Your favourite breeds of bird...

[WildRosie]

I've tried to categorise mine:

Regular garden birds - collared dove, very delicate and gentle birds;
- bullfinch, the male (sorry, not fair) is a great colour!

Birds of prey - barn owl, elegant and attractive;
- sparrowhawk, swift and purposeful.

Wildfowl - mute swan, clean and graceful;
- teal, brilliant colours.

Exotica - peacocks, unashamedly gaudy;
- hyacinth macaw, like all parrots, fabulous colours.

I could count the ring-necked parakeets as both garden and exotica, given the big populations in the UK. But I won't do that until I actually see one!

The Splendid Fairy Wren
(love its name too!)

My favorite is fairy or blue penguins.

Pelicans

One particular noisy miner bird

Garden birds
Rosella
Various cockatoos
Galahs
Bin chicken
Blue fairy wren
Zebra finches

North America birds
Cardinals
Bluejays
Robins

Most hated are Canadian geese. They're evil demons.

What a lovely thread.My dear late father loved all birds and photographed them .He has some great kite shots.
I love a blue tit or robin.
When a kite flies overhead I always think it is my father's spirit.

I do like a red kite. We live close to a breeding site so I see them most days but they still make me smile. Yesterday one was flying around quite low when I went for my lunchtime walk.

In my garden probably the robin, blue tit and sparrows. I like long tailed tits but don't get them too often so that's always a treat.

And owls, most of them.

Puffins!

Apologies if it has been mentioned up thread, but I am a massive fan of the free(!) bird song app "Merlin Bird ID" from The Cornell Lab.

I was surprised just how
Many goldfinches pass through my garden.

I forgot to sing the praises of cormorants (we have a roost(?) along the river from us so I often stop to watch them fish).

I love peregrine falcons, sometimes I’ll watch them diving on YouTube videos to cheer myself up. I’ve never seen one in the wild though :(

Love puffins and the adorably named pufflings

And my garden regulars - the blue tits, goldfinches, robins, sparrows, starlings etc. they are just delightful

Burrowing owl
Little owl
Hoopoe (got one on my patch at the moment!)

All the peregrines I’ve ever seen have been near seabird colonies, but there’s quite a few in towns and cities too. Anywhere where lots of birds gather that are the right size to be a meal for a peregrine 😬

I saw a peregrine at the weekend, when I was close to a nesting site for fulmars. I also saw choughs, which always make me smile. For a bird that rare, they are a really easy one to spot. They don’t seem to mind people at all and will happily come within a few metres of your feet so that you can have a good look at their magnificent red feet & beaks.

Where are you, WeAreBorg? They like roosting in church spires/cathedrals/power stations.

If you are a Londoner you can often hear them before you see them at Bankside (Tate Modern) and Battersea Power Station. I googled the latter to figure out where they were nesting and how long they had been there:
https://batterseapowerstation.co.uk/news/peregrines-at-battersea-power-station/

Difficult to narrow it down, but at home: pied wagtails are just adorable with their little bobbing walk, ravens, tawny owls, and the goldcrest.

Abroad: cassowary, kakapo, galah, kookaburra. I really wish I lived in Australia.

I love rosellas, galahs, Australian king parrots, sulphur crested cockatoos and rainbow lorikeets.

Honourable mention goes to the mighty cassowary. Wouldn't want to meet one in the wild but I've got a soft spot for them.

Dishonourable mentions goes to the Kookaburra for their 5 am wake up calls (perfectly fine any other time) and the magpie, fucking magpies. Although they do have a lovely morning wake up call (not as loud as the Kookaburra).

And who could forget the bin chicken. They're pests but deep down ( very deep down) us Aussies have a soft spot for them. Don't ask us why, we just do.

The bin chicken is the ibis, right? I always think they're such a regal, otherworldly sort of bird, not like a chicken at all!

Yes they are an Ibis. Bin chicken is a nickname.

Yup. In different league. The fact that they live out to sea in wild and windswept places; their bonding rituals and, above all, the dart-like dive. Those wings tucked in at the last moment. The ochre and white colour scheme and that alarming blue eye. David Attenborough says the boat trip out to the Bass Rock to see the gannet colony is one of the great wildlife experiences of the world. It is. They are magnificent.

I don't have a garden so can't comment on garden birds but my other faves would be -

Barn owl - their little heart shaped faces are just so beautiful. The way they glide noiselessly is amazing
Kingfisher - their blue is just the most beautiful colour. Growing up that was always my favourite colour and I think it stems back to when I used to go fishing with my dad and we'd see kingfishers
Robin - there's just something so cute about them and they always make me think of Christmas which is usually a happy time

All types of vulture but particularly the Eurasian griffon .

Haha, I googled that because I thought it didn't exist! It's quite spectacular, isn't it?

Blackbirds - we have a large tree in our garden and I love to listen MY blackbird at the top of it, singing his beautiful song

Peregrine falcons - also neighbours of ours, very exciting when they come screeching through when they've caught something to take back to the chicks - pretty gruesome when they sit on the church spire ripping whatever it is to pieces tho.

Swifts - a dwindling colony up the road and from the beginning of May I get terrible swift anxiety, hoping that they will have survived the journey and come back - beaks off peregrines!

And penguins. Love them. None nearby, sadly.

I love seeing red kites and get quite excited! I seem to remember hearing a lot about them being endangered when I was a child and they've made their way over to my part of England fairly recently so it feels exciting to get to see them (even though I see them hovering near the road most days!)

We have wood pigeons and collared doves and right now it’s mating season. The males will follow a female around for days, performing a kind of bowing motion in front of the female, who often appears to be disinterested or unimpressed and flies off, leaving the male looking a little bit crestfallen. If he is lucky, the male will jump onto the female for a split second of actual mating. So much effort for very little reward!

Oh yes, I have Aussie rellies who are firmly on the "bloody pest" side of the debate. I like them, but it's not my bins they're going through.

One of my cousins is regularly visited by kookas and lorikeets that he feeds. They're practically tame and will land on his head, shoulder or arm, and allow him to pet them. We don't have any birds that will do that in the UK so I can't help but think what a marvellous thing it is, even though they're noisy buggers.

The Superb Lyrebird

Swifts! Love their high-speed, excitedly screechy fly-bys in spring and summer.

Do peacocks actually live and breed wild in the UK or are they all captive ?