BIRDS 1 - 999

On the next 10 pages you will find the complete list of the birds of the world with their English or "common names". If that is your interest, please jump straight to the list of Birds 1 - 999

If you got here from somewhere else, this website is about birds, nature, conservation and the passion for nature. But before I continue, let me tell you a bit about myself.

On this website, you can find the checklists  the birds of all countries of the world: Just go to http://www.birdlist.org/site/regions.htm. In many of them you can find the names of the birds  in its native language as well. But there is much more. There are pictures of nature, great tools for conservation, information on national parks and other nature reserves, an on-line book on ecology and nature conservation, free software for downloading, technical reports for those who want it. In order to find your way through the 2000 interlinked web pages on nature and conservation, please go to the site map. On this page we help you find the way to the worldwide list of birds and the bird names in other languages.

How many species of  birds are there??

We have composed a list of species of originally based on the bird list of Sibley and Monroe of 9702, 1993. Since then, some new species of birds have been discovered and a larger number of subspecies have been given the species status. Some claim as many as 13 000 species of birds and several numbers in between.  Why is that? The answer is that there are several "species concepts" and those who adhere to one typically fight vigorously against those who adhere to another, and there is no real end in sight to the argument. In this issue there is no real right of wrong. 

However, what matters to you, the birdwatcher, is what you find in the field at the place where you are birding. Let's say you are birding in Kenya. Recently, the scientific community has decided to raise two subspecies of birds to the species level, and gave each a different scientific name. However, your bird guide does not list those names, nor has the country's committee on species of birds has not yet listed those names. If we were to list the new names of birds in stead of the old names, you would not be able to check it off on our checklist of the birds, simply because the old name is no longer listed. So we are rather conservative with listing new names of birds, because being progressive would only confuse YOU, the real user. So, we only add a species of birds when it appears on the list of a national bird species committee. That way, we will only gradually expand the number of species of birds, as they are actually being used by active birding communities. When that happens, we will also compose a new name in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and German. Currently our list has 10 031 species of birds.

If you want to read a bit more about the species concept, you may find some conceptual discussions here: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species

Another discussion is at: http://research.amnh.org/ornithology/crossbills/species.html

After all, we're trying to fit millions of years of evolution into a series of nice, tidily organised list of species of birds, and the world is not now nor has it ever been nice or tidy. So, if you find a longer or shorter list elsewhere, those lists are just slightly different from our bird list, but not better or worse.

NON-ENGLISH NAMES OF BIRDS 

We are providing non-English bird names for 22 languages. 

For lists that by far exceed national bird names, we offer lists in this section:

1. English
2. Français
3. Español
4. Nederlands
5. Deutsch
6. Português

For your convenience and rapid page loading, they are cut up into ten pages each.

We have the following native language lists of birds for the relevant language regions only:

7. List of birds in Norwegian, 
8. List of birds in Finish, 
9. List of birds in Swedish, 
10. List of birds in Danish, 
11. List of birds in Icelandic, 
12. List of birds in Estonian, 
13. List of birds in Latvian, 
14. List of birds in Polish, 
15. List of birds in Hungarian, 
16. List of birds in Serbian, 
17. List of birds in Turkish, 
18. List of birds in Japanese, 
19. List of birds in Italian,
20. List of birds in Zuidafrikaans;
21. List of birds in Esperanto
22. List of birds in Russian.

Non-English bird names used to be available from a variety of European websites, but recent testing of links revealed that the majority has disappeared. Most bird names are either for the country or for palearctic birds. 

Multilingual North European Bird Dictionary
This is the largest and most extensive bird names database that we are aware of:
http://www.megabytedata1.co.uk/MB064u/index.asp

Babel Birdy - Bird Name Translation (Western Palearctic and World)
Scientific, German, English, French, Spanish
http://www.bavarianbirds.de/birdy_e.html 

Dutch - English - Scientific bird names 
http://home.swipnet.se/~w-58871/birdies/birdies.html  

Swedish - Dutch - English bird names 
http://birding.veranoest.net/ 

Happy birding!

Dr. Ir. Daan Vreugdenhil