the legs and lower mandible. Foraging is restless, in the outer foliage, where minute insects and aphids are picked from the undersides of leaves. The nest stands on or just above the ground and is domed, with the entrance in one side. Migration runs for thousands of kilometres to tropical wintering grounds, and it is on that long route that birds regularly end up far outside their usual range in autumn.
• Bulbuls | Pycnonotidae2 speciesThe family does not belong here by nature: birds from the cage-bird trade have been released or have escaped and have settled in gardens, parks and orchards on the islands in the Pacific and locally on the mainland in the south. They are medium-sized birds with loose, soft plumage, a short neck and a slender, slightly decurved bill with stiff bristles at its base; hair-like feathers stand on the nape, and many species carry a crest. They live in noisy parties, call all day in clear chattering phrases and are conspicuously present in settled country. The food consists largely of fruit and flower buds, supplemented with nectar and with insects seized in a short sally from a perch; fruit is swallowed whole, so the seeds pass through undamaged and end up elsewhere. The nest is an open cup in a shrub or low tree.
• Parrotbills and allies | Paradoxornithidae1 speciesThe bill is short, deep and strongly arched, with a curved upper edge, built to crack hard seeds and to prise insects out of stems. Also striking are a long graduated tail often held cocked, short rounded wings and loose, fluffy plumage. These are birds of dense low scrub that seldom venture far from cover and fly poorly; in this region one species lives in the dry, springy brush of the western coastal hills. They are markedly sedentary: a pair stays together the whole year and often for life in the same territory, roosts side by side and moves so little that many birds spend their entire lives within a few hundred metres of where they hatched. The song is a series of clear notes that speeds up and runs into a rattle, like a bouncing ball; it is heard all year, and the bird is almost always heard before it is seen.
• White-eyes and allies | Zosteropidae1 speciesThe family does not belong here by nature: birds were released on the islands in the Pacific in the 1920s, and the species now occurs there in large numbers, from gardens at sea level up into mountain forest. The mark of the family is a closed ring of short white feathers around the eye, sharply set off against plain olive-green upperparts. The bill is fine, pointed and slightly decurved, and the tongue ends in a brush-like tip with which nectar is taken from flowers; small fruit and insects are eaten as well. They are thoroughly social: they move through the canopy in parties, keep in touch with a thin, continuous calling and preen each other's head feathers. The nest is a small, neatly woven cup slung in a fork. Members of this family have reached and populated remote island groups all over the world.
• Laughingthrushes and allies | Leiothrichidae3 speciesThe family does not belong here by nature: these birds were imported as cage birds for their song, and released or escaped individuals have settled on the islands in the Pacific, along forest edges, in gullies and in run-wild plantings. They are sturdily built birds with short rounded wings and strong legs, spending most of their time in the lowest layer of dense forest: leaf litter is turned over with bill and feet, and open ground is crossed on foot rather than on the wing. They live in parties that shift noisily through the undergrowth and answer one another in clear whistling and cackling series, two birds fitting their phrases together so tightly that it sounds like a single song. The nest is a cup low in dense cover, and in part of the family group members other than the pair help to feed and guard the young.
• Thrushes, flycatchers and starlings | MuscicapidaSongbirds that work from a fixed post: sitting upright they watch about them and drop onto whatever moves, or else pick insects off bark, branch and ground. The legs are sturdy, the bill is broad at the base and set with bristles, and the song is loud and musical, with a great many phrases run one after another. The first plumage of the young is spotted or scaled, even in species that are plain as adults. In late summer and winter most of them turn largely to berries and other soft fruit - the reason thrushes shift west en masse in a hard winter.
• Waxwings | Bombycillidae2 speciesThe plumage is silky and smooth, with hardly any individual feathers showing; the pointed crest, the black mask and a crisp yellow or orange band at the tip of the tail are the marks to look for. On the tips of the inner wing feathers adult birds carry red waxy plates, widened ends of the feather shaft, whose number increases with age and plays a part in the choice of a mate. For much of the year these birds live almost entirely on fruit and berries, swallowed whole and passed quickly through the gut; on fermented fruit they can become visibly drunk. No territory is defended: flocks wander all year from one fruiting shrub to the next, which means they may be present in hundreds one winter and absent the next. Perched in a row they pass a berry or a petal from bill to bill along the line and back again. There is no real song, only a very high thin trill as a contact call. Breeding comes late in the season, as the fruit ripens.
