Bird Word Search

About this puzzle

A good bird list should feel like a field guide flipped open at random, and that's the idea here. You'll find backyard birds like the cardinal, blue jay, and robin next to record holders: the peregrine falcon, the ostrich, and the wandering albatross. There are flightless birds, fish catchers, a desert sprinter, and a crow clever enough to remember your face.

This bird word search works for a backyard birding unit, a scout badge meeting, or a cozy morning with binoculars on the windowsill. Teachers can ask students to sort the birds by habitat or by what they eat once the grid is done. Each name has a note with a true and specific detail, so the puzzle doubles as a mini lesson on adaptation.

The 28 words in this puzzle

Every word, with a short note. Handy for teaching the vocabulary before or after solving.

In every version (12)

Bald Eagle

The bald eagle is the national bird of the United States. It isn't bald at all; the name comes from an old word meaning white, describing its head feathers.

Blue Jay

A blue jay's feathers have no blue pigment. The color comes from the way tiny structures in the feather scatter light, so a crushed feather looks brown.

Cardinal

Male northern cardinals are bright red, while females are warm brown with red tints. Unusually for North American songbirds, both males and females sing.

Crow

Crows are among the most intelligent birds. Studies have shown that American crows can recognize individual human faces and remember people who treated them badly.

Duck

Ducks have waterproof feathers, kept that way by oil from a gland near the tail. Their webbed feet work like paddles when they swim.

Flamingo

Flamingos get their pink color from pigments in the algae and tiny shrimp they eat. They often rest standing on one leg.

Ostrich

The ostrich is the largest living bird and lays the largest eggs. It cannot fly, but it can sprint at around 40 miles per hour on its two-toed feet.

Parrot

Parrots have two toes pointing forward and two pointing back, which helps them climb and hold food. Some, like the African grey, can learn to say many words.

Peacock

Only the male is properly called a peacock; the female is a peahen, and together they are peafowl. The male fans out his long, eye-spotted train to impress females.

Penguin

Penguins are flightless birds that use their stiff wings as flippers to swim. The emperor penguin is the largest kind, standing nearly four feet tall.

Robin

The American robin is a thrush. Early colonists named it after the European robin, a different bird that also has a reddish-orange breast.

Swan

Swans are among the heaviest flying birds. The trumpeter swan, named for its horn-like call, is the largest native waterfowl in North America.

Added in Medium and Hard (8)

Barn Owl

A barn owl's heart-shaped face works like a satellite dish, funneling sound to its ears. It can catch mice in complete darkness using hearing alone.

Goose

Geese often migrate in a V formation. Flying in a V lets each bird save energy by riding the swirling air coming off the wingtips of the bird ahead.

Hummingbird

Hummingbirds can hover in place and even fly backward. In flight, a hummingbird's heart can beat more than 1,000 times a minute.

Pelican

A pelican scoops up fish and water in its stretchy throat pouch, then tips its bill to drain the water before swallowing. It does not store fish in the pouch.

Puffin

Atlantic puffins can carry several small fish crosswise in their bills at once. Their bright bill colors fade after breeding season, when outer plates are shed.

Sparrow

Sparrows are small, brown, seed-eating birds found in backyards and cities. The house sparrow was brought to North America from Europe in the early 1850s.

Toucan

A toucan's huge bill is surprisingly light, made of keratin over a spongy bony frame. Blood flow to the bill helps the bird shed extra body heat.

Woodpecker

Woodpeckers drill into trees to find insects and to carve nest holes. Their long tongues wrap around the back of the skull when pulled in.

Added in Hard (8)

Albatross

The wandering albatross has the largest wingspan of any living bird, up to about 11 feet. It can glide over the ocean for hours with hardly a wingbeat.

Chickadee

The black-capped chickadee is named for its chick-a-dee-dee call. Studies show it adds more dee notes to the call when a more dangerous predator is nearby.

Emu

The emu is Australia's largest native bird and the second-tallest bird in the world. The father sits on the eggs and raises the chicks.

Heron

Herons wade in shallow water and stand perfectly still before striking with their spear-like bills. In flight, they fold their necks into an S shape.

Kingfisher

Kingfishers dive into water to catch fish with barely a splash. Engineers in Japan reshaped the nose of a bullet train based on the kingfisher's beak to make it quieter.

Kiwi

The kiwi of New Zealand is flightless and mostly active at night. It is the only bird with nostrils at the tip of its bill, which it uses to sniff out worms.

Peregrine

The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on Earth. When diving after prey, it has been clocked at over 200 miles per hour.

Roadrunner

The greater roadrunner is a ground-dwelling cuckoo of the southwestern US and Mexico. It runs down lizards, insects, and even small rattlesnakes.

A few facts to share while you solve

• Birds are the only living animals that have feathers.
• Tracking studies have recorded Arctic terns flying more than 40,000 miles in a single year as they migrate between the Arctic and Antarctica.
• There are more than 10,000 known species of birds, living on every continent including Antarctica.

Four versions of this puzzle

Pick a version with the buttons above the grid. Each one has its own grid and answer key, and your progress on each is saved separately in this browser.

Hard and large print versions

Hard bird word search: all 28 words on a 16 × 16 grid, hidden forward, backward, up, down and along both diagonals, with filler letters borrowed from the word list. Print it without the word list for an extra challenge. Play the hard version, or see all hard word searches.

Large print bird word search: the 12 most familiar words on a 11 × 11 grid, printed with big letters and a big word list, and no backwards words. Play the large print version, or see all large print word searches.

Printing this word search

Press Print / PDF above the puzzle. You get a clean one-page sheet with the title, the grid, a word list with tick boxes, and optional name and date lines. The answer key prints on a second page. Prefer a file? Download it as a PDF or an image to print later or drop into a worksheet. Whatever version is showing on screen is the one that prints, and the large print version prints with bigger letters.

How to play online

1. Find a word from the list in the grid. Scanning for its first letter is the quickest way.
2. Drag across the word from its first letter to its last. On a phone, you can also tap the first letter, then the last.
3. Found words get highlighted and crossed off. Stuck? Hint circles the first letter of a word you haven’t found.

Read the full guide to solving word searches, with tips that make big grids much faster.