User blog:StaraptorEmpoleon/Introduction to birds, part one

There are two types of birds:


 * 1) Non-passerines: any bird from loons to woodpeckers and ostriches to kingfishers are non-passerines.
 * 2) Passerines: any bird from crows to sparrows and orioles to finches.

Basically, if you read a field guide, usually they're in what we call taxonomic order (basically, the birds' evolutionary relationships to other birds). Depending on what field guide you're looking at:


 * Non-passerines: they usually start with the loons (one of the oldest Northern Hemisphere families of birds, they have fossils from possibly the Late Cretaceous, 99.6-65.5 million years ago) and woodpeckers (fossils are from the Late Oligocene, 25 million years ago. Their evolutionary history isn't well-documented)


 * And as for the passerines, it usually starts with the tyrant flycatchers (e.g. scissor-tailed flycatcher is a good example) and usually ends with Old World sparrows (e.g. house sparrow) or finches (e.g. goldfinch).