Searching for Birds

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Searching for Birds

Winter months are dreary in New York City, but perhaps none so much as January 2021. Cold air and gray clouds blew between the skyscrapers as the world below remained stuck in the pandemic’s icy grip.

But that month, a small corner of the city briefly came alive when a majestic Snowy Owl appeared in Central Park. Bird fanatics and dozens of other intrigued New Yorkers ventured out of their homes, hoping to catch a glimpse.

[*] --><br>As word spread, so, too, did people’s curiosity. In New York City, Google searches for the term Snowy Owl spiked as residents wanted to learn about the species — and how one ended up in their backyard. New York’s Snowy Owl was as much a story about one special bird as the humans who took notice of it.

Chart: Snowy Owl Search Interest

A line chart showing the relative Google search interest for "Snowy Owl" in New York. The interest spikes dramatically in January 2021, reaching a peak of 100, coinciding with the appearance of a Snowy Owl in Central Park. Prior to this event, interest was negligible.

Google search data, which is available through the company’s Google Trends database, can show us which birds capture our attention.

Google Trends categorizes search terms based on their meaning. For instance, cardinals, orioles, ducks and falcons could refer to either sports teams or birds, but Google generally distinguishes between the helmeted kind and the winged kind. (This story will point out the rare instances when meanings get muddled.)

As you scroll through the following interactive graphics, you’ll get a glimpse at roughly 700 North American and Hawaiian species and learn about why some of them make us fall in love. Let’s see what search trends tell us about our relationship with our feathered friends.

Part One

I Am Not a Bird Person

It’s kind of intimidating how many birds there are. Not in a menacing, Alfred Hitchcock sense, but in an awe-inspiring sense. If you’ve ever cracked open a birding guidebook, you may have felt overwhelmed by the staggering variety of shapes and colors.

The thing is, even if you don’t consider yourself a “bird person,” you inherently know enough about birds to describe an unfamiliar species in familiar terms. You might characterize a loon as a duck, or a falcon as a hawk. These shortcuts stem from a recognition of similar shapes, environments and behaviors — even if the unfamiliar bird actually belongs to an entirely separate family. That’s why there are more searches for general bird terms, like duck or hawk (or owl or parrot) than for individual species names.

Within the nest below you can find the most Googled birds in the U.S. over the last five years, based on their general “type.”

Visualization: Most Searched Bird Groups

A circular visualization depicting a bird nest containing eggs. Each egg represents a general bird type (like "Hawk", "Eagle", "Duck"). The size of the egg corresponds to its search popularity. The largest eggs are Hawk, Eagle, and Duck, indicating they are the most searched bird terms. Other visible groups include Owl, Parrot, and Falcon.

Ornithologists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology know that humans use clues to identify birds, which is why their online guide, All About Birds, is searchable by location, keywords and even bird shape. As of October 2025, the All About Birds database had grouped over 700 species into 76 general “types” of birds. These “type” categories are the basis for the Google search terms shown in the nest. The rankings reflect average search interest over the past five years at the U.S. national and state levels.

Countrywide, two birds of prey — hawk and eagle — get the most searches. They each take the No. 1 search spot in a dozen states. Duck comes in third nationally, but it has the broadest state-level interest, taking the top spot in 17 states.

For many people, bird identification doesn’t stretch much beyond these general bird categories. But being a “birder,” a “birdwatcher,” or a “bird person” doesn’t require encyclopedic knowledge of bird names. In fact, it doesn’t require much of anything. There’s a brand of birding that fosters a gentle approach of simply noticing and observing birds for nothing other than the joy of doing so — no deeper knowledge or superzoom cameras required.

Over the last decade, birding has become a more inclusive activity, with organizations popping up around the country to cater to people of all backgrounds and abilities. The mission of these groups is to cultivate communities of birders who don’t necessarily identify with the hard-core, rare-bird-chasing crowd.

But once you begin to notice birds, there’s a good chance you’ll see one that changes everything.

Part Two

The Spark Bird

It might seem challenging to get from “duck” to the more specific Green-winged Teal. But the identification process starts with a simple step: caring to know a bird’s name in the first place. Often, this happens after a...