• Silky-flycatchers | Ptiliogonatidae1 speciesThe plumage is soft and silky, the head carries a thin, upright crest and the eye is red. Insects are caught in a graceful, fluttering sally above the canopy, but for most of the year the family lives on small fruit. The desert species depends almost entirely on mistletoe berries: hundreds pass through in a day, swallowed whole, after which the skin is separated from the pulp in the stomach and the seed is voided within half an hour; it sticks to a branch and grows there into a new mistletoe, so the bird sows its own food plant. Unlike wandering berry-eaters, it holds a winter territory around a tree laden with mistletoe and defends it against other fruit-eating birds. The nest is a small, shallow cup in a fork of a branch, built mainly by the male. The call is a soft whistle that bends upward like a question; the song is thin and hesitant, with imitations worked into it.
• Kinglets | Regulidae2 speciesAt around six grams these are among the smallest songbirds in the region. They are almost never still, flitting through the outer twigs of conifers and flicking their wings nervously as they go, a manner that gives them away at a distance. While feeding they hover briefly in place to pick minute insects, springtails and eggs from the underside of needles. The crown carries a coloured patch that normally lies half hidden between the surrounding feathers and is only raised into a blazing crest in excitement or display. The nest is a deep, thick-walled cup of moss, lichen and spider silk slung beneath a conifer branch, so small that the eggs lie in two layers; the clutch is remarkably large for a bird of this size. The song is a series of very high thin notes running into a fast tumbling ending. Outside the breeding season they join roving parties of woodland birds and get through cold nights by huddling tightly together.
• Nuthatches | Sittidae4 speciesThese are the only birds that walk head-first down a trunk and along the underside of a branch without using the tail as a prop: the tail is short, and the bird holds on with one foot up and one foot down, with long curved claws. Bark crevices are therefore inspected from an angle that birds which only climb upwards never get to see. A seed or nut is wedged into a crack and hacked open with short hard blows of the bill; in late summer such stores are pushed into the bark and covered with a flake of lichen or bark. Nesting is in cavities, and some species smear the rim of the entrance with resin or wipe it with a crushed insect. The call is nasal and tooting and is heard all year round. In several species young from the previous year help the pair to feed the brood, and in winter dozens of birds roost pressed together in the same hole.
• Treecreepers | Certhiidae1 speciesThe upperparts are mottled brown, rust and white like a piece of bark; a bird pressed motionless against a trunk cannot be picked out at close range. The tail feathers are stiff and pointed and serve as a prop, the claws are long and curved, and the thin bill is strongly decurved for probing into crevices in the bark. Foraging follows a fixed pattern: start at the foot of a trunk, climb upward in a spiral into the lowest branches, then fly to the base of the next tree and begin again. The food consists almost entirely of small arthropods and their eggs, picked out of the bark. The nest is a crescent-shaped hammock of twigs and spider silk, wedged behind a loose slab of bark on a dead or dying tree, with an opening at either end. Song and calls are so high and thin that they lie at the upper limit of human hearing and are inaudible to many people.
• Gnatwrens and gnatcatchers | Polioptilidae4 speciesThese are very small, slender insect-eaters with a fine, needle-like bill and a long, narrow tail edged with white. The tail is seldom still: it is cocked and swung sideways in short jerks, and the flash of white startles insects out of cover, to be taken in the air with a brief sally. Foraging goes on without pause among the outermost twigs of shrubs and canopies, often while hanging upside down or briefly hovering in place. The sound that gives the birds away first is a thin, nasal, slightly rasping zzzz with which a pair keeps contact all year; the song is a soft, rambling murmur with snatches of imitation in it, audible only at close range. The nest is a small, deep cup built straddling a branch; after disturbance it is taken apart and the material worked into another one, sometimes more than once in a season. Species of dry thorn scrub stay paired throughout the year and take most of their moisture from their prey, while northern birds migrate away.
