Other Bird Families

This group gathers taxon/Bird Families subcategory members that are genuine bird families but that this atlas's own sourced descriptions do not identify with one of the thirteen more specific bird-order groups gathered separately above. It spans Gruidae, the crane family, and Rallidae, the rail family, both placed in the order Gruiformes, cosmopolitan, largely terrestrial or semi-amphibious birds including the crakes, coots and gallinules, and Trochilidae, the hummingbird family of the order Apodiformes, the largest bird family in the Americas by species count and famous for a hovering flight powered by wingbeats too fast for the human eye to resolve without slow-motion photography. Every family gathered here is a genuine bird family by the broad definition of the class Aves; the split above exists only to keep thirteen especially large or well-known orders browsable on their own rather than to draw a biological line excluding anything placed here.