20 Most Incredible Birds From Around the World

Somewhere above you right now, something is flying. It might be a small brown sparrow crossing a parking lot, or it might be a cretus the size of a small aircraft riding wind currents three miles above the ocean without flapping its wings for hours at a time. Birds are the last living dinosaurs, and after 150 million years of evolution, they have become some of the most extraordinary animals the planet has ever produced. Some of them can fly higher than a commercial jet. Some of them cannot fly at all, and would rather kick you to death. Some weigh less than a coin, and some can carry a monkey out of the treetops in a single strike. Tonight, we are traveling across every continent on earth to meet 20 of the most incredible birds alive today. From the swamps of Africa to the ice of Antarctica, from the Amazon canopy to the peaks of the Andes, each of these birds does something that should not be possible. We count down from 20 to 1, and the closer we get to number 1, the stranger and more magnificent they become. Before we begin, drop a comment and tell us where you are watching from and what time it is right now. We want to see how many countries this video reaches. Number 20. Rainbow lorikeet Australia. We start with a bird that looks like it was colored in by a child who refused to stop at the lines. The rainbow lorikeet, native to the eastern coast of Australia, is a riot of blue, green, orange, and yellow packed into a body barely 30 centimeters long. But its most incredible feature is hidden inside its mouth. Unlike most parrots that crack seeds, the lorikeet has a tongue tipped with tiny brush-like structures called papillae. This brush tongue is a specialized tool for sweeping nectar and pollen out of flowers, allowing the bird to feed on a liquid diet that most parrots cannot process. Flocks descend on flowering trees in screaming, chaotic clouds, and a single tree can host dozens of birds at once. They are loud, aggressive, and endlessly social, forming lifelong bonds with a single partner. In some Australian suburbs, they have become so bold that they will land on an outstretched hand within seconds. Behind that cartoon coloring is a highly intelligent animal capable of solving puzzles and remembering feeding sites for years. It is a fitting way to open our journey, proof that even a common backyard bird can be a small miracle of engineering. Hoatzin, Amazon Basin, South America Deep in the flooded forests of the Amazon lives a bird so strange that scientists spent over a century arguing about where it belongs on the tree of life. The Hoatzin is roughly the size of a pheasant, with a spiky orange crest, a bright blue face, and red eyes that give it a permanently startled expression. But two things make it truly remarkable. The first is its digestive system. The Hoatzin is the only bird in the world that ferments its food the way a cow does, using bacteria in an enlarged crop to break down the tough leaves it eats. This fermentation produces a powerful, sour smell, which is why locals call it the stinkbird. The second wonder is even stranger. Hoatzin chicks are born with two functioning claws on each wing. When a predator threatens the nest, the chick will throw itself into the water below, swim to safety, and then use those tiny claws to climb back up through the branches to the nest. This feature is a living echo of Archaeopteryx, the ancient link between dinosaurs and birds. The claws disappear as the bird matures. But for a few weeks, each Hoatzin chick is a walking piece of prehistory, climbing through the Amazon exactly as its ancestors did over a hundred million years ago. Number 18. Secretary Bird, Sub-Saharan Africa. Across the open grasslands of Africa strides a that hunts on foot and kills with its feet. The secretary bird stands over a meter tall on long, crane-like legs, with the body of an eagle and a crown of black, quill-like feathers that reminded early observers of the pens tucked behind the ears of Victorian clerks. But there is nothing clerical about how it hunts. The secretary bird specializes in killing snakes, including venomous ones, and it does so by stomping. Studies have measured the force of these strikes at around five times the bird's own body weight, delivered in just 15 milliseconds. Faster than the human eye can follow, it targets the head of a snake with pinpoint accuracy, delivering blows so fast and so precise that the snake often has no chance to bite back. When it cannot reach with its feet, it will stamp the ground to flush out prey, then chase it down across the savannah. This is a raptor that traded soaring for walking, covering up to 30 kilometers a day on foot. It appears on the national coat of arms of South Africa, wings spread in protection, a symbol of a hunter perfectly adapted to a world of tall grass and hidden danger. Number 17. Ripples, Griffon Vulture, East Africa. The next bird holds a record that sounds impossible. On the 29th of November 1973, a commercial aircraft flying over the Ivory Coast at an altitude of 11,300 meters collided with a bird. That is roughly 37,000 feet, higher than the summit of Mount Everest, higher than most passenger jets' crews. The bird was identified from its feathers as a Ripples, Griffon Vulture, and it remains the highest flying bird ever recorded. To survive at that altitude, where the air holds a fraction of the oxygen available at sea level, this