Passerines (Songbirds)

This group gathers Birds subcategory members belonging to the order Passeriformes, the perching birds, defined by a foot with three toes pointing forward and one pointing back, an arrangement well suited to gripping a branch or wire. Passeriformes is by far the largest order of living birds worldwide, and it includes both the songbirds proper, which carry a specialized vocal organ called a syrinx capable of complex song, and a smaller number of unrelated suboscine lineages that share the same foot but not the same voice box. Within this subcategory it spans sparrows, finches, thrushes, crows, jays, magpies, warblers, swallows and martins, wrens, tits, larks, pipits and wagtails, shrikes, tanagers, buntings, orioles, starlings and mynas, bulbuls, mockingbirds, flycatchers, antbirds, and the more visually striking Australasian branches such as the lyrebirds, the birds-of-paradise and the honeyeaters, among them Hawaii's own extinct ʻōʻō. A member landed here whenever no other, smaller order-based group in this subcategory claimed it first.