About Birds Birds are vertebrate animals adapted for flight. Many can also run, jump, swim, and dive. Some, like penguins, have lost the ability to fly but retained their wings.

Birds are warm-blooded vertebrates (vertebrates have backbones) and are the only animals with feathers. Although all birds have wings, a few species can't fly.

Looking across the assortment of birds featured here, you’ll notice that each species is vastly different from the others, either in color, shape, or feather arrangement.

The ostrich is the tallest and the heaviest of all birds. While the huge ostrich is a bird, it does not fly. Instead it runs. One stride can cover up to 16 feet (4.9 meters)—about the length of a mid …

Learn about the dozens of species called birds of paradise. Discover the dramatic, brightly colored plumage that sets them apart from their peers.

Atlantic puffins are birds that live at sea most of their lives. They fly through the air like most birds, but they also "fly" through the water, using their wings as paddles.

A flamingo's color varies depending on what it eats. Photograph by Ajn, Dreamstime Animals Birds

Snakes, cats, black bears, raccoons, and other birds such as house sparrows hunt adult and baby eastern bluebirds. Eastern chipmunks and flying squirrels like to eat eastern bluebird eggs.

Explore a family tree with more than 350 species. Learn more about these long-lived, intelligent, colorful birds.

When a severe drought in 1932 drove nearly 20,000 emus into the farming areas, the birds—breaking fences that allowed smaller pests in—became the final straw.