PHOTOS: 30 trangest Birds On The Planet

The Tufted Puffin is a surface-diving seabird acclimated to the colder waters of the north Pacific. It’s the largest of all the Puffin species and breeds between northwestern Alaska down through central California.

The Tufted Puffin’s golden plumes only appear during mating season. When this species is ready for nesting, they burrow into the edges of cliffs.

Tufted Puffins are skilled hunters who are able to catch and hold up to 20 fish in their mouths at a time in order to bring food back for the chicks. When Tufted Puffins mature and reach adulthood, they eat their fish underwater.

Primarily found in the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, Thailand and Myanmar, the helmeted hornbill mostly munches on strangler figs and breeds just once a year, producing a single chick.

We’ll concede that this large bird looks a smidge like a rooster and a toucan had a lovechild, bringing together standout features like an elongated yellow beak, wrinkly throat patch, and a massive casque at the top of the head, which explains its name. The casque is so large that it actually makes up about 10 percent of the hornbill’s weight.

Sadly, though, this bird is a victim of heavy hunting, which has pushed the species to near extinction. This is largely because poachers kill the birds for their casques to create carved jewelry and ornaments.

Take one look at the African Marabou Stork, and it’s plain to see this big bird is funky. From its hollow leg bones and toe bones, to its bald head, and the males’ large air sacs, this thing comes in at a hulking five feet tall, with a wingspan of over 8.5 feet.

The Marabou’s most peculiar feature is that large air sac, a red pouch that hangs from its neck. Males use it for courting purposes to woo a mate, just as other colorful birds, like Peacocks, do. Connected to the left nostril, the sac inflates and acts as a resonator of sorts to create a loud croaking noise.

The Spectacled Eider gets its name from the markings around its eyes that make it look like it’s wearing glasses.

This arctic seabird is built to handle cold temperatures and thrives in the tundra, as well as western Alaska, where its main breeding ground lies. The Spectacled Eider’s diet consists mostly of mollusks, but when summer rolls around, these birds have been known to munch on grass and berries.

The Golden Pheasant is native to central and southern China (it’s also known as the Chinese Pheasant)—where the people believe that seeing one indicates good luck and fortune—and features an eye-catching array of colors and patterns.

These little guys are omnivores whose diets consist of soft bamboo shoots, insects, berries, seeds, and flowers. They stay relatively small, usually maxing out at 1.2 pounds.

Golden Pheasants have the ability to fly but aren’t very good at it, which is why they tend to stay grounded unless they need to get back to their roosts.

The Andean Cock-of-the-Rock is Peru’s national bird. These guys are native to South America and are usually found in tropical areas such as the rocky regions in the rainforests where they like to build their nests.

The birds are easy to spot thanks to their bright coloring and the crest on their heads. You can tell the females apart from the males because the females’ crest and coloring are duller and less intense than what’s seen on males.

Males tend to spend a lot of their time at breeding grounds, looking to attract mates with low-pitched, guttural throat noises.

Frigatebirds are a family of blackbirds who have giant beaks and whose males all have gigantic gular pouches. The six species cover a handful of superlatives—magnificent, great, and lesser, along with the Christmas and Ascension frigatebirds.

The magnificent frigatebird lives up to its description, owing to the fact that it has a giant, bright red gular pouch taking up a large portion of its body. But while the birds’ appearance may be magnificent, their behavior is not—they’re known for attempting to make other birds regurgitate their food so they may feast on it.

The Kakapo is a critically endangered flightless parrot native to New Zealand. They’re hefty boys, the heaviest of any parrot species. Even so, the birds are adept climbers, using their wings to balance as they jump between branches.

The kakapo lives a mostly nocturnal life, sniffing out food with its well-adapted olfactory senses, but suffering from poor eyesight. The species was driven to the brink primarily by rats and dogs brought in by human settlers. Successful conservation programs have brought the number of individuals from 51 in 1995 to 149 today.

A rare and flightless bird from New Caledonia—a French territory made up of a few dozen islands in the South Pacific—the Kagu looks a bit like a heron, an egret, and a cockatoo, but actually has no close ancestors at all, according to the San Diego Zoo.

Strangely, the Kagu has large wings for its body, considering it’s only about the size of a common chicken. Despite the fact that the Kagu is a flightless bird, its wings do serve an important function: parent birds flap its wings on the ground, looking injured, to distract incoming predators from attacking its chicks.

The Hoatzin has a distinctive plumage, but an even more distinctive smell, which has given this Amazonian native the nickname “skunk bird.” This is because the bird’s herbivorous diet leaves it digesting leaves and plants like a cow.

The smell also seems to repel would-be predators, including humans. The birds’ call also sounds a bit like a crow with a cold. Its place on the bird family tree isn’t well known, as it seems to be its only close relative.

The frogmouth family, a group related to the aforementioned potoo, has a wide mouth meant for eating prey, as they’re predominantly carnivorous birds that happen to be great at vermin control. For larger prey, the frogmouth may