vulture carries a special type of haemoglobin in its blood that absorbs oxygen far more efficiently than that of almost any other animal. It can soar for hours in the thin, freezing air, scanning hundreds of square kilometers of African landscape for the carcasses it feeds on. With a wingspan of around two and a half meters, it rides thermals up to extraordinary heights, then glides for enormous distances without a single flap. Sadly, this magnificent bird is now critically endangered, its numbers collapsing due to poisoning and habitat loss. The bird that flies higher than any other on earth is running out of sky. Number 16. Bar-tailed Godwit, Alaska and New Zealand. This modest-looking shorebird, brownish, long-billed, easy to overlook on a mudflat, is the greatest endurance athlete in the animal kingdom. In 2022, scientists tracking a young bar-tailed godwit recorded a single, non-stop flight from to Tasmania, covering roughly 13,500 kilometers. The bird flew for 11 days and one hour without landing, without eating, and without drinking a single drop of water. It did not stop to rest on the ocean, because it cannot swim. If it had landed, it would have died. To prepare for this journey, the godwit performs a biological transformation that borders on science fiction. In the weeks before departure, it shrinks its own internal organs, its liver, kidneys, and digestive system, to save weight, while nearly doubling its body mass in fat. It essentially remodels its own body into a flying fuel tank. It uses weather systems and wind patterns with such precision that researchers believe it can sense storm fronts thousands of kilometers away. There is no other migration like it on the planet. A bird you could hold in one hand crosses the largest ocean on Earth in a single, unbroken flight, guided by instincts we are only beginning to understand. Number 15. Bee Hummingbird, Cuba. From the greatest flyer to the smallest bird alive. Found only on the island of Cuba, the bee hummingbird measures just five to six centimeters from beak to tail and weighs less than two grams, lighter than a single coin. It is so small that it is regularly mistaken for an actual bee, and yet inside this tiny body beats one of the most extreme engines in nature. Its heart can pound over a thousand times per minute. Its wings beat up to 80 times per second during normal flight, and even faster during courtship displays, producing the humming sound that gives the family its name. It can hover in place, fly backwards, and even upside down. To fuel this staggering metabolism, it must visit hundreds of flowers every single day, consuming roughly half its body weight in nectar and drinking eight times its body weight in water. If it does not eat almost constantly, it will starve within hours. At night, to survive, it enters a state called torpo, dropping its heart rate and body temperature dramatically to conserve energy. A kind of nightly hibernation. This is life lived at the absolute limit of what biology allows, packed into a creature small enough to sit on the tip of your finger. On a few predator-free islands off the coast of New Zealand lives one of the rarest and strangest birds on earth. The kakapo is a parrot, but almost nothing about it behaves like one. It cannot fly. It is nocturnal. It is the heaviest parrot in the world, with some males weighing up to four kilograms. And it can live for a very long time, possibly up to 90 years, making it one of the longest-lived birds known. When New Zealand had no land mammals, the kakapo thrived, freezing in place and relying on its mossy green camouflage to hide from the eagles that once hunted it. But when humans arrived, bringing cats, rats, and stoats, its freezing defense became a death sentence, and the species collapsed. By the 1990s, only around 50 birds remained. Today, thanks to one of the most intensive conservation programs ever attempted, every single living kakapo has a name and is monitored individually. The population has slowly climbed back to around 200 birds. Their breeding is bizarre. Males gather and produce a deep, booming call that can travel for kilometers across the night, inflating themselves like feathered balloons to attract females. Gentle, curious, and almost impossibly rare, the kakapo is a survivor pulled back from the very edge of extinction. Number 13. Resplendent Quetzal, Central America. In the misty cloud forests of Central America lives a bird so beautiful that entire civilizations worshiped it. The resplendent quetzal shimmers in iridescent green and gold, with a crimson breast, and, in breeding males, a pair of tail streamers that can trail over a meter behind the body. To the ancient Maya and Aztec peoples, the quetzal was sacred, associated with the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl. Its brilliant feathers were prized above gold, and killing the bird was said to be punishable by death. The feathers were plucked from living birds, which were then released. Today, the quetzal gives its name to the currency of Guatemala. What makes it truly incredible is not only its beauty, but its fragility. It depends almost entirely on the wild avocado trees of the cloud forest, swallowing the fruit whole and later regurgitating the pit, which helps replant the forest. It nests in the hollows of decaying trees, and the male's long tail feathers are so delicate he must enter the nest and turn to face outward, so they curl up over his back