Bird trivia questions and answers

Question 1

In a 1784 letter, which bird did Benjamin Franklin call “a much more respectable Bird” than the Bald Eagle?

Accepted Answer

The turkey. He wrote it to his daughter, Sarah Bache, on January 26, 1784, and called the eagle “a Bird of bad moral Character.” It was a private letter, not a proposal to Congress.

Question 2

Which birds are the only ones that can fly backward?

Accepted Answer

Hummingbirds. Their wings don't just flap: the motion “involves a lot of wing rotation,” a researcher told National Geographic.

Question 3

Which bird, holding an olive branch, is landing on the Moon on the Apollo 11 mission patch?

Accepted Answer

The Bald Eagle. The patch shows the eagle touching down on the lunar surface with Earth behind it; the olive branch stands for peace, the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum says.

Question 4

Baltimore's NFL team is named after a poem by which writer?

Accepted Answer

Edgar Allan Poe. In a 1996 Baltimore Sun phone poll, 21,108 of more than 33,000 callers picked Ravens, after Poe's poem “The Raven.”

Question 5

Which red songbird is the state bird of seven states?

Accepted Answer

The Northern Cardinal. Seven eastern states chose it: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. The Western Meadowlark is next, with six.

Question 6

True or false: an ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Accepted Answer

True. An ostrich eye can be about 2 inches (50 mm) across, roughly twice as wide as a human eye, while its brain is no bigger than a walnut, Guinness World Records says.

Question 7

Which president made Pelican Island, Florida, America's first national wildlife refuge in 1903?

Accepted Answer

Theodore Roosevelt. His 1903 executive order set the island aside to protect its nesting birds, making it the nation's first national wildlife refuge, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says.

Question 8

The CIA once built a camera light enough for which bird to carry?

Accepted Answer

A pigeon. It didn't work out: the CIA says the birds had trouble flying over the exact places it needed photographed.

Question 9

Coal miners once carried which small yellow songbird underground to warn them of poison gas?

Accepted Answer

The canary. Carbon monoxide has no color or smell, so a canary's collapse gave miners time to get out. Many miners whistled to their birds and treated them as pets. Britain only outlawed canaries in its coal mines in December 1986, Smithsonian magazine says.

Question 10

Which bird does the US president “pardon” at the White House each Thanksgiving?

Accepted Answer

A turkey. The White House Historical Association credits Abraham Lincoln with the first pardon, at Christmas: his son Tad pleaded for a live turkey meant for dinner. The formal Thanksgiving tradition took hold in 1989 under George H. W. Bush.

Question 11

Which Sesame Street character stands 8 feet, 2 inches tall, with lemon-yellow feathers and orange feet?

Accepted Answer

Big Bird. He has been on Sesame Street since 1969, BirdNote notes, and he lives in a huge nest behind 123 Sesame Street. The first time he saw the alphabet, he thought it was one really, really long word.

Question 12

True or false: in real life, a coyote can run faster than a roadrunner.

Accepted Answer

True. A Greater Roadrunner can reach about 20 mph and a coyote up to 43 mph, BirdNote says, citing a Texas field guide. The fastest human clocks about 22 mph.

Question 13

In Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving painting Freedom from Want (1943), which bird is being carried to the family table?

Accepted Answer

A turkey. The woman holding the big turkey was the Rockwell family's cook, Mrs. Thadeus Wheaton, the Norman Rockwell Museum says. Neighbors and family posed for the scene one at a time in his studio.

Question 14

Canada's one-dollar coin, first issued in 1987, is nicknamed the “loonie” after the bird on it. Which bird?

Accepted Answer

The loon. The loon was a stand-in. Dies for the planned design, a voyageur in a canoe, were lost after the mint tried to save $43.50 by shipping them by ordinary courier, says a 1987 report quoted in the University of British Columbia's Dictionary of Canadianisms.

Question 15

Legend says the Tower of London, and the monarchy with it, will fall if which birds that live there are ever killed?