• Wrens | Troglodytidae10 speciesThese are small brown birds with fine barring on wings and tail and a thin, slightly curved bill; the tail is often flicked steeply upright. They move through dense scrub, brush piles, reed beds and rock crevices in a mouse-like way, creeping into every opening in search of insects and spiders. For the size of the body the voice is remarkably loud: sustained, rapid trills and rolling phrases kept up for minutes on end, answered in some species by the female with a rattling call, so that it sounds like one continuous outburst. The nest is, in part of the family, a closed ball of grass with a side entrance, in others a cavity or niche stuffed full of twigs; the male builds several rough starts and the female then picks one and finishes it with feathers and hair. Outside the breeding season several birds crowd into the same narrow hole in cold weather to get through the night.
• Mockingbirds and thrashers | Mimidae11 speciesA long tail, often held cocked while the bird feeds, and a slender bill that is strongly decurved in part of the family are the marks to look for; the bill sweeps sideways through leaf litter and loose soil, throwing it aside until insects, larvae and seeds are exposed. Much of the song consists of imitated snatches of other birds, of frogs and of sounds from the surroundings, delivered in a rhythm that is fixed for each species: one repeats every phrase about three times before moving on, another exactly twice, a third strings the snatches together without repeating at all, so that the singer can be placed by ear. Unpaired males sing from an exposed perch, at night as well, and the repertoire keeps growing throughout life. The nest is a coarse twig cup low in a dense shrub or thorn thicket, and a breeding pair will attack cats, snakes and people that come too close without hesitating. Insects dominate the diet in summer, berries in winter.
• Rhabdornis, starlings and mynas | Sturnidae2 speciesThe family does not belong here by nature: in 1890 a few dozen birds were released in a city park on the east coast, and within half a century they had spread across the whole continent, while on the Pacific islands another member of the family was set free and now lives in villages and along roads. They are sturdy, short-tailed birds with a pointed bill that walk over the ground rather than hop, with a purposeful, slightly waddling stride. In autumn the glossy plumage carries pale feather tips that wear away during the winter, so that by spring the bird has turned dark and metallic without moulting. The song is a long, rambling series of whistles, clicks and rattles into which imitated sounds of other birds and of machinery are inserted. Nesting is in cavities, which are taken from other hole-nesting birds with much commotion. Outside the breeding season the birds roost in their thousands and wheel above the roost in dense, coherent clouds before dark.
• Dippers | Cinclidae1 speciesThese are the only songbirds that feed under water. In fast streams they walk upstream along the bottom, turn over pebbles and pick caddisfly, mayfly and stonefly larvae from their undersides; in deeper water they row with the wings. The head is held angled into the current, which presses the bird down onto the bed, while the claws grip the gravel. The body is stocky and short-tailed, the plumage dense and kept waterproof with oil from an unusually large preen gland; the nostrils close with a flap and a nictitating membrane slides across the eye under water. On a boulder in midstream the bird bobs continuously in deep knee-bends and blinks with white eyelids. The nest is a large ball of moss with a low entrance at the front, on a ledge above the water, under a bridge or behind a waterfall where the spray drifts over it. The song is loud, sustained and pitched high enough to carry over the roar of the water, and is heard in midwinter too, along the fixed stretch of stream that is held all year.
• Thrushes and allies | Turdidae20 speciesRegardless of the adult pattern, the young of nearly every species in this family show a densely spotted breast, a pattern that fades in some adults and persists in others, such as the true thrushes. The song is melodious and flute-like, with a wide tonal range produced by a syrinx with two independently controlled sound sources, letting some species produce two notes at once. Ground foraging follows a distinctive run-stop-look-or-listen sequence, ending in a quick jab at a worm or insect just below the surface; outside the breeding season the diet shifts increasingly toward fruit. Nests range from a mud-plastered cup to a simple lining inside a tree cavity, and in many North American species migration takes place at night, guided in part, it seems, by the stars.