rather than snapping. A living jewel of the mountains, the quetzal is a bird that helped shape the myths of an entire hemisphere. Number 12. Southern Cassowary, Australia and New Guinea. Now we meet a bird that is genuinely dangerous. The southern cassowary of the rainforests of northern Australia and New Guinea is often called the most dangerous bird in the world. It stands up to nearly two meters tall, can weigh over 60 kilograms and is built like a feathered dinosaur, which in a real sense it is. On top of its head sits a tall, helmet-like crest called a casque, made of a spongy keratin material, which may help it push through dense undergrowth or amplify the deep, booming calls it uses to communicate. Sounds so low they sit at the very edge of human hearing, but the truly fearsome feature is on its feet. Each foot carries three toes, and the inner toe ends in a dagger-like claw that can be over 10 centimeters long. A frightened or cornered cassowary can deliver a leaping, slashing kick powerful enough to cause serious injury. It can run at speeds up to 50 kilometers per hour through thick forest and even swim across rivers. Despite this reputation, the cassowary is a shy animal that mostly wants to be left alone, spending its days eating fallen fruit and, like the quetzal, spreading the seeds of dozens of rainforest plants. It is a gardener of the forest wearing the armor of a warrior. Number 11. Kiwi, New Zealand. Returning to New Zealand, we find a bird that seems to break every rule of what a bird should be. The kiwi is roughly the size of a chicken, flightless, covered in shaggy, hair-like feathers with tiny, useless wings hidden beneath. It has nostrils at the very tip of its long beak. The only bird in the world with this arrangement, which it uses to sniff out worms and insects underground in the dark. But the kiwi's most astonishing feature is its egg. Relative to its body size, the kiwi lays one of the largest eggs of any bird on earth. A single egg can weigh up to 20% of the female's entire body weight. The human equivalent would be a woman giving birth to a six-year-old child. The egg is so large that in the final days before laying, the female can barely eat because there is almost no room left inside her body. The chick hatches fully feathered and, remarkably, is left to fend for itself within days. Kiwis are so beloved in New Zealand that the people of the country call themselves Kiwis. Nocturnal, secretive, and utterly unique, this odd little bird is a national treasure and a reminder of how strange evolution can become on an isolated island. Number 10. Ostrich, African savannah. We have reached the top 10 and we begin with the largest and heaviest bird on the planet. The ostrich of the African plains can stand up to 2.7 meters tall and weigh as much as 145 kilograms. It gave up flight long ago, but in exchange, it gained something extraordinary on the ground. An ostrich can sprint at speeds up to 70 kilometers per hour and maintain a fast pace for a long distance, making it the fastest running bird and one of the fastest land animals on two legs. Each stride can cover up to five meters. Its powerful legs are not just for running. A single kick from an ostrich can be lethal, delivered with enough force to kill a lion, and its clawed feet act like weapons. The ostrich also lays the largest egg of any living bird, weighing around the equivalent of about two dozen chicken eggs. Its eyes are the largest of any land animal, roughly five centimeters across, larger than its own brain, giving it superb vision across the open savannah. And the old story that ostriches bury their heads in the sand is a myth. They simply lower their heads to the ground to tend their nests. Everything about the ostrich is built on a scale that dwarfs every other bird alive. Number nine, superb lyrebird Australia. The next bird is perhaps the greatest impressionist in the natural world. The superb lyrebird of the forests of southeastern Australia is a ground-dwelling bird about the size of a rooster with a spectacular tail that, when fanned, resembles the shape of a lyre, the ancient harp-like instrument. But its true genius is in its voice. The male lyrebird is the finest vocal mimic on earth, capable of imitating almost any sound it hears with uncanny precision. In the wild, it reproduces the songs of 20 or more other bird species in a single performance. But it does not stop at birds. Lyrebirds have been recorded imitating the click of a camera shutter, the whine of a chainsaw, the beep of a car alarm, and even the sound of a human's power tools echoing through the forest. It weaves these sounds together into a long, flowing performance to attract a mate, singing from a mound it builds and clears on the forest floor. A single male can sing for up to 20 minutes without repeating himself. For a female lyrebird, the quality of this vocal performance is everything. In a world full of birds that sing their own song, the lyrebird has mastered the art of singing everyone else's. Number 8. Arctic Tern. From the Arctic to the Antarctic. If the godwit is the greatest endurance flyer, the arctic tern is the greatest traveler. This slender, elegant seabird holds the record for the longest migration of any animal on the planet. Every year, it flies from its breeding grounds in the Arctic to the waters around Antarctica and back again. Because it does not fly in a straight line but follows winding routes to catch