Accepted Answer

The ravens. In one version BirdNote tells, King Charles II's soothsayer gave the warning in 1666, though nobody knows which origin story, if any, is true. A Ravenmaster still looks after at least six ravens at the Tower, with ample food and comfy quarters.

Question 16

In old European folklore, which big bird brings new babies to their families?

Accepted Answer

The stork. The legend probably began in what is now northern Germany, BirdNote says. White Storks returned each spring, just when many babies were born, so people welcomed their big stick nests on roofs and chimneys. Many still see storks as good luck.

Question 17

Which common shorebird got its name from its own loud call, “kill-dee, kill-dee, kill-dee”?

Accepted Answer

The Killdeer. It often gives the call as an alarm when a predator comes near its nest, BirdNote says. The Northern Bobwhite and the Whip-poor-will are also named for their calls.

Question 18

Which birds fly over the stormy field in Vincent van Gogh's 1890 painting Wheatfield with ___?

Accepted Answer

Crows. It is often called his last painting, but Smithsonian magazine reports that Van Gogh Museum researchers think a lesser-known canvas, Tree Roots, is the more likely candidate. A letter dates Wheatfield with Crows to around July 10, 1890.

Question 19

Pittsburgh's NHL team is named after a flightless bird, partly because its old arena was nicknamed the “Big Igloo.” Which bird?

Accepted Answer

The penguin. In 1967 the name was suggested by 716 different people, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recalls. Not everyone approved: critics said penguins can't fly, have flippers instead of wings and, cute as they are, don't inspire fear.

Question 20

Which bird sits in the center of Mexico's flag, perched on a cactus and eating a snake?

Accepted Answer

A Golden Eagle. In the legend BirdNote retells, the god Huitzilopochtli told the Mexica people to settle where they saw that sign. They found it on a tiny islet in Lake Texcoco and built Tenochtitlan, which grew into Mexico City.

Question 21

Which Australian bird is famous for copying almost any sound it hears, even a chainsaw?

Accepted Answer

The Superb Lyrebird. About 80 percent of a Superb Lyrebird's song is borrowed, the Australian Museum says, and it can include anything the bird hears nearby: chainsaws, car engines, barking dogs and other native birds.

Question 22

Where does a flamingo get its pink color?

Accepted Answer

From its food. Flamingos really are what they eat, says the Smithsonian's National Zoo. The algae and brine shrimp they eat carry natural pigments, the kind that make carrots orange, and the bird's body turns them into pink feathers. Chicks hatch gray-white.

Question 23

True or false: an ostrich buries its head in the sand when it senses danger.

Accepted Answer

False. It's a myth, says San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. An ostrich that can't run away flops down with its pale head and neck flat on the ground, so from a distance it only looks as if its head is buried.

Question 24

The world's smallest bird is often mistaken for an insect. What is it called?

Accepted Answer

The Bee Hummingbird. Found only in Cuba, it is about 2¼ inches long and weighs less than two grams, less than a dime, BirdNote says. The female's nest is barely an inch across, and her eggs are about the size of a coffee bean.

Question 25

Which ocean wanderer has the greatest wingspan of any living bird, almost 3.5 meters (about 11 feet)?

Accepted Answer

The Wandering Albatross. It spends most of its life in flight, landing only to breed and feed, the Australian Museum says. One banded bird covered 6,000 kilometers (about 3,700 miles) in twelve days.

Question 26

True or false: penguins and polar bears live together near the North Pole.

Accepted Answer

False. Penguins live only in the Southern Hemisphere and polar bears only around the North Pole, so they are never neighbors except at a zoo, Audubon magazine says.

Question 27

In emperor penguins, which parent keeps the egg warm on its feet through the Antarctic winter?

Accepted Answer

The father. The mother hands him the egg and heads to sea, the Australian Antarctic Division says. Huddled with other males in winter storms, he can't leave to eat, and by the time the chick hatches he has fasted for about four months.

Question 28

Hummingbirds use a sticky, stretchy material as “duct tape” for their tiny nests. What is it?