• Chats, Old World flycatchers and allies | Muscicapidae8 speciesWorldwide this is a large Old World family; in this region only a handful of species breed, in the far northwest, and the rest turn up as strays on the western islands. What the members share is an upright stance on a low lookout — a stone, a fence post, a tussock — from which they drop onto prey on the ground and then return; the legs are slender and fairly long, the bill short and broad at the base. The plumage is mostly grey or brown, with the colour concentrated on the throat, rump or tail base and revealed only as the bird flies off or spreads its tail. Nesting is in narrow crevices: among stones, in an abandoned rodent burrow or under an overhanging tussock, with a tight entrance leading deep inside. The song is loud and varied and often carries snatches of imitation. The northwestern breeders do not head south across the continent in autumn but cross back over the sea to Asia and travel on from there as far as Africa or southern Asia.
• Finches, sparrows and buntings | PasseridaSeed is the staple of the adults here: the bill is either conical or fine and tweezer-like, food is gathered walking or hopping on the ground, and the birds have to drink every day. The young, even so, are fed on insects almost everywhere, including in species whose adults eat nothing but seed. Male and female differ in plumage more often and more strongly than in the other groups, and the song is short and repetitive, delivered from an open perch or in a song flight over open country. Outside the breeding season many species gather in flocks wherever seed lies: stubble fields, rough ground and feeding places by the house.
• Olive warbler | Peucedramidae1 speciesThe family holds a single species worldwide, a bird of high mountain pine forest; DNA work has set it apart as a family of its own, out of the American warblers, where it was long placed. It stays almost always high in the crown of conifers, working slowly and methodically along the outermost needle clusters, hanging upside down a great deal and picking small insects and spiders from between the needles with a thin, sharp bill notched near the tip; the branch is rarely left for a sally into the air. The head is warm orange-brown with a black mask in the male and duller in the female, the rest of the plumage grey with white wing bars. The nest sits high and far out on a horizontal limb, hidden in a dense tuft of needles, and is a deep little cup of lichen, rootlets and plant down. The song consists of clear whistled notes in an even, repeated series that carries far through the forest. There is no migration; at most the birds move down to lower forest in winter.
• Munias, parrotfinches, waxbills and allies | Estrildidae8 speciesNone of the species living wild here belongs to this region naturally: they are escaped and released cage birds from Africa and tropical Asia that have settled mainly on the Pacific islands and in a few warm lowlands of the mainland, where they live on seed along roadsides, in reed fringes and on rough grassland. They are very small birds with a short, thick bill, often coral-red or silver-grey and gleaming as if waxed; the plumage is finely barred or scattered with white spots. Half-ripe grass seeds are picked from the head and husked one by one in the bill. The nest is a dense ball of grass with a short entrance tube; outside the breeding season a separate, rougher ball is built in which the group sleeps packed close together. The nestlings carry a fixed pattern of dark spots inside the mouth and shining beads at the corners of the gape that catch what light there is in the dark nest and show the parents where to feed. The male sings so quietly that he is audible only at very close range, holding a grass stem in his bill and dancing on the perch.
• Accentors | Prunellidae1 speciesThese are unobtrusive, grey-brown birds with a finely streaked back, a grey head and breast and a thin, pointed bill: in summer they take small insects, in winter mainly seeds. They move mouse-like and low over the ground, shuffling along with quivering wings, usually right at the edge of a bush or a pile of stones, and when disturbed they fly low to the nearest cover. The breeding grounds lie in the low scrub of mountains and tundra, up beyond the treeline. The mating system stands out: in several species a single territory holds a number of males and females mixed together, all of which mate with one another, after which each male feeds the young in proportion to his share of those matings. The nest is a neat little cup of moss and fine twigs, low in a shrub and lined with hair. The song is a short, high, slightly jangling phrase from a bush top or a rock; the call is a thin, trilling tsee-ee. In this region the family appears only as a stray from Asia, in the far west and northwest.
