30 Birds That Start With B (Facts, Habitats & Photos)

Birds that start with B include the one that flies further without stopping than any other animal, and a bird whose name is a permanent monument to a mistake. Bald eagles, barn owls, blue jays, blackbirds, bee-eaters and bowerbirds are all here.

This guide covers 30 birds beginning with B, with scientific names, range, diet and what makes each one distinctive.

Birds Starting With B: Complete List

Birds of Prey and Owls

Bald Eagle

Not bald — the name comes from the older English word piebald, meaning marked with white. It takes four to five years for a bald eagle to develop the white head and tail, so brown immatures are frequently misidentified as golden eagles. Bald eagles build the largest nests of any North American bird, adding to them annually until some exceed a tonne. The population collapsed under DDT, which thinned eggshells until they broke under the parent’s weight, and recovered strongly after the 1972 ban.

Barn Owl

Hunts in complete darkness using hearing alone. Its ear openings are set at different heights on the skull, so a sound arrives at each ear at a fractionally different moment, letting the owl build a three-dimensional fix on a mouse under snow or vegetation. The facial disc works as a parabolic reflector, funnelling sound to the ears. Flight is near-silent because the leading edge of the flight feathers is combed into a fine fringe that breaks up turbulence.

Barred Owl

Its call is one of the most recognisable in North American woodland — conventionally rendered as “who cooks for you, who cooks for you all”. It has expanded westward substantially over the past century and now competes directly with the northern spotted owl, which is a serious conservation problem: the barred owl is larger, more aggressive and less fussy about habitat.

Buzzard

A source of transatlantic confusion. In Britain and Europe a buzzard is a Buteo hawk that soars on thermals; in North America “buzzard” is used colloquially for vultures, which are unrelated. European buzzards vary enormously in plumage from near-white to dark chocolate, which makes identification harder than it should be for such a common bird.

Songbirds

Blackbird

The European blackbird has one of the richest songs of any bird — fluting, unhurried and varied, and often the last voice heard at dusk in a British garden. Males are black with a yellow eye-ring and bill; females are brown, which regularly confuses people into thinking they are a different species. Note that American blackbirds are an entirely separate family.

Black-capped Chickadee

Its alarm call encodes threat level: the more dee notes appended to the chick-a-dee, the more dangerous the predator. Small, agile owls that pose a real risk attract far more notes than a large hawk that cannot manoeuvre in trees. Chickadees also shrink their hippocampus and regrow it seasonally, expanding memory capacity for cached food in autumn.

Blue Jay

A skilled mimic of hawk calls, which it uses to clear other birds from a feeder before dropping in. Blue jays cache thousands of acorns each autumn and, like European jays, are significant planters of oak woodland through the ones they never recover. The blue is structural rather than pigmented — a crushed feather loses the colour entirely.

Blue Tit

Famous for a genuine case of cultural transmission in animals: in early twentieth-century Britain, blue tits learned to pierce the foil caps of doorstep milk bottles to reach the cream, and the behaviour spread across the country far faster than genetics could explain. It stopped only when doorstep delivery declined.

Blackcap

A warbler whose behaviour has changed within living memory. Central European blackcaps that once migrated south-west to Iberia increasingly head north-west to Britain instead, drawn by garden bird feeding. The two groups now return to breeding grounds at different times and are beginning to diverge — an unusually visible case of evolution responding to human habit.

Bullfinch

A stocky finch with a rose-pink breast in the male, and historically persecuted in Britain because it strips buds from fruit trees in early spring, when other food is scarce. Bullfinches were once subject to a bounty. They are generally quiet and unobtrusive despite the striking plumage.

Brambling

A finch that follows the beech mast crop across Eurasia, moving to wherever the seed is plentiful. In an exceptional mast year, roosts can reach into the millions of birds — among the largest concentrations of any European songbird — then be absent from the same area entirely the following winter.

Bobolink

Undertakes one of the longest migrations of any North American songbird, travelling to southern South America and back — a round trip of roughly 20,000 km. The breeding male is the only North American bird that is black underneath and largely pale above, an inversion of normal countershading.