favorable winds, the true distance covered can reach up to 90,000 kilometers in a single year. Over a lifetime of around 30 years, a single arctic tern may fly a total distance equivalent to traveling to the moon and back three times. And there is a poetic dimension to this journey. Because the tern chases summer from one end of the earth to the other, it experiences more daylight than any other creature alive. It lives in an almost perpetual summer, seeing two of them every year. This tiny bird, weighing only around 100 grams, spends most of its life on the wing, crossing entire oceans to follow the light. It is a living thread stitching the two ends of the planet together, year after year, in the longest commute in the history of life. WANDERING ALBATROSS – SOUTHERN OCEAN Above the wild and stormy waters of the Southern Ocean glides a bird with the largest wingspan of any living creature. The wandering albatross has wings that can stretch up to three and a half meters from tip to tip, wider than many small cars are long. But the true miracle is how it uses them. The albatross has mastered a technique called dynamic soaring, exploiting the differences in wind speed, just above the ocean's surface, to travel enormous distances while barely flapping at all. It can lock its wings in place with a special tendon, meaning it expends almost no energy to hold them open. Using this technique, an albatross can travel over 10,000 kilometers in a single foraging trip and can circle the entire globe in as little as 46 days. It spends the vast majority of its life at sea, sometimes going years without touching land, sleeping while it flies. It can live for more than 50 years and mates for life, performing elaborate courtship dances with a partner it may keep for decades. To sailors of old, the albatross was a symbol of good fortune and to see one wheeling over the waves is to witness one of the most effortless and graceful acts of flight on the planet. Number 6. Andean Condor. The Andes Mountains, South America. High in the mountains of South America soars one of the largest flying birds in the world. The Andean Condor has a wingspan reaching up to 3.3 meters and can weigh up to 15 kilograms, making it one of the heaviest birds capable of flight. To keep such a massive body in the air, it relies almost entirely on rising columns of warm air and mountain winds, riding these currents to great heights and soaring for hours while flapping its wings only rarely. It can travel over 200 kilometers a day in search of food, scanning the mountains and coastlines for carcasses with extraordinary eyesight. The condor holds deep significance in the cultures of the Andes, revered by the Inca and many other peoples as a sacred messenger between the earthly world and the heavens. It is a bird of extremes in age as well as size. It can live for over 70 years, among the longest lifespans of any bird. Bald-headed and enormous, it is not conventionally beautiful up close, but seen from a distance, spread against the peaks of the Andes, the condor is one of the most majestic sights in all of nature, a giant of the sky drifting silently above the roof of the continent. Number 5. Emperor Penguin, Antarctica. The next bird survives conditions that would kill almost any other animal on earth within minutes. The emperor penguin is the largest of all penguins, standing well over a meter tall, and it lives in the most hostile environment on the planet, the frozen heart of Antarctica. While every other creature flees the coming winter, the emperor penguin walks toward it. In the depths of the Antarctic winter, when temperatures plunge to minus 60 degrees Celsius and winds scream across the ice at nearly 200 kilometers per hour, the female lays a single egg and then departs for the sea to feed. The male is left to hold that egg on top of his feet, tucked beneath a fold of warm skin, for over two months through the darkest, coldest season on earth. He does not eat the entire time, surviving on his fat reserves and losing nearly half his body weight. The males huddle together in enormous groups of thousands, constantly rotating so that each bird takes a turn on the freezing outer edge and then moves to the warm center. And in the water, the emperor penguin is transformed. It can dive deeper than 500 meters and hold its breath for over 20 minutes, deeper and longer than any other bird. It is the ultimate portrait of endurance, a devoted father standing in the coldest place on earth so that new life can begin. Number 4. Harpy Eagle. The rainforests of Central and South America. Now we meet one of the most powerful birds of prey on the planet. The harpy eagle rules the canopy of the tropical rainforests and it is built for one purpose, to kill. It has the largest talons of any eagle, with rear claws that can grow to around 13 centimeters long, roughly the same size as the claws of a grizzly bear. With those talons, it can exert a crushing grip powerful enough to snap the bones of its prey instantly. And its prey is not small. The harpy eagle hunts monkeys and sloths, plucking them straight out of the treetops, and it can carry off animals weighing as much as it does, up to nine kilograms. Despite a wingspan of around two meters, its wings are relatively short and broad, allowing it to maneuver at high speed through the dense forest, dodging trunks and branches as it dives. It can reach speeds of up to 80 kilometers per hour in the confined