Get to Know your British Bird Families! Quiz

Answer: Ducks

The smew (Mergellus albellus) is a very attractive duck. The male's plumage is mainly white with black and grey lines and patches, while the female is mainly grey with a chestnut crown and forehead and a white chin. Their bills are serrated with a hooked tip, which helps them catch the fish they eat.

They have a characteristic call which sounds just like a high-pitched "smew"; however they don't make this call in the winter, and as smew are winter migrants to southern England the average British bird watcher is unlikely to hear it!

Answer: Ducks

Scaup (Aythya marila) - or "bluebills" in North America - are quite distinctive ducks. The male has a dark green glossy head with a black breast and a white belly; the bill is bright blue and the eye is yellow. The female is mostly brown with a dull blue bill and white on the face.

They breed within the whole Arctic Circle, often forming "rafts" of thousands of birds when feeding. They spend their winters mainly in coastal bays and estuaries.

Answer: Ducks

The gadwall (Mareca strepera) is found in northern Europe and central North America. A dabbling duck, it lives in open wetlands such as lakes, marshes and ponds. The male is grey with a black rear end and the chestnut wings have a white mark at the trailing edge.

The female is speckled brown, looking very like a female mallard. Population numbers in the UK are low but rising, and recently colonies have become established in Ireland.

Answer: Ducks

The goosander (Mergus merganser) is my favourite duck, and one that I often have the pleasure of seeing at close range. It's a big duck that sits low in the water and often swims with its head underwater, searching for fish. The adult male in breeding plumage is a very striking bird: the body is white, the head is black with an iridescent green gloss, the rump and tail are grey, and the wings are largely white on the inner half and black on the outer half. The female is attractive too, with a grey body and a chestnut head.

They eat fish, and so the bill is clearly serrated. I live beside the Lancaster Canal, and if the nearby River Lune is turbid due to flooding then the goosanders come from the river to fish in the canal; I can watch them all day, and I remember one adult female catching three fish in three consecutive dives!

Answer: Rails

The corncrake (Crex crex) is a bird in the rail family. It breeds in Europe and Asia, and migrates south to Africa during the winter. It's an upright-looking bird, with buff upperparts and blue-grey underparts, and it breeds in hayfields and grassland. It's particularly notable because of the male's loud and distinctive "krek krek" call, which can be audible up to a mile away. Corncrakes used to be very common in rural areas in western Europe before the advent of mechanisation. Changes in the way that hay was cropped led to habitat loss.

One summer, about 30 years ago, I spent a few days in a very rural part of County Sligo in Ireland. The cottage was surrounded by old-fashioned hay meadows - perfect corncrake country. And indeed, one evening we heard a corncrake call! I immediately phoned the Corncrake Hot Line (yes, honestly), and they confirmed that a male bird had been calling in the area over the previous few days. I was totally delighted. My wife, meanwhile, was not so impressed - she'd spent her childhood in rural County Antrim, and she could remember hearing them all summer - they would keep her awake all night in the breeding season!

Answer: Rails

The moorhen (Gallinula chloropus) is a common pond, marshland and wetland bird - it swims well, despite the fact that it doesn't have webbed feet. It's related to the gallinule (Gallinula galeata) in the US, both belonging to the rail family. The sexes are similar - brown plumage above the white stripe of the wings and black below. Both sexes have a red and yellow frontal shield on the forehead, and also a pair of white feathers that stick up out of the tail feathers when the birds are fighting or otherwise excited.

I live in a house beside the Lancaster Canal and there's a pair of moorhens nesting in the reeds on the other side of the canal from me. The males fight noisily and vigorously during the breeding season!

Answer: Rails

Coots (Fulica atra) look for all the world like ducks, especially when you see them congregating in large rafts on open water. However they're not ducks, they are actually in the rail family. Both sexes are black, with a white frontal shield on the forehead. Recently-hatched coots are nature's joke - they look like little black balls of fluff with enormous feet!

Being a young coot, though, is a dangerous thing - if there's insufficient food around to feed the whole clutch, the parent birds will single out the weakest chicks and attack them. Many chicks die in the first week or so after hatching, and pairs may ultimately raise only two or three out of up to ten chicks.

