1
Bee-eater
Merops apiaster
A brilliantly colored aerial hunter that catches bees, wasps, and other stinging insects in mid-flight — then systematically beats the insect against a perch and wipes the stinger clean before swallowing.
Looking for 8-letter birds? Here are 15 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.
List of 8-letter Birds
2
Bluebird
Sialia sialis (Eastern); Sialia mexicana (Western); Sialia currucoides (Mountain)
A small bright-blue thrush native to North America — a beloved garden bird whose population was rescued from near-collapse in the mid-1900s through one of America's most successful citizen-science conservation campaigns.
3
Cardinal
Cardinalis cardinalis
A vivid red songbird of the eastern and central United States, the official bird of seven U.S. states, with a distinctive crest and a year-round musical presence.
4
Cockatoo
Cacatuidae (family)
A loud, intelligent Australasian parrot with a distinctive crest of feathers — including the most affectionate parrot species and some of the most ecologically destructive flocks, with several species critically endangered.
5
Flamingo
Phoenicopterus roseus
A long-legged wading bird whose pink color comes from carotenoid pigments in its food, famous for filter-feeding upside-down and standing on one leg.
6
Hawfinch
Coccothraustes coccothraustes
Britain's most powerful-billed finch — the hawfinch has a massive, pale bill capable of cracking cherry stones and olive pits that require 50–70 kg of force to split; a bulky, short-tailed finch with rich chestnut, black, and white plumage and a distinctive white wing bar; notoriously shy and elusive, spending most of its time in high tree canopy and often detected only by its sharp call.
7
Hornbill
Bucerotidae (family; 55 species)
A large tropical bird defined by its enormous brightly colored bill topped with a casque — a forest frugivore and icon of African and Asian biodiversity, and the subject of one of the most unusual nesting behaviors in the bird world.
8
Marsh Tit
Poecile palustris
A small, glossy-capped tit of ancient woodland — easily confused with the willow tit but distinguished by its glossier black cap, cleaner white cheeks, and distinctive 'pitchoo' call; like all tits, the marsh tit is an intelligent, acrobatic forager; it is a food-hoarder, storing thousands of individual seeds in bark crevices and leaf litter, and has an exceptional spatial memory for relocating them.
9
Nightjar
Caprimulgus europaeus
A cryptically camouflaged nocturnal bird that rests motionless on the ground or along tree branches during the day, invisible against bark and leaf litter — famous for its churring mechanical song heard across heathlands at dusk.
10
Nuthatch
Sitta europaea
A small, compact woodland bird that walks headfirst down tree trunks — the only bird capable of descending a vertical surface face-down, and a remarkably efficient hoarder of seeds and insects.
11
Pheasant
Phasianus colchicus (common pheasant)
A large game bird native to Asia — introduced to North America and Europe for hunting, with the iridescent ring-necked males and mottled-camouflage females being among the most familiar farmland birds in their introduced range.
12
Redstart
Phoenicurus phoenicurus
A jewel of the oak woodland — the male common redstart has a fiery orange tail (constantly quivered), blue-grey upper parts, and a bold black face; a summer visitor to Britain from Africa, its liquid song is a key sound of ancient oak woods in Wales and the Lake District.
13
Starling
Sturnus vulgaris (European starling)
A glossy black songbird with iridescent purple-green sheen — native to Eurasia but introduced to North America in 1890 by Shakespeare enthusiasts, now one of the most invasive bird species in the Western Hemisphere.
14
Wheatear
Oenanthe oenanthe
A migratory chat with a flash of white rump that arrives on British uplands each spring from sub-Saharan Africa — one of the earliest summer migrants, sometimes appearing in late February; the male has a grey back and black eye mask; it undertakes one of the most remarkable migrations of any small bird, with Greenland birds crossing the entire Atlantic non-stop.
15
Woodcock
Scolopax rusticola
The forest phantom of the twilight — the woodcock is almost never seen by day, relying on extraordinary cryptic plumage of dead-leaf brown, chestnut, and black bars to become invisible on the woodland floor; it emerges at dawn and dusk to probe soft ground for earthworms with its long, sensitive bill; males perform a distinctive display flight called roding over woodland in the breeding season.
About 8-letter birds
That's our current list of birds with exactly 8 letters. Need a different length? Try the browse-by-length pills in the sidebar, or combine with a starting letter — for example, 8-letter birds that start with A.