• Snowfinches and Old World sparrows | Passeridae2 speciesThe family does not belong here naturally: the two species living wild in the region were brought over from Europe and released in the nineteenth century, after which one spread across the entire continent while the other stayed within a small area around the place where it was let loose. They are stocky birds with a heavy, conical bill and short legs, hopping over the ground and almost always keeping within a few metres of cover or buildings. They live in groups, bathe both in water and in dry dust, and roost all year in numbers together in ivy, dense hedges or under roof tiles. The nest is an untidy, domed mass of grass and feathers stuffed into a cavity, under the eaves or among ironwork, and is reused two to four times in a single season. Song in the proper sense is absent: for months the male repeats the same chirp from a fixed spot beside his nest hole. The size of the black bib on the throat differs from male to male and goes with his place in the pecking order within the group.
• Wagtails and pipits | Motacillidae9 speciesThese are slender ground birds with a thin bill and a long tail, which walk over open country instead of hopping and pump the tail up and down continually as they go, and again the moment they land; at a distance that movement is the most reliable mark of the family, though what it is for has not been settled. In part of the family the hind claw is strikingly long and straight, which suits a life among grass and on flat bare ground. Food is insects picked from the surface while walking, along water margins, on mudflats and beaches, on tundra and in short grassland. Since there are no song posts in such open country, the male climbs steeply in the breeding season, sings high in the air and then sinks back down on stiff, raised wings; some species keep that flight up for a very long time. The nest lies in a hollow on the ground, tucked under a grass tussock or an overhanging edge, often with a run leading to it. Outside the breeding season they feed in loose flocks on bare fields and shores.
• Finches, euphonias and allies | Fringillidae40 speciesSeed is not only cracked on the spot but also carried away: a pouch in the oesophagus holds a store that sees the bird through the night and from which the young are fed as well. Unlike almost all other songbirds, those young are given regurgitated seed rather than insects, which frees breeding from the peak of insect abundance: they breed where and when the seed ripens, and after a poor seed crop whole populations leave their usual range and turn up far to the south. The flight is deeply undulating, and on each wave comes a call by which the species can be told apart without being seen. In the crossbills the tips of the bill slide past one another: with them the scales of a cone are levered apart and the seed lifted out with the tongue, even in midwinter. The Hawaiian honeycreepers are counted in this family too; their bills range from short and heavy to long and sickle-shaped, some live on nectar, and many of these birds now hold on only in high mountain forest, above the zone where mosquitoes carry avian malaria.
• Longspurs and snow buntings | Calcariidae6 speciesThese birds belong in open, treeless country, from tundra and short-grass prairie to bare coast, and are built for walking on the ground there, with a long, almost straight claw on the hind toe. They do not hop but step and shuffle, pressed low against the surface, and in that terrain they are usually only seen when they take off. With no song posts available, the territory is marked out from the air: the male climbs while singing and then glides back down on raised wings. The nest sits in a hollow in the ground under a tussock, or in the far north deep in a rock crevice or between stones, thickly lined with feathers and hair against the cold; the short northern summer allows only one brood, raised almost entirely on insects. In winter they live on seeds on bare fields, road verges and beaches, in flocks of tens to hundreds that roll low over the ground and show white in wing and tail. The breeding plumage comes not from a moult but from wear, as the brown feather tips abrade through the winter.
• Old World buntings | Emberizidae2 speciesIn this region this Old World family turns up almost only in the far west: a few birds a year, on the islands of the Bering Sea and along the coast of Alaska, in late spring or in autumn, when they have drifted too far east on their route between northeastern Asia and southern and southeastern Asia. Characteristic is a short, conical bill with a hard knob on the palate, against which a seed is held with the tongue and stripped of its husk. The tail is fairly long and slightly forked, with white outer feathers that flash as the bird takes off. Breeding is in open country with scattered bushes: taiga edges, clearings, reed marsh and mountain meadows, in a grass nest on or just above the ground. The song is short and simple, a set phrase of a few notes repeated unchanged for minutes on end from a bush top, a reed stem or a wire. Outside the breeding season the birds feed in flocks on stubble fields and in reedbeds, and they migrate by night.
• New World sparrows | Passerellidae43 speciesDespite the name, these American sparrows are unrelated to the Old World sparrows; the family stands apart from them and was only recognised as its own group relatively recently, on the basis of DNA evidence, with a thick, conical bill for cracking seeds. They forage on or just above the ground with a distinctive double scratch, kicking both feet backward at once to clear leaf litter and expose seeds and insects. The mostly streaked brown plumage camouflages the birds against dry grass and scrub, while the nest, low in vegetation or on the ground, is woven from grass and rootlets. Song varies considerably across the range of a single species, with local dialects that young birds pick up from neighbouring singers.
