Birds

Strix occidentalis

Strix occidentalis, the spotted owl (Búho manchado, Chouette tachetée), is a brown forest owl of western North America with northern, California, and Mexican subspecies, threatened by logging, wildfire, and barred owl competition.

Strix uralensis

Strix uralensis, the Ural owl, is a large pale woodland owl breeding across Eurasian forests from Scandinavia to Japan; it is named for the Ural Mountains, where its type specimen was collected.

Struthio

Struthio is the ostrich genus (Linnaeus, 1758) of large flightless African ratites, with two living species, common and Somali ostrich, a rich Eurasian-African fossil record, and record running speed and egg size among birds.

Sturnella

Sturnella (meadowlarks) is a Vieillot 1816 genus of Icteridae songbirds, now limited to yellow-breasted North American meadowlarks (magna, neglecta, lilianae); South American red-breasted species moved to Leistes.

Sturnus

Sturnus (starlings) is a genus of Sturnidae passerines erected by Linnaeus in 1758, now limited to the Common Starling Sturnus vulgaris and Spotless Starling S. unicolor; known for communal roosts, murmurations, and invasive status.

Sulphur-crested cockatoo

Sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita), also called white cockatoo: large white Australian parrot with yellow crest, 45-50 cm, IUCN Least Concern, over 500,000 birds; introduced to New Zealand; Sydney populations learned to open bins and drinking fountains.

Sunbird

Sunbirds (Nectariniidae) are small Old World passerine birds from Africa to northern Australia that drink nectar with curved bills and tubular tongues using intralingual suction, convergent with but unrelated to hummingbirds, and pollinate many useful African plants.

Surnia

Surnia is a monotypic owl genus erected by Duméril around 1805, holding only Surnia ulula, the Northern Hawk-Owl, a diurnal boreal owl with hawk-like flight, vole diet, and irruptive movements.

Swainson's hawk

Swainson's hawk (Buteo swainsoni), a North American buteo breeding in western grasslands, migrating about 20,000 km to Argentine pampas; insect-eating outside breeding, ~900,000 birds, IUCN Least Concern.

Swallow

Swallows (family Hirundinidae, including Barn Swallow, Tree Swallow, House Martin) are small passerine birds that catch insects in flight worldwide. Distinguished from unrelated swifts by color and wing shape; nest in mud cups, cavities, or burrows.

Swan

Swan (genus Cygnus): large long-necked water birds; seven species including Mute, Whooper, Bewick's, Tundra, Trumpeter, Black, and Black-necked Swans; white Northern Hemisphere species pair for life, feed on aquatic vegetation, and include the invasive North American Mute Swan.

Swan song

Swan song: idiom for a person's final work or performance before retirement or death, from the ancient false legend that the mute swan sings beautifully just before dying; first expressed by Aeschylus (458 BC), used by Plato, and adopted into English in the early 19th century from German Schwanengesang.

Sylvia borin

Sylvia borin, the garden warbler (Gartengrasmücke, fauvette des jardins), a plain brown Sylviidae warbler breeding across Europe and wintering south of the Sahara; known by its fluty blackcap-like song, UK population 145,000 territories, IUCN Least Concern.

Sylvia curruca

Sylvia curruca, the Lesser Whitethroat (Curruca curruca, 白喉林莺), is a small Palearctic Sylviidae warbler, a full migrant wintering in Africa, Arabia and India; Least Concern with 27.9-47.7 million mature individuals and six debated subspecies.

Sylviidae

Sylviidae (sylviid babblers), family Leach 1820 of Sylvioidea passerines, once the wastebin Old World warblers; now restricted to Sylvia and Curruca, about 32 species in Africa and Eurasia.

Synallaxis

Synallaxis (Vieillot, 1818) is the largest spinetail genus of the ovenbird family Furnariidae, Neotropical from Mexico to Argentina, with about 33–37 species; the Amazonian S. rutilans group was split into five species in 2022.

Synthliboramphus

Synthliboramphus (Brandt, 1837) is a genus of five North Pacific auk species: Ancient, Japanese, Scripps's, Guadalupe, and Craveri's murrelets, small burrow-nesting seabirds whose precocial chicks go to sea within days of hatching.

Tachybaptus

Tachybaptus (dabchicks, little grebes) is a genus of small diving grebes in Podicipedidae, erected by Reichenbach in 1853, including the Little, Australasian, Least, and Madagascar Grebes and the extinct Alaotra Grebe.

Tachycineta

Tachycineta, the tree swallows, is a genus of nine New World cavity-nesting swallows (Hirundinidae) ranging from Alaska to southern South America, split into South/Central American and North American/Caribbean clades, with T. bicolor a model research species.