Accepted Answer

Spider silk. A female Ruby-throated Hummingbird gathers it by sticking it all over her bill and breast, BirdNote says. The silk glues the nest together and stretches as the chicks grow.

Question 29

In 2002 a crow named Betty amazed scientists at Oxford by bending a straight piece of garden wire. What did she make?

Accepted Answer

A hook, to lift a food bucket out of a tube. The twist came in 2016: University of St Andrews biologists saw wild New Caledonian crows bending their twig tools as a matter of course, which casts doubt on how inventive Betty really was.

Question 30

True or false: protein from a T. rex bone turned out to be more like a chicken's than a lizard's.

Accepted Answer

True. In 2007–2008 studies, protein from a 68-million-year-old T. rex bone closely matched the bone protein of chickens and ostriches, Smithsonian magazine reported. So what did T. rex taste like? Its answer: “Well, possibly chicken.”

Question 31

True or false: all of a frigatebird's feathers together weigh more than its whole skeleton.

Accepted Answer

True. Bird bones are built to be light, BirdNote explains: a Red-tailed Hawk's bones are hollow, braced inside by struts, and the bones of frigatebirds, masters of the air, weigh less than their feathers.

Question 32

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, the world had over 33 billion of which farm bird in 2020?

Accepted Answer

Chickens. About 46 percent of them were in Asia, the FAO says. More than 1,600 chicken breeds are recognized, and a commercial laying hen can lay over 300 eggs a year.

Question 33

Which World War I pigeon carried the message that helped save the “Lost Battalion” in 1918?

Accepted Answer

Cher Ami. Cher Ami is credited with saving the Lost Battalion in the Argonne Forest in October 1918. France awarded the pigeon the Croix de Guerre, the U.S. Army says.

Question 34

Before 1900, many Americans spent Christmas on a “side hunt.” Which ornithologist proposed counting birds instead?

Accepted Answer

Frank M. Chapman. On Christmas Day 1900, Chapman's first Christmas Bird Census drew 27 birders to 25 counts. The Christmas Bird Count still runs every winter.

Question 35

Which Civil War eagle, named for President Lincoln, went into battle with a Wisconsin company?

Accepted Answer

Old Abe. The Bald Eagle went with Company C into nearly 40 battles, BirdNote says (counts vary by source), then retired to the Wisconsin Capitol and appeared at parades and veterans' gatherings.

Question 36

The Baltimore Oriole's orange and black match the coat of arms of which 17th-century lord?

Accepted Answer

Lord Baltimore. That match is the usual explanation for the bird's name, the National Audubon Society says. Baltimore's baseball team later took its name from the bird.

Question 37

The Philadelphia Eagles took their name from a blue eagle, the symbol of which Depression-era program?

Accepted Answer

The National Recovery Act. Bert Bell spotted the blue eagle on a placard in a Philadelphia shop window. It stood for the country's resolve to beat the Depression, the Philadelphia Inquirer says.

Question 38

A strange seabird event in Capitola, California, helped inspire which Alfred Hitchcock film?

Accepted Answer

The Birds (1963). Scientists later suspected domoic acid, a nerve poison made by certain ocean algae, was behind the birds' strange behavior.

Question 39

Gas companies add a smell like rotting meat to natural gas. Which bird gathers at pipeline leaks?

Accepted Answer

The Turkey Vulture. The added chemical, ethyl mercaptan, is a key part of the smell of carrion. A Union Oil employee noticed vultures gathering where gas was leaking, BirdNote tells.

Question 40

How do vultures cool off on a hot day?

Accepted Answer

They poop on their own legs. Birds can't sweat or pant the way we do, so a hot vulture excretes down its legs and lets evaporation cool it, the National Park Service explains.

Question 41

In a 1995 study, pigeons learned to tell apart the paintings of which two artists?

Accepted Answer

Monet and Picasso. The pigeons learned to sort color slides of the two painters' works, then sorted paintings they had never seen. Turning a Monet upside down confused them; an upside-down Picasso didn't.

