Top 10 Most Beautiful Birds with Long Tails

Long-tailed widowbird
Long-tailed widowbird

Birds are also known as Ave’s or avian dinosaurs is a group of endothermic vertebrates that comes with feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. As of now, 10,000 types of birds has been identified in the world. There are few unique birds that come with long tails, Here is the list of the top 10 birds with long tail,

Birds With Long Tail

1.Scissor-tailed flycatcher

The scissor-tailed flycatcher is a type of kingbird that belongs to the flycatcher family. The bird species is native to North and South America. It thrives in savannas with scattered trees, fields, pastures, areas near the towns, golf courses and scrublands. The scissor-tailed flycatcher is one of the birds with long tails that can grow upto 8.7 to 14.6 inches in length and 1.3 to 2 ounces of weight. Talking about the appearance, they have a grey head and back along with white throat and salmon-pink flanks. Male bird species has a much longer tail than females and juvenile birds. The varage lifespan of the bird species is 10 to 15 years in the wild.

Also Read: Top 10 Beautiful Black And White Birds In The World

Scissor-tailed flycatcher
Scissor-tailed flycatcher

Image Source: Texas Eagle

2.Lady Amherst’s pheasant

Lady Amherst’s pheasant is a gamebird that belongs to the Phasianidae family. Male species is very colourful and comes with long black and white tail along with a greenish back, red and yellow rump. The small and cute birds can grow upto 3 to 4 ft long and weighs approximately 1.5 to 2 pounds. The avarage lifespan of Lady Amherst’s pheasant is 6 to 10 years in the wild and up to 15 years under captivity. They are mostly seen in the regions of southwestern China and northern Burma in forested areas and bamboo thickets. It loves to feed on seeds, berries, and roots. Lady Amherst’s pheasant is named after Sarah Countess Amherst, wife of Sir William Pitt Amherst, Governor of Bengal.

Also read: 10 Amazing Water Birds In The World

Lady Amherst’s pheasant
Lady Amherst’s pheasant

3.Superb lyrebird

Australian continent has only two species of Lyrebird known as Albert’s Lyrebird and the Superb Lyrebird. The bird species also features on the Australian 10c coin and the superb lyrebird is an expert mimic who is capable of copy both natural and mechanical sounds. The name of superb lyrebird comes from its tail that looks like a lyre which is an ancient Greek musical instrument and hence listed as one of the birds with a long tail. The species can grow upto 80-100 cm tall including the tail. It loves to feed on seeds, insects, spiders, worms, frogs, and smaller invertebrates. The superb lyrebird is distributed in southeastern Australia and southern Tasmania. It thrives in regions of moist forests and woodlands.

Also Read: Top 10 Beautiful Orange And Black Birds

Superb lyrebird
Superb lyrebird

Image Source: David Cook

4.Turquoise-browed motmot

Turquoise-browed motmot belongs to the motmot family. It is mostly seen in Central America, from southeast Mexico to Costa Rica. The bird species appear in turquoise, green and orange colour in the wild and prefers edges of forests and scrubland. It loves to thrive in the tropical forests of Central America that come with a strong beak. It is also known by the name of Torogoz in El Salvador and Guardabarranco in Nicaragua. Also, the Turquoise-browed motmot is the national bird of these two countries. The signature beak comes with two bare feathers ending in tufts.

Turquoise-browed motmot
Turquoise-browed motmot

Image Source: Wikimedia

5.Golden Pheasant

One of the beautiful types of yellow birds, Golden Pheasant is a colourful bird that has a long tail barred in light and dark brown. Talking about the appearance, the upper back is green with wings that are dark brown and their rump is golden. The male species can grow upto 43 to 44 inches while the females are shorter than can grow upto 26 inches, however, two-third of the total length is their long and beautiful tail. The total wingspan of the species is around 70 cm or about 27.5 inches. The bird species can fly but they cannot go for long flights because of long tails and short wings. The avarage lifespan is 5 or 6 years in the wild and 15 years to 20 years in captivity.

Golden pheasant

6.Resplendent quetzal

The resplendent quetzal is a beautiful bird known for its green body and redbreast. It has a colourful plumage and quetzal feathers can shine in colors such as green, cobalt, lime, yellow and even ultramarine, howvever, that totally depends on the light. The male species has a helmet-like crest and the bill is yellow in colour in mature males and black in females. Resplendent quetzal distribution can be seen from Chiapas, Mexico to western Panama. It can grow upto 36 to 40 cm in length and the avarage lifespan of the bird species in wild is 3 to 10 yrs. Resplendent quetzal also thrives in vegetated ravines, open areas with scattered trees and pastures.

Resplendent quetzal
Resplendent quetzal

7.Red-billed streamertail

Red-billed Streamertail Hummingbirds can only be seen in the Caribbean island of Jamaica and mostly seen along the coast and in the mountains. It is also known as the Doctorbirds, God Birds, Scissors Tails, Longtail Hummingbirds or Western Streamertails and closely related to the Black-billed Streamertails a subspecies. It can grow upto 3.25 to 3.5 inches in length and the long tail comes with another 6 to 7 inches. This is the longest tail of all hummingbirds and hence listed with the birds with a long tail. It generally feeds on nectar taken from a variety of brightly coloured, scented small flowers of trees, herbs, shrubs and epiphytes.

Red-billed streamertail
Red-billed streamertail

Image Source: Wikimedia

8.Indian Peafowl

Indian Peafowl is a species of birds called pheasants. The male’s species are known as peacocks, howvever, the females are known as peahens and together they are known as peafowl. It is among the largest of all birds that fly where the beautiful feathers are also cover the tails of a peacock. Indian Peafowl is native to the countries of India and Sri Lanka in South Asia. The family of peafowl is known as “bevvy” and the group of peafowl is called “party”.The beautiful and colourful tail is only a feature of the male species. The avarage lifespan of Indian Peafowl is 20 years both in the wild and in captivity.

Indian Peafowl
Indian Peafowl

Image Source: Wikimedia

9.Long-tailed widowbird

The Long-tailed widowbird is also known as “Sakabula” is a bird species that belongs to the family Ploceidae. It is mostly seen in Angola, Botswana, the DRCongo, Kenya, Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zambia. The medium-sized bird species can easily identify with the help of their long tail that is approximately 20 inches long. The bird was first described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1779 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a bird collected in the Cape of Good Hope region of South Africa. It feeds on seeds, supplemented occasionally by arthropods.

Long-tailed widowbird
Long-tailed widowbird

Image Source: Wikimedia

10.Ribbon tailed astrapia

The Ribbon tailed astrapia also known as Shaw Mayer’s astrapia is a species of bird-of-paradise. It is distributed in the regions of Papua New Guinea. Ribbon-tailed astrapia is the most recent species of bird-of-paradise and it endangered because it is mainly hunted for plumes and listed as Threatened on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Ribbon tailed astrapia was discovered by the great naturalist and New Guinea explorer Fred Shaw Mayer in 1938. The medium-sized bird species can grow upto 32 cm long without a tail and the length of long-tail is approximately 1 metre and therefore popular as one of the birds with a long tail.

Ribbon tailed astrapia
Ribbon tailed astrapia

Image Source: Francesco Veronesi

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