Bunting

A large group including the snow bunting, which breeds further north than any other songbird on earth, on Arctic rock and scree. Male snow buntings arrive on the breeding grounds weeks before females, in temperatures well below freezing, to claim the best crevice nest sites.

Bananaquit

A small, adaptable Caribbean and South American bird that often bypasses a flower’s opening entirely, piercing the base to take nectar without transferring pollen — a strategy known as nectar robbing. It is one of the commonest birds across much of its range and readily visits sugar bowls on café tables.

Baltimore Oriole

Weaves a hanging pouch nest from plant fibre, suspended from the tip of a slender branch where few predators can reach it. Construction takes about a week. It is named for the orange and black of Lord Baltimore’s heraldic colours, which is also why the baseball team carries the name.

Water Birds and Seabirds

Bar-tailed Godwit

Holds the record for the longest non-stop flight of any animal. Individuals have been tracked flying from Alaska to New Zealand without landing, feeding or drinking — over 11,000 km in a single continuous flight lasting more than a week. Before departure the birds shrink their digestive organs and expand their flight muscles, since they will not eat again until arrival.

Black Swan

Australian, and responsible for a phrase in common use. Europeans assumed all swans were white until black swans were encountered in Western Australia in 1697 — which is why a “black swan event” now means something considered impossible until it happens. Unlike most swans they often nest in loose colonies.

Bittern

Almost impossible to see. When alarmed it points its bill straight up and its streaked brown plumage matches the surrounding reeds so precisely that it disappears, and it will even sway gently to match the reeds moving in wind. The male’s booming call is among the lowest-pitched sounds made by any bird and carries several kilometres across a marsh.

Booby

Plunge-dives from as high as 30 metres, hitting the water at speed with the wings swept back. Air sacs beneath the skin of the head and chest cushion the impact, and the nostrils are permanently closed — boobies breathe through the corners of the mouth. The name comes from the Spanish bobo, meaning foolish, because the birds were unafraid of sailors and easy to catch.

Brown Pelican

A conservation success story. DDT thinned its eggshells so severely that the species disappeared entirely from Louisiana — its own state bird — before the 1972 ban. It recovered sufficiently to be removed from the endangered species list in 2009. It is the only pelican that plunge-dives for fish rather than fishing cooperatively at the surface.

Bufflehead

A small diving duck that nests almost exclusively in old northern flicker holes, which constrains where it can breed — it is small enough to use a woodpecker cavity, and larger ducks are not. The male’s head looks black at a distance and iridescent green and purple in good light.

Belted Kingfisher

One of relatively few bird species in which the female is more colourful than the male — she has an additional rust-coloured band across the belly. It hunts by hovering over water then diving headfirst, and nests in a burrow tunnelled up to two metres into an earth bank.

Tropical and Specialist Species

Bee-eater

Eats bees and wasps and has evolved to deal with the obvious problem: it catches prey in flight, returns to a perch, and beats and rubs the insect against the branch to discharge the sting and squeeze out the venom before swallowing. Bee-eaters nest in tunnels dug into sandy banks, often in large colonies.

Bowerbird

The male builds a bower — a structure of sticks that is not a nest and is never used for eggs — and decorates it with carefully sorted objects, favouring a particular colour. Satin bowerbirds collect blue items obsessively, including bottle tops and pegs. Some species arrange objects by size to create a forced-perspective effect from the female’s viewing position, which is a genuine use of visual illusion.

Budgerigar

Wild budgerigars are green and yellow and form nomadic flocks in the Australian interior that can reach tens of thousands, moving in response to rainfall. Every colour variation in captivity descends from mutations of that wild type. They are among the few birds able to learn and reproduce human speech in context.

Barbet

Stout tropical birds that excavate their own nest holes in soft or rotten wood, like woodpeckers but with less specialised skulls. Many species have bristles around the bill, which is the origin of the name. African and Asian barbets are only distantly related to the American ones despite the shared name.