Question 42

How did Audubon fit a life-size American Flamingo onto one page of The Birds of America?

Accepted Answer

With its neck bent down. The flamingo is one of the birds that needed a special pose to fit the giant page at life size, the University of Wisconsin–Madison's library explains.

Question 43

Legend says the swallows return to Mission San Juan Capistrano, California, on the same saint's day every March. Which day?

Accepted Answer

St. Joseph's Day (March 19). The legend has the Cliff Swallows leave again on October 23, San Juan's Day. Audubon magazine says the real birds trickle in through March, and by 2016 none had returned to nest at the old stone church since workers removed their nests in the 1990s.

Question 44

In 1976, 154 fans suggested the same bird name for Toronto's new baseball team in its naming contest. What name was it?

Accepted Answer

The Blue Jays. The contest drew more than 30,000 entries, MLB.com recounts, and many fans wanted the Toronto Blues. With 154 people sending in Blue Jays, a draw picked the winner: a periodontist who got two 1977 season tickets and a trip to spring training.

Question 45

True or false: baseball's St. Louis Cardinals were originally named after the red bird.

Accepted Answer

False. The name came from a color. The story goes that a fan called the team's new 1899 uniforms “a lovely shade of cardinal,” and a newspaper columnist ran with it. MLB.com says management didn't think of the birds until 1921.

Question 46

In 1965 a schoolteacher won the contest to name Atlanta's new NFL team by writing that this bird “never drops prey.” Which bird?

Accepted Answer

The falcon. Several people suggested Falcons, the team's own history recalls, but Julia Elliott, a teacher from nearby Griffin, won for her reasons: the falcon is “proud and dignified, with great courage and fight.”

Question 47

The University of Kansas Jayhawk is a made-up bird. Which two real birds does its name come from?

Accepted Answer

The blue jay and the sparrow hawk. In a 1926 radio talk, KU's F. W. Blackmar called the Jayhawk “a myth” built on two Missouri Valley birds: the noisy, quarrelsome blue jay and the sparrow hawk. Who first joined the names, he said, no one knows.

Question 48

In 1921 a turkey named Supreme II flew toward the White House in an aviation helmet and goggles. Why did it finish the trip by train?

Accepted Answer

It got airsick. It also wore a black and gold sweater held on by a pink bow, the White House Historical Association says. Flying was still a novelty then, and the turkey made national news.

Question 49

In 1943 a US Army pigeon flew 20 miles in 20 minutes to stop Allied planes bombing an Italian village their own troops had just taken. What was its name?

Accepted Answer

G.I. Joe. His message arrived just as the bombers were about to take off, saving at least 100 Allied soldiers, the British animal charity PDSA says. In 1946 he became the first non-British recipient of its Dickin Medal, presented at the Tower of London.

Question 50

During World War II, psychologist B.F. Skinner designed a missile that would be steered by which birds?

Accepted Answer

Pigeons. In “Project Pigeon,” three trained pigeons sat in tiny cockpits in the nose cone and pecked at a picture of the target to steer. Despite a successful demonstration, officials canceled it. The nose cone is at the Smithsonian's American History Museum.

Question 51

Woody Woodpecker was supposedly born on cartoonist Walter Lantz's honeymoon. What was a real woodpecker doing to annoy him?

Accepted Answer

Hammering on the roof of their cabin. BirdNote says it was probably an Acorn Woodpecker, pounding at the shingles of their California cabin. Lantz was ready to shoot it, but his bride, Grace, suggested he vent his frustration creatively instead.

Question 52

On the Moon, Apollo 15 commander David Scott dropped a hammer and a feather together on live TV. Which bird did the feather come from?

Accepted Answer

A falcon. With no air to slow it, the feather fell as fast as the hammer, as Galileo had concluded centuries before, NASA explains. Mission Controller Joe Allen found that reassuring: the astronauts' trip home depended on the same theory.

Question 53

The phrase “halcyon days” comes from a Greek myth about birds said to nest during seven calm days each year. Which birds?

