Articles that explain how birds live, behave, and differ, answering common questions and curiosities. This section is for reading rather than identifying — the background that makes the rest of the site make more sense.

Some of it is comparative and record-keeping: the largest flying birds measured by wingspan, weight and height; the largest eagles; the largest woodpeckers, including two giants now gone; the smallest owls and how they survive at that size. These guides exist because superlatives are how most people first get interested in birds, and because the extremes genuinely illuminate how the group works — why a bird can only get so large and still fly, why a tiny owl hunts differently from a large one.

Other articles deal with behaviour and biology. Brood parasites that lay their eggs in other birds' nests, the species considered the most intelligent and what the evidence for that actually is, how birds of prey are classified and told apart in the field, why particular displays and plumages exist at all.

The common questions get their own treatment: why a peacock spreads its tail, how birds navigate, what a particular call means, why a familiar garden bird disappears for part of the year.

Nothing here assumes prior knowledge or a technical vocabulary. Where a term is unavoidable it is explained in place, and where a claim rests on research rather than observation that is made clear.

Read this section to understand birds; use Local Birds and Visual Identification to name them.