Barn Swallow

One of the most widespread birds in the world, breeding across the northern hemisphere and wintering in the southern. Before migration was understood, the autumn disappearance of swallows was explained by theories including hibernation in mud at the bottom of ponds — a view held seriously into the eighteenth century.

Bluebird

Eastern bluebird numbers fell sharply in the twentieth century as competition from introduced house sparrows and starlings took the tree cavities it depends on. A large volunteer nest-box movement across North America reversed the decline — one of the clearest examples of amateur conservation working at scale.

Other Species in This Group

Broad-tailed Hummingbird

The bright and colorful broad-tailed hummingbird is mostly found in mountainous parts of western North America. This small bird is around four inches long and has a five-inch wingspan. The male’s back and head are coated with bright, iridescent green feathers that sparkle in the sunlight. It gets its name from its long, rounded tail, which is its most noticeable feature. Unlike many other hummingbird species, the female of this species has a more subdued green hue. Aspen groves, coniferous forests, and alpine meadows are common in the high-altitude nesting habitats of broad-tailed hummingbirds. They can be found from southern Mexico to the Rocky Mountains in the United States.

Black-throated Sparrow

The black-throated sparrow is a small and attractive bird native to the dry plains of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. It has a remarkable and striking appearance, with a noticeable black neck patch that goes down to its breast and a distinguishing grayish-brown body. The white eye line and the distinctive white patch on the bird’s wings add to its allure. Black-throated sparrows grow to be about six inches long as adults. These sparrows prefer dry and semi-arid habitats like rocky slopes, open grasslands, and desert scrublands. They are common in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, including New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California. The omnivore black-throated sparrow eats a diverse range of foods. Its food consists of fruits, seeds, and insects. It has been observed feeding on the ground, pecking at seeds, and capturing small insects with its bill. Males may devour insects and spiders during the mating season to enhance their nutrition and feed their young ones.

The bustard is the largest bird beginning with the letter B, and it belongs to the Otididae family. The fascinating bustard is known for its large size and odd appearance. Bustards are classified into several species, although they all have strong bodies, powerful legs, and relatively short necks. Because of their huge wingspan, which spans from six to eleven feet, they are among the heaviest flying birds. These birds are enormous!

13 Birds With Red Head

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Frequently Asked Questions

What birds start with the letter B?

Thirty are covered here, including bald eagle, barn owl, barred owl, blue jay, blackbird, blackcap, blue tit, bluebird, bittern, bee-eater, bowerbird, budgerigar, bullfinch, brambling, bunting, buzzard, booby, barbet, bufflehead, bobolink, bananaquit, Baltimore oriole, barn swallow, belted kingfisher, brown pelican, black swan, bar-tailed godwit, black-capped chickadee, broad-tailed hummingbird and black-throated sparrow.

Why is the bald eagle called bald?

Because “bald” here comes from the older word piebald, meaning marked with white — a reference to the white head, not to featherlessness. Young bald eagles are entirely brown and take four to five years to develop it.

Which bird has the longest non-stop flight?

The bar-tailed godwit. Tracked individuals have flown from Alaska to New Zealand without stopping — over 11,000 km in more than a week of continuous flight, without feeding or drinking.

Can a barn owl really hunt in total darkness?

Yes. Its ear openings are at different heights on the skull, so sound reaches each at a slightly different moment, allowing it to pinpoint prey by hearing alone — including animals moving beneath snow.

What is a black swan event?

A term for something assumed impossible until it happens, taken from the European belief that all swans were white — overturned when black swans were found in Western Australia in 1697.

Why do chickadees add extra “dee” notes?

To encode how dangerous a predator is. More dee notes signal a greater threat, and small agile owls — which can actually catch a chickadee among branches — attract far more notes than a large, less manoeuvrable hawk.

Sources

Classifications and ranges follow current ornithological references. Bar-tailed godwit tracking records: satellite-tagging studies. Chickadee alarm-call research and blue tit milk-bottle cultural transmission: peer-reviewed behavioural literature. DDT impacts and species recovery: national wildlife agency records.

This article is for general information. Do not disturb nesting birds — many species are legally protected during the breeding season.

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