Accepted Answer

Kingfishers. In the myth, retold by BirdNote, the gods took pity on two lovers lost at sea, Ceyx and Alcyone, and turned them into “halcyon birds”: kingfishers. Many kingfishers still carry “halcyon” or “Ceyx” in their scientific names.

Question 54

When his patron refused to pay his full fee, painter James McNeill Whistler painted the two of them on the dining room wall as which quarreling birds?

Accepted Answer

Fighting peacocks. Whistler titled the mural Art and Money. The patron, shipping magnate Frederick Leyland, banned him from the room but kept dining in it. The Peacock Room is now at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art in Washington.

Question 55

A male Satin Bowerbird decorates the stick bower where he courts females with objects of one favorite color, including stolen bottle tops and straws. Which color?

Accepted Answer

Blue. Blue clothespins, drinking straws and bottle tops are among his favorite stolen items, the Australian Museum says. Away from people, he uses mostly bright blue parrot feathers, flowers and brown snail shells.

Question 56

A flamingo's leg seems to bend backward at the knee. What joint are you really looking at?

Accepted Answer

Its ankle. Flamingo legs bend just like ours, the Smithsonian's National Zoo explains. The real knees sit higher up, hidden by the body and feathers, so think of a flamingo as standing on tiptoe.

Question 57

An ostrich egg weighs only about 2 percent of its mother. Which flightless bird lays an egg of about 15 percent of her body weight?

Accepted Answer

The kiwi. For its body size, the kiwi lays the second-largest egg of any bird, says the Smithsonian's National Zoo, which in 1975 became the first place outside New Zealand to hatch a brown kiwi.

Question 58

An ostrich egg is the largest egg laid today. About how many chicken eggs would it take to match its weight?

Accepted Answer

About 24. At more than 3 pounds, the ostrich egg is the largest single cell on the planet today, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance says; only dinosaurs laid bigger eggs.

Question 59

About how many times a minute does an active hummingbird's heart beat?

Accepted Answer

About 1,200. That's twice as fast as a flying pigeon's heart, at 600, BirdNote says. A human athlete going all out reaches only about 150 beats a minute.

Question 60

A woodpecker's tongue is at least three times as long as its bill. Where does the bird keep it when it isn't using it?

Accepted Answer

Curled around the back of its skull. The tongue has sticky barbs at the tip for snagging ants deep in the wood, BirdNote says. When it's pulled in, it sits in a sheath that runs up the back of the skull and curls all the way around to the eyes.

Question 61

Before the Wright brothers built their first glider, which circling birds did they watch to work out how to bank and turn?

Accepted Answer

Buzzards. The buzzards rolled by tilting one wingtip up and the other down, a NASA history says. Wilbur then twisted a small cardboard box in his hands and hit on wing warping; a century later NASA tested a jet fighter that twists its wings in flight.

Question 62

Why do pet parrots copy human speech, according to parrot scientist Irene Pepperberg?

Accepted Answer

To fit in: they treat their people as their flock. Wild parrots use their voices to fit in with the flock, Audubon magazine reports, so a pet parrot joins its human “flock” the same way. Pepperberg is best known for Alex, an African Grey Parrot who lived in her lab for 30 years.

Question 63

Which penguin is named after the same 18th-century fashion as the “macaroni” in “Yankee Doodle”?

Accepted Answer

The Macaroni Penguin. In the 18th century, British explorers thought it looked like the fashionable dressers back home called “macaronis,” who wore feathers in their hats, Audubon magazine says. “Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni” refers to that same fashion.

Question 64

Japanese bullet trains boomed loudly when bursting out of tunnels at high speed. Which bird's beak inspired the 500 Series' long nose that eased the problem?

Accepted Answer

The kingfisher. A kingfisher dives from air into water without a splash, engineer Eiji Nakatsu, a Wild Bird Society of Japan member, told Japan for Sustainability. Tests found the ideal nose almost identical to its beak; the train ran 10 percent faster on 15 percent less electricity.

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