Kinds of Birds

My favorite weather is the bird-chirping weather. - Loire Hartwould

The sweet chirping of the birds which we get to hear every morning is probably the best we can hear everyday. Although, we can rarely interpret what they are trying to convey! For most bird lovers, the sight of birds flying in a clear skyline is simply a treat for the eyes! Watching birds twist, glide, turn, soar, dive, etc. in the sky is simply fascinating and causes us to desiderata to fly like them in the sky. Witnessing so many kinds of birds, we often wonder how long would the list be if we were to consider all of them?

To sum up, there are over 10,000 bird species on this planet, and this number is still rising with the discovery of newer species. These species are generally categorized in to 25 to 30 kinds. More than 80% of these come amongst a few well-known types. Here is a compilation of these 12 common bird categories which include the ones that are commonly observed, as well as the more rarely encountered species. Although, you may find many other ways to categorize birds, but here we have typecast them according to their appearance and behavior.

Kinds of Birds: A List

Sr. No.	Birds	Example
1	Long-legged Waders	herons, egrets, storks, spoonbills, flamingos, bitterns, limpkins, ibises, cranes
2	Duck-like	surface-feeding ducks, diving ducks, stiff-tailed ducks, mergansers, coots, whistling-ducks, geese, swans, pelicans, grebes, loons
3	Perching	sparrows, kingfishers, cuckoos, bulbuls, crows, flycatchers, parrots, mockingbirds, blackbirds, ravens, starlings, jays, magpies, shrikes, buntings
4	Fowl-like	chicken, turkey, rails, gallinules, jacanas
5	Hawk-like	hawks, kites, eagles, ospreys, harriers, caracaras, falcons, vultures
6	Owls	True owls, barn owls
7	Upland Ground	woodcocks, quails, peacocks, partridges, pheasants, grouse, turkeys, roadrunners, chachalacas, nightjars
8	Hummingbirds	Hummingbirds
9	Tree-clinging	woodpeckers, nuthatches, creepers
10	Upright-perching Water Birds	auks, murres, puffins, cormorants, anhingas
11	Gull-like	gulls, fulmars, shearwaters, albatrosses,terns, skimmers, gannets, boobies, storm-petrels, frigatebirds, skuas, jaegers, tropicbirds
12	Pigeon-like	pigeons, dove

Apart from the list given here, there are many more bird kinds, but as said before, these 12 types categorize most of the birds on this planet, while birds in the remaining categories are very rare and very insignificant in numbers.

I realized that if I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

With this inspiring saying from Charles Lindbergh, I would like to conclude this write-up.