The 20 most common backyard birds in the US and what they sound like

Across the United States the birds that turn up in the most yards are the Mourning Dove, American Robin, House Finch, House Sparrow, American Goldfinch, Dark-eyed Junco, Downy Woodpecker, European Starling and American Crow. East of the Great Plains add the Northern Cardinal, Blue Jay, chickadees, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Red-bellied Woodpecker and Carolina Wren. On the Pacific side the regulars are Anna's Hummingbird, California Scrub-Jay, Steller's Jay and Spotted Towhee. Each has one sound that gives it away.

About the ranking

There is no official national ranking of backyard birds, so this list leans on Project FeederWatch, the winter count run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Birds Canada, in which tens of thousands of people report what visits their feeders each week. When Cornell tallied the 1996-97 season, the ten most widespread feeder birds in North America were, in order, Dark-eyed Junco (at 83 percent of feeders), House Finch, American Goldfinch, Downy Woodpecker, Blue Jay, Mourning Dove, Black-capped Chickadee, House Sparrow, Northern Cardinal and European Starling. A more recent tally for the Northeast region, which in FeederWatch's map runs west to Wisconsin and south to Virginia, put chickadees at 97 percent of sites, juncos at 95, Downy Woodpeckers at 92, Blue Jays and Mourning Doves at 91, cardinals at 90, and goldfinches and House Finches at 86.

Two caveats. Feeder counts happen in winter, so summer yard birds like the robin are underrepresented, and feeders miss birds like crows that eat elsewhere. The order below is a rough feeling for how often each bird turns up, not a precise rank.

Everywhere: the nine birds almost every yard shares

2. American Robin. A run of rich caroling phrases that rise and fall, one of the first voices of the day in spring and often started before sunrise. Robins hunt earthworms on lawns in summer and gather by the hundreds in berry trees in winter.

4. House Sparrow. Shrill, monotonous chirping, more noise than song, from hedges, eaves and parking lots. Introduced from Europe in 1851, it lives only around human structures, which is why it is in your yard.

5. American Goldfinch. Listen up: the flight call is a bright per-chick-o-ree, better known as potato chip, given once per dip of the bird's bouncing flight. They come to nyjer feeders in flocks.

7. Downy Woodpecker. A soft pik, a whinny that descends in pitch, and drumming on a dead limb, which both sexes do. The small woodpecker at the suet, light enough to hang on a weed stalk.

8. European Starling. A stream of squeaks, rasps and wheezes with startling imitations of other birds mixed in, plus a descending whee-ee call. Brought over in 1890, now around 250 million strong, and usually arriving as a crowd.

9. American Crow. Caw, caw. Everyone knows it. Crows nest in city parks now and roost by the thousands in winter; feeder counts undersell them, but they are in almost every yard's airspace.

East of the Great Plains

11. Blue Jay. A harsh jay, jay, a musical queedle-queedle, and a convincing copy of a Red-shouldered Hawk's scream that empties the feeder. Jays pound nuts open with the bill and bury acorns for later.

13. Tufted Titmouse. A whistled Peter, Peter, Peter, four to eight notes, repeated over and over, and sometimes given in the middle of a January thaw. Titmice carry sunflower seeds off one at a time and hammer them open.

14. White-breasted Nuthatch. A nasal yank, yank, like a tiny tin horn, plus a song of low whistled notes. The bird walking headfirst down the trunk toward your suet is this one.

15. Red-bellied Woodpecker. A loud rolling churrrr, often repeated, and a chuck-chuck-chuck that drops in pitch. Once a bird of southern swamps, it has expanded north into the Great Lakes and New England.

16. Carolina Wren. Teakettle, teakettle, teakettle, far louder than a bird this size should manage, sung all day in every season. Pairs duet, the female chattering under the male's song.

Close behind these: the Common Grackle, whose song is a squeaky rusty hinge and whose range is spreading west; the Red-winged Blackbird, whose rising o-ka-leeee comes back to the marsh early in spring; the Song Sparrow, three notes and a trill from the brush pile; the Northern Mockingbird, repeating every phrase three or more times, sometimes at midnight; and the Eastern Bluebird, whose soft warble and liquid tur-lee belong to yards with big open lawns.

The West Coast and the mountains

19. Steller's Jay. The jay of conifer country, from the Pacific Northwest coast up into the mountains. A harsh shack-shack-shack or chook-chook-chook, and, like its eastern cousin, a talent for imitating hawk screams.

20. Spotted Towhee. A long, buzzy cheweeee song and a questioning, cat-like mewww? from inside a thicket, along with a loud scratching in the leaf litter that is often the first thing you notice. Harsher in voice than the eastern towhee.

Also in the western mix: the Lesser Goldfinch, with a plaintive falling tee-yee and a jumbled song that borrows bits from other birds, and the Black-billed Magpie of the plains and Rockies, whose nasal mag, mag, mag and giant stick nests are hard to miss.

How to learn all twenty

Do not try to learn them at once. Pick the three loudest birds in your own yard this week, play their recordings above until the sound is boring, then add the next one. Dove, robin and whichever finch is on your feeder cover most mornings; the chickadee and the cardinal or scrub-jay come next. After that the rest arrive on their own, because an unfamiliar sound now stands out from a background you already know.

When one does stand out, open Warble and tap the green button while the bird is still going. It names the bird as it sings and adds the species to your album, which makes a slow morning on the porch slightly competitive.

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Questions people ask

Warble is a game, not a field guide. Where this page states a fact about a bird, it comes from the sources above.