• 16 parts
  • Checked October 2026

Parts of a Bird's Head

A sparrow's head in three drawings: the feather regions, the stripes, then the bill close up.

Parts of a Bird's Head

Name Date

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
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Write the name of each numbered part.Answer key

  1. Crown
  2. Forehead
  3. Nape
  4. Lore
  5. Eye-ring
  6. Ear coverts
  7. Chin
  8. Throat
  9. Crown stripe
  10. Eyebrow stripe
  11. Eye line
  12. Malar stripe
  13. Upper mandible
  14. Lower mandible
  15. Culmen
  16. Nostril

Drawn for this site on 2026-10-01 from plain geometry. Licence: own work.

Each numbered ring is a button. Use the arrow keys to move between them and Enter to choose. Names are read out in Study, and once a part is answered.

Next step Next: the parts of the whole bird

All 16 parts on the diagram

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The head 8

  1. Crown The top of the head, behind the forehead.
  2. Forehead From the bill up to a line between the eyes.
  3. Nape The back of the head, past the crown.
  4. Lore The area between the eye and the base of the bill.
  5. Eye-ring A ring of feathers around the eye, often paler than those nearby.
  6. Ear coverts Small feathers behind the eye that cover the ear opening. Also called the auriculars.
  7. Chin A small feathered area just below the lower mandible.
  8. Throat The area between the chin and the top of the breast.

The stripes 4

  1. Crown stripe A stripe along the midline of the head.
  2. Eyebrow stripe A line over the eye. Its scientific name is the supercilium.
  3. Eye line A line through the eye, often darker than the feathers beside it.
  4. Malar stripe A line angling back from the chin, between cheek and throat.

The bill 4

  1. Upper mandible The upper half of the bill. The nostrils are in it.
  2. Lower mandible The lower half of the bill, like a lower jaw.
  3. Culmen The ridge along the top of the upper mandible. Bill length is measured along it.
  4. Nostril One of two openings near the upper mandible's base. Also called the nares.

How this list was compiled: Every name checked on 2026-10-01 and kept only where two of these three use or describe it. (1) Wikipedia, text only: Glossary of bird terms, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_bird_terms , with Beak, Supercilium and White-throated sparrow (crown, forehead, nape, lore, eye-ring, ear-coverts, chin, throat, supercilium or eyebrow, eyestripe or eye line, the moustachial or malar stripe, upper mandible, lower mandible, culmen, nares or nostrils; a crown with a central stripe, and auriculars, on the sparrow). (2) The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds, Bird ID Skills: Field Marks, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/bird-id-skills-field-marks/ , read in the Internet Archive copy because the live page refuses scripts (eyebrow stripe or superciliary, the line over the eye; eyeline, the line through the eye; whisker mark, also called mustache or malar stripe, the line angling back from the chin between the cheek and the throat; throat; lore, the area between the base of the beak and the eye; crown stripe, the stripe in the midline of the head; eyering; chin; cheek). (3) F. M. Chapman, Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, 1912, https://archive.org/details/handbookofbi00chap , full text (upper mandible, lower mandible, culmen as the measure of the bill from the feathers of the forehead to the tip, nostril, forehead, crown, nape, lores, ear-coverts and auriculars, chin, throat, eye-ring, superciliary, a line over the eye, a line through the eye, a line through the center of the crown). Crown stripe is named by source 2; sources 1 and 3 describe it without that name. Licence: own work

The drawing: Drawn for this site on 2026-10-01 from plain geometry; nothing traced. Licence: own work

How it works

The parts of a bird's head are the names a field guide uses to tell one small bird from another. The first drawing has eight regions; the next two add the stripes and the bill.

Read the full guide

Regions first

Numbers 1 to 8 are areas of feathers: the crown on top, the forehead above the bill, the nape at the back, the lore in front of the eye, the eye-ring, the ear coverts behind the eye, and the chin and throat underneath.

Then the stripes and the bill

Numbers 9 to 12 are marks on a striped sparrow: the crown stripe, the eyebrow stripe over the eye, the eye line through it and the malar stripe below the cheek. Numbers 13 to 16 are on the bill: the upper and lower mandible, the culmen and the nostril.

  • Over the eye is the eyebrow stripe; through the eye is the eye line.
  • Supercilium is the scientific word for the eyebrow stripe, and auriculars for the ear coverts.

Questions and answers

What are the parts of a bird's head?

On top, the forehead, crown and nape. On the side, the lore, the eye-ring and the ear coverts. Underneath, the chin and throat. The bill has an upper and a lower mandible, and many birds have stripes over or through the eye.

What is the lore on a bird?

The area between the eye and the base of the bill. A bird has one on each side of its head.

What is a supercilium?

A stripe that runs from the base of the bill above the eye, toward the back of the head. Bird guides also call it the eyebrow stripe. It is not the eye line, which runs through the eye.

What is the culmen of a bird's bill?

The ridge along the top of the upper mandible, from the feathers of the forehead to the tip. The length of a bill is measured along it.

What is a malar stripe?

A line that angles back from the chin, between the cheek and the throat. It is also called a whisker mark or mustache stripe.

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