Every bird on this page is exactly 6 letters long — full profile for each.
Looking for 6-letter birds? Here are 26 birds that fit — each linked to a full profile.
Letters are counted across the whole name with spaces, hyphens, apostrophes, and diacritics excluded. "Apple Pie" is 8 letters; "Boeuf Bourguignon" is 16.
Britain's most elegant wader — a black-and-white bird with an extraordinary upturned bill that it swings from side to side through shallow water to catch invertebrates; the symbol of the RSPB, the avocet returned to breed in Suffolk in 1947 after an absence of over 100 years and is now one of British conservation's greatest success stories.
A small yellow finch native to the Canary Islands — domesticated for centuries as a singing pet, used historically in coal mines as gas detectors, and now bred in dozens of color and song varieties.
Two massive vulture species — the California condor (rescued from near-extinction in 1987 with only 27 birds remaining) and the Andean condor (the world's largest flying bird by combined wingspan and weight).
A medium-sized bird famous for its distinctive call (the basis of cuckoo clocks) and brood parasitism — laying eggs in other species' nests to be raised by unwitting foster parents.
Europe's largest wading bird — recognised by its extraordinarily long, downcurved bill and haunting bubbling call; a moorland and coastal bird facing serious population decline across its range due to habitat loss and predation of ground nests.
The only aquatic songbird — a compact brown-and-white bird that walks along the riverbed submerged, using its wings to swim against the current and find invertebrates in fast-flowing streams.
Britain's most abundant small wader — a dumpy, short-legged sandpiper that winters in enormous flocks on estuaries and mudflats, performing breathtaking aerial "murmurations" that twist and turn as a single organism; in summer breeding plumage it has a distinctive black belly patch unique among similar species.
A swift, sharp-winged raptor — including the peregrine, the fastest animal on Earth — with extraordinary diving speeds and a long history as a hunting partner in royal falconry traditions.
A large white seabird that plunge-dives from 30 meters at 100 km/h to catch fish underwater — with a suite of anatomical adaptations specifically evolved for this extreme impact, including no external nostrils and built-in air-sac cushioning.
A family of plump ground-dwelling birds adapted to cold climates — including iconic species like ruffed grouse, sage grouse, and ptarmigan, with elaborate dramatic mating displays in many species.
A cinnamon-orange bird with a dramatic black-tipped crown that fans open into a bold crest — found across Africa, Europe, and Asia, the national bird of Israel, and known in many cultures as a messenger between the worlds.
A tropical wading bird with extraordinarily long toes that distribute its weight across floating vegetation — earning it the nickname "lily-trotter" for its ability to walk on water lilies.
A small finch of open farmland and heathland whose male has a crimson breast and forehead in spring — linnets feed almost exclusively on seeds, particularly those of weeds on farmland, and have declined dramatically as herbicides have eliminated the weed seed supply; their liquid, twittering song was once prized and they were widely kept as cage birds.
A long-tailed black-and-white corvid with iridescent blue-green wing flashes — Eurasian magpies are among the most-studied intelligent birds, while Australian magpies are renowned for spring swooping attacks on humans.
Britain's smallest falcon — a fierce, compact little raptor of upland moorland and coasts that hunts small birds with explosive speed, often following close to the ground in low dashing pursuit; the female is streaky brown, the male is blue-grey above with an orange-buff breast, and both are easily overlooked until they erupt in a burst of rapid wingbeats.
A vivid orange-and-black North American songbird with elaborate woven hanging nests — closely related to blackbirds, with multiple species across the Americas including the iconic Baltimore oriole that gave the city's baseball team its name.
A medium-sized grey parrot widely regarded as the most cognitively gifted bird species, capable of imitating human speech and demonstrating reasoning beyond simple mimicry.
A globally ubiquitous urban bird descended from the rock dove of Mediterranean cliffs — domesticated for over 5,000 years for food, communication, racing, and ornamentation, with feral populations in nearly every city worldwide.
A family of compact, fast-running shorebirds found on beaches, mudflats, and grasslands worldwide — famous for the killdeer's broken-wing distraction display that lures predators away from the nest.
A small black-and-white seabird with a colorful triangular bill — capable of holding 10+ fish in its beak at once, nesting in cliff burrows by the millions, and increasingly threatened by warming oceans.
A brilliant blue and chestnut European and African bird named for its spectacular rolling display flight — one of the most colourful birds of open Mediterranean and African habitats.
A small, lively finch of conifers and birch woodland — the male is a bright greenish-yellow bird with a streaked black cap; siskins form acrobatic feeding flocks in alder and birch trees in winter, and have become one of the most popular garden feeders in Britain since learning to exploit nyjer seed feeders.
A diverse family of medium-sized songbirds known for melodious songs and ground-foraging — with the American robin, European blackbird, and song thrush as the most familiar members of a globally distributed family.
The largest toucan species, a Central and South American fruit-eater with a striking oversized orange bill that serves as a thermal radiator as well as a feeding tool.
A large North American gamebird domesticated by Indigenous Americans, surviving through the European-introduced Christmas-and-Thanksgiving traditions, with wild populations recovering to abundance after near-extinction.
Small African songbirds famous for elaborate woven nests — males construct intricate hanging structures, often with multiple chambers and entrances, to attract females and rear young in colonies.
That's our current list of birds with exactly 6 letters. Need a different length? Try the browse-by-length pills in the sidebar, or combine with a starting letter — for example, 6-letter birds that start with A.