Parts of a Bird Activity – Label a Songbird Diagram

All 21 parts on the diagram

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Eight parts to start 8

Beak Also called the bill. A bird eats, preens and feeds its young with it.
Eye One on each side of the head. The colored part is the iris.
Wing Its long flight feathers are the primaries and the secondaries.
Tail The tail feathers help a bird control its flight.
Breast The front of the body, between the throat and the belly.
Belly The underside of the body, behind the breast.
Back The upper side of the body, in front of the rump.
Leg The thin part you can see is the tarsus. The toes grow from its end.

Field guide words: the body 6

Wing bars Stripes across the folded wing, made by pale tips of small feathers. They often come in pairs.
Secondaries The flight feathers on the inner half of the wing.
Primaries The long flight feathers on the outer half of the wing. On a folded wing they make the tip.
Rump From the back's end to the tail's base.
Flank The side of the body, between the belly and the rump.
Tarsus The part of the leg that shows most. The toes grow from its lower end.

Field guide words: the head 7

Crown The top of the head, behind the forehead.
Forehead From the beak up to a line between the eyes.
Nape The back of the head, past the crown.
Lore The area between the eye and the base of the beak. A bird has one on each side.
Eye-ring A ring of feathers around the eye, often paler than those nearby.
Chin A small feathered area just under the beak's base.
Throat The area between the chin and the top of the breast.

How this list was compiled: Every name checked on 2026-09-30 against (1) 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 (the main regions: beak or bill, head, back, throat, breast, wings, tail and legs; lore, crown, eyering, chin, eye; wingbars as stripes across the folded wing; primaries on the outer half of the wing and secondaries on the inner half); (2) Wikipedia, text only: Glossary of bird terms, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_bird_terms, and Bird anatomy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_anatomy (beak, crown, forehead, nape, lore, eye-ring, chin, throat, breast, belly, back, rump, flanks, wing bar, primaries, secondaries, tarsus, tail); (3) F. M. Chapman, Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, 1912, https://archive.org/details/handbookofbi00chap, whose descriptions use crown, forehead, nape, lores, eye-ring, chin, throat, breast, belly, back, rump, flanks, wing-bars, primaries, secondaries and tarsus throughout. Licence: own work

The drawing: Drawn for this site on 2026-09-30 from plain geometry; nothing traced. Licence: own work

How it works

This parts of a bird activity uses one songbird on a twig. The first drawing has eight parts for a first bird unit. The next two add the words a field guide uses.

Read the full guide

Eight parts first

Numbers 1 to 8 are the beak, eye, wing, tail, breast, belly, back and leg. That is enough for labeling parts of a bird in the early grades.

Then the field guide words

Numbers 9 to 14 are on the wing and body: the wing bars, the secondaries and primaries of the folded wing, the rump, the flank and the tarsus. Numbers 15 to 21 are on the head: crown, forehead, nape, lore, eye-ring, chin and throat.

From beak to tail along the top: forehead, crown, nape, back, rump.
From beak to tail underneath: chin, throat, breast, belly.

Questions and answers

What are the main parts of a bird?

The beak, head, back, throat, breast, wings, tail and legs. Bird guides divide those further, into parts such as the crown on top of the head and the rump above the tail.

What is the top of a bird's head called?

The crown. The forehead is in front of it, just above the beak, and the nape is behind it, at the back of the head.

What are wing bars on a bird?

Stripes across the folded wing, made by the pale tips of small wing feathers. They often come in pairs, and bird watchers use them to tell similar birds apart.

What is the difference between primaries and secondaries?

Both are flight feathers. The primaries are the long feathers on the outer half of the wing, and the secondaries are on the inner half, closer to the body.