space beneath the canopy. On its head sits a crown of dark feathers that it can raise into a striking crest, giving it a fierce, almost mythical appearance. Silent, enormous, and immensely strong, the harpy eagle is the undisputed apex predator of the rainforest sky, a ghost of the canopy that most of its prey never sees until it is far too late. Number three, peregrine falcon worldwide. The bird at number three is not just the fastest bird, it is the fastest animal on earth. The peregrine falcon is found on every continent except Antarctica, making it one of the most widespread birds in the world. In level flight it is fast, but its true weapon is the hunting dive known as the stoop. When a peregrine spots prey below, it folds its wings tight against its body and plunges from great height, and in that dive it has been recorded reaching speeds of over 380 kilometers per hour. To survive velocities that would be fatal to most creatures, the peregrine's body is packed with special adaptations. Bony structures called baffles inside its nostrils slow the incoming air so it can still breathe at high speed, a design so effective that engineers have studied it to improve jet engine intakes. A special third eyelid sweeps across its eyes to keep them clear and protected. When it strikes its prey mid-air, the impact can kill instantly. The peregrine is also a conservation triumph. In the mid-20th century, the pesticide DDT nearly wiped it out across much of the world by thinning its eggshells. After the chemical was banned and decades of recovery efforts, the peregrine has returned, now nesting even on the ledges of city skyscrapers, hunting pigeons through the concrete canyons of our largest cities, the fastest hunter on earth living right above our heads. Number 2. Shoebill, the swamps of East Africa. Our second place bird looks less like a modern animal and more like something that stepped out of the age of dinosaurs. The shoebill stalks the vast, remote swamps of East Africa from South Sudan to Zambia and standing up to 1.5 meters tall, with a wingspan of well over 2 meters, it is an imposing and deeply strange sight. Its defining feature is its enormous bill, shaped like a wooden shoe or clog, up to 24 centimeters long, with razor-sharp edges and a hooked tip capable of decapitating its prey. It hunts by standing utterly, unnervingly still, sometimes for hours at a time, waiting for a lungfish, a catfish or even a young crocodile to break the surface of the water. Then, in a single explosive lunge, it strikes, collapsing its whole body forward onto the prey. This hunting method is known as collapsing and it is unlike anything else in the bird world. The shoebill is also famous for its intense, unblinking stare and for a strange behavior. It clatters its huge bill like a machine gun, a sound that echoes across the swamp. It will even bow its head to human researchers who approach respectfully. Solitary, ancient-looking and hauntingly still, the shoebill is one of the most extraordinary birds a person can ever hope to see in the wild. A living statue that has stepped out of deep time. Number one. Superb bird-of-paradise, Papua New Guinea. And so we arrive at number one, a bird that transforms itself into something that does not even look like a bird. In the rainforests of Papua New Guinea lives the superb bird-of-paradise and the male performs what may be the single most astonishing courtship display in the entire animal kingdom. On an ordinary day, the male is a striking but recognizable black bird with an iridescent blue-green breast shield. But when a female appears, he undergoes a transformation. He raises a cape of jet-black feathers up and around his head. And these feathers are among the darkest materials found anywhere in nature. Their microscopic structure absorbs up to 99.95% of all light that hits them, so black that the eye cannot make out any depth or texture at all. Against this void of black, he raises his brilliant blue-green breast shield and two glowing spots that sit above it. Suddenly, he is no longer a bird. He has become a floating, smiling face, an alien blue mouth, and two glowing eyes hovering in the darkness of the forest floor. Then, he begins to dance, snapping his feathers and bouncing rapidly around the female in a hypnotic, side-to-side motion, producing sharp clicking sounds all the while. The female watches. Judging his performance with brutal standards, most males are rejected many times before one is finally chosen. It is beauty, physics, and theatre fused into a single living creature. Of all the incredible birds on Earth, this one has evolved to bend light itself and turn its own body into an illusion. It is a fitting number one, proof that nature's imagination has no limit. Twenty birds, six continents, and every one of them a marvel. From the brush-tongued lorikeet to the light-bending bird of paradise, from a falcon that dives faster than a race car to a penguin that survives the coldest winter on Earth, these creatures show us just how far life can be pushed by time and evolution. The next time you hear wings overhead, remember, you are watching the last of the dinosaurs, still ruling the sky after 150 million years. If you enjoyed this journey around the world, let us know in the comments which of these incredible birds amazed you the most, and which one you would most want to see with your own eyes. Thank you for watching, and until next time, keep looking up!