Answer: Rails

Well the water rail (Rallus aquaticus) is indeed a rail and not a mean trick. Both sexes have mainly brown upperparts and blue-grey underparts, with black bars on the flanks, long toes, a short tail and a long reddish bill. They live in reed beds and other marshy places with dense vegetation. The call is very recognisable: a series of grunts followed by a high-pitched squeal and finally more grunts. It is referred to as "sharming".

If you're very lucky you might see one skulking through the reeds. If they think they've been spotted, they'll freeze; they swim only rarely.

Answer: Finches

The serin (Serinus serinus) is a small finch. The upperparts are dark-streaked grey-green with a yellow rump, while the breast is yellow and the belly white. The yellow breast and white belly are also heavily streaked.

The call is a high-pitched trill - I've heard it in Greece but I never managed to see the actual bird.

Answer: Finches

The Eurasian siskin (Spinus spinus) is a small seed-eating finch living in the forests of northern Europe and Siberia. The bird's upperparts are greyish-green while the underparts are grey streaked with white. Its wings are black with a conspicuous yellow bar.

They have one rather odd habit: every few years during the winter they migrate southwards in huge numbers, possibly in search of food. They'll visit domestic bird feeding stations at these times so you might be lucky enough to see one!

Answer: Finches

The twite (Linaria flavirostris) is a small seed-eating bird in the finch family. It's not spectacularly coloured - in fact it comes pretty close to what some birders call an "LBJ" (a "Little Brown Job"), but it does have a nice pink rump.

Twite movements have been the subject of research in the UK. It seems that the birds that breed to the east of the Pennines move to the southeast coast in winter, while those that breed to the west of the Pennines winter between Lancashire and the Hebrides. Meanwhile almost all of the population of twite that breed in Wales spend their winters in Flintshire in north Wales. To me this looks like the very beginning of possible speciation, if the populations stay separate and reproductive isolation starts happening.

Answer: Finches

The redpoll (Acanthis flammea) is a small brownish-grey seed-eating finch with a bright red patch on its forehead. I have vivid memories of this bird going back to when I was about nine years old - I went bird-spotting with a school friend and we saw a flock of redpolls in some scrubland at a local park. I was gobsmacked! - I'd never seen an "unusual" bird before (i.e. something that wasn't a sparrow!). And the excitement of that "spot" laid the foundations for my next 65 years of birding.

Answer: Flycatchers

The nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) was originally thought to be a member of the thrush family, but is now placed in the chat sub-family of the Old World flycatcher family. It isn't spectacular to look at - both sexes are plain brown with lighter underparts - but the song has inspired artists, musicians, playwrights and writers.

I have lovely memories of listening to one singing in a little village called Aladinou, on the Greek island of Andros. Aladinou actually means "nightingale" because they were so common there! It's also the national bird of the Ukraine and Iran.

Answer: Flycatchers

The European robin (Erithacus rubecula) is another member of the Old World flycatcher family. It's a small bird with brown upperparts and white underparts and a distinctive orange breast lined with blue-grey. Male robins are noted for their highly aggressive behaviour, and the orange colour of the bird's breast is a releasing trigger for this.

Both sexes sing, with a lovely, somewhat plaintive song. There are lots of legends and stories connected to robins, and it's been repeatedly voted Britain's favourite bird. The American robin (Turdus migratorius) is a member of a different family, the thrushes.

Answer: Flycatchers

The black redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros) is another bird that was originally thought to be a member of the thrush family but is now placed in the chat sub-family of the Old World flycatcher family. It's a handsome bird, very dark brown or black with an orange or red rump and tail. Black redstarts were rare breeding birds in Britain, nesting mainly on cliffs in south-east England.

However, after the bombing of London during WWII, the shattered ruins of buildings - possibly cliff-like - seem to have attracted black redstarts, and there was a bit of a population explosion. The birds can now be found in places like railway yards and derelict industrial sites.

Answer: Flycatchers

The stonechat (Saxicola rubicola) is another bird that was originally thought to be a member of the thrush family but is now placed in the chat sub-family of the Old World flycatcher family. They're attractive birds; in the breeding season the male has black upperparts and head, an orange throat and breast, and a white belly. It also has a small white collar on its neck. The female is generally duller.

In the British Isles it's found in mountainous areas of Northern Ireland, northern Scotland, north Wales and the Pennine hills. I used to go walking on the County Antrim coast, and up on the hilltops I'd be surrounded by stonechats all making their distinctive call, sounding exactly like two stones being knocked together.