Robin

Last year I took a 10-week course where we did an overview of some 72 North American bird families. It was overwhelming, and I really liked the part of this lesson that showed smaller, informal categories (e.g. songbirds, raptors, wading birds) and subgroups of songbirds (acrobatic flyers, sparrows, etc.) Here in suburban Maryland outside Washington DC, birds I commonly see in the backyard include mourning doves, robins, Northern cardinals, a couple finches (house, or purple?), bluejays, song sparrows, and seasonal visits by juncos, redwing blackbirds, grackles, and cowbirds. Also plenty of invasive house sparrows and starlings. On our tree in the front yard we get white-breasted nuthatches and flickers. We are not close enough to a forest or meadow to get many non-feeder species, so those are the ones I'm hoping to find and learn.