Birds that contain W

List of Birds That Contain W

1

Crow

Corvus brachyrhynchos

A large, all-black corvid widespread across North America — among the most intelligent of all birds, with sophisticated tool use, problem-solving, and individual face recognition.

2

Curlew

Numenius arquata

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.

3

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.

4

Hawk

Accipitridae and Buteoninae (multiple species)

A general name for medium-sized day-flying raptors — including the Cooper's, sharp-shinned, and red-tailed hawks of North America — built for speed in forest pursuit and for soaring on thermals.

5

Kiwi

Apteryx (genus, 5 species)

New Zealand's iconic flightless bird — about the size of a chicken, with hair-like feathers, a long sensitive beak with nostrils at the tip, and the relatively largest egg of any bird, sometimes 20% of the female's body weight.

6

Lapwing

Vanellus vanellus

A pied farmland wader with a wispy black crest and spectacular aerial courtship display — once Europe's most abundant wader, now in rapid decline due to agricultural change, and the subject of major conservation concern.

7

Little Owl

Athene noctua

Britain's smallest owl and the only one to be diurnal — this compact, flat-headed owl perches in the open on fence posts, telegraph poles, and old walls, staring at passers-by with intense yellow eyes and bobbing its head in indignation; introduced to Britain from the Continent in the 1870s and 1880s, it is now a naturalised and widely distributed species.

8

Macaw

Ara macao

A large, brilliantly colored Central and South American parrot with a powerful nutcracking bill and lifelong pair bonds, threatened across most of its range by habitat loss and poaching.

9

Owl

Tyto alba

A heart-faced, ghostly nocturnal raptor found on every continent except Antarctica, and one of the most efficient rodent-controllers in the natural world.

10

Sparrow

Passer domesticus (house sparrow); various Passerellidae species

A small, brown, ubiquitous songbird — the house sparrow following human settlements globally, the native New World sparrows often confused with it, all unfussy about food and habitat.

11

Swallow

Hirundo rustica (barn swallow); Hirundinidae family

A graceful, fast-flying songbird that catches insects on the wing — the barn swallow nesting in human structures across the Northern Hemisphere, performing transcontinental migrations.

12

Swan

Cygnus olor

A large white waterfowl with an orange bill and an iconic curved neck, fiercely territorial and surprisingly aggressive despite its placid appearance.

13

Swift

Apus apus

A dark, scythe-winged aerial specialist that spends almost its entire life on the wing — eating, sleeping, bathing, and mating in flight — landing only to nest, making it the most aerial bird in the world.

14

Warbler

Parulidae (New World)

Small, often brightly colored songbirds — the "wood warblers" of the New World contain over 110 dazzling species, while "Old World warblers" comprise different families with different characteristics, both crucial for migration and forest insect control.

15

Waxwing

Bombycilla garrulus

A plump, crested bird with silky pinkish-brown plumage, a waxy red tips on its secondary feathers, and a voracious appetite for berries — irrupts into Western Europe and North America in winter when Scandinavian berry crops fail.

16

Weaver

Ploceidae (family)

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.

17

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.

18

Whitethroat

Sylvia communis

A scratchy, energetic warbler of bramble scrub and overgrown hedgerows — the male has a white throat that puffs out during his jerky song-flight display, in which he rises a few metres into the air and parachutes back down singing; a common summer visitor that suffered a catastrophic population crash in 1969 due to Sahel drought.

19

Willow Tit

Poecile montanus

Britain's most rapidly declining resident bird — the willow tit has lost over 90% of its British population since the 1970s, one of the steepest declines of any British species; virtually identical to the marsh tit but distinguishable by its duller black cap, pale wing panel, and very different nasal buzzing call; it excavates its own nest hole in rotten wood, an unusual behaviour for a tit.

20

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.

21

Woodpecker

Dryocopus pileatus

A large, crow-sized woodpecker with a vivid red crest, the model for Woody Woodpecker; chisels rectangular holes deep into wood with a series of head-snapping impacts.

22

Wren

Troglodytidae (family)

Tiny brown songbirds with surprisingly loud voices — about 88 species worldwide, with the iconic Eurasian wren weighing just 10 grams while producing some of the loudest songs in the bird world.

23

Yellowhammer

Emberiza citrinella

A bright yellow European bunting whose distinctive song is often transcribed as "a little bit of bread and no cheeeese" — a familiar farmland bird in the British Isles, declining with the loss of mixed agriculture.