• Spindalises | Spindalidae1 speciesThis is a small family of the wooded islands of the Caribbean; in this region it reaches only the far southeastern tip of the mainland, where a bird now and then crosses over from the Bahamas. The males are sharply marked, with a black-and-white striped head, an orange to chestnut breast and rump and an olive-green back; the females are almost plain olive-grey. The bill is short and sturdy, with a slightly curved upper edge. The food consists mainly of small fruits and berries, swallowed whole, supplemented with flower buds, young leaves and insects. Foraging takes place high in the canopy, where the birds are easily overlooked despite their pattern because they move slowly and silently through dense foliage. Outside the breeding season small parties wander from one fruiting tree to the next, and when the crop fails they cross open water. The nest is a small cup of grass and plant fibre in a shrub or tree. The voice consists of very high, thin and weak notes that are easily missed.
• New World blackbirds, troupials and allies | Icteridae25 speciesThe bill is pointed and straight and is used not only for pecking but for gaping — inserting it closed into soil or under bark and then forcing it open to pry out hidden food, a technique widespread in this family and comparatively rare among other songbirds. In many species the males are glossy black or brightly coloured while the females are much plainer, streaked brown, a pattern that goes along with a mating system in which one male breeds with several females at once, as seen in densely colonial marsh-nesting species. Orioles weave a hanging, pouch-shaped nest of plant fibres that dangles from the tip of a slender twig, while the Brown-headed Cowbird is the only member of the family that builds no nest of its own at all, instead laying all its eggs secretly in the nests of other songbirds, which then raise the young as their own. A cowbird chick often grows faster than its host's own chicks and outcompetes them for food or space.
• New World warblers | Parulidae54 speciesThe bill is thin and pointed, built for plucking small arthropods from leaves and twigs, often while fluttering constantly or hanging from the outermost twig tips. Many species wear a bold, high-contrast head and wing pattern during the breeding season that gives way after the moult to a much duller winter plumage, so the same bird can be almost unrecognisable from its spring self by autumn. The nest is a compact cup, usually tucked low in shrubs or even on the ground, and is among the favourite targets of the Brown-headed Cowbird, which slips an egg of its own into it unnoticed. Migration in many species takes place in one unbroken overnight flight across long distances, with some populations crossing the Gulf of Mexico in a single stage.
• Cardinals and allies | Cardinalidae18 speciesThis family is held together partly by DNA evidence: cardinals, grosbeaks and buntings, with their heavy, conical, seed-crushing bill, were once kept apart from the Scarlet Tanager and its relatives, which have a slimmer bill suited to insects and fruit, until genetic studies showed they belong in the same family. What the family does share is a pronounced difference between the sexes: males are mostly brightly coloured, from deep red to blue, while females wear muted brown or olive tones. Unusually for songbirds, in several species within this family, including the Northern Cardinal, both sexes sing, which helps them defend a territory year-round. The nest is a loose cup of twigs and leaf stems in a shrub or low tree, usually holding three to four eggs, and the chicks are naked and helpless at hatching.
• Tanagers and allies | Thraupidae8 speciesWorldwide this is a very species-rich family of the tropics; in this region it is thinly represented, mainly on the Pacific islands, where the birds were released and have settled in gardens, parks and villages, and beyond that by a few birds that reach the extreme southern edge of the mainland. Bill shape varies widely with the food: short and conical in the seed-eaters, which bend grass stems down to bring the heads within reach, and thin and curved in the nectar-drinkers, which lap nectar with a tongue frayed at the tip and will also pierce the base of a flower to get at it without pollinating it. Fruit is crushed against a branch, the pulp swallowed and the seeds dropped elsewhere. The nest is a small, tightly woven cup in a fork; in part of the family it is a closed ball with a side entrance that also serves as a roost outside the breeding season. For such brightly coloured birds the song is often thin, wiry and barely musical, and pairs stay together all year.