A flash of sky-blue streaking across the western mountains signals one of North America's most eye-catching songbirds at work, hovering like a kestrel before diving for insects in the alpine meadows.

Few bird families capture the imagination quite like finches, these seed-cracking specialists whose remarkable diversity brings vibrancy to Britain's skies year-round. With their distinctive conical ...

A swift and skilful hunter of the Australian skies, this compact falcon rockets through city parks and woodlands at high speed to catch birds mid-flight. The Australian Hobby is a sleek, medium-sized ...

The Rainbow Lorikeet is a vibrant, small parrot with striking multicoloured plumage. Its head is deep blue, contrasting with a bright green back, wings, and tail. The chest is bold orange-red, while ...

In Christian art the Goldfinch stands for Christ's Passion, and it appears in hundreds of devotional pictures, Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch among them. Here is what it meant, where those ...

A Goldfinch sounds tinkling: a quick two- or three-note call and a fast, liquid song of twitters, trills and buzzes. Listen to recordings of the song, calls and young birds, and learn when, where and ...

Those familiar with the fairytale “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen may remember how the ‘ugly duckling’ in the story was actually a baby swan and not a duckling at all! In real life, ...

Perched on a fence post with its bill tilted skyward, the Western Meadowlark delivers one of the most celebrated songs on the North American continent — a rich, bubbling, flute-like melody that ...

Known for its distinctive warty red face and hefty size, this farmyard favorite traces its wild origins to the tropical forests of Central and South America. The Muscovy Duck is a large, heavy-bodied ...

Magpies are a key member of the intelligent Corvidae family, and there are some 17 species distributed across much of the world. The commonest magpies are the Eurasian magpie and Black-billed magpies, ...

Murmurations are the winter displays of Starlings swirling over their roost at dusk, mainly from November to February. Here is when and where to see one in the UK, why Starlings do it, and how ...

The Blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) is inarguably one of North America’s most famous birds, so famous in fact they have a Canadian baseball team named after them, called the Toronto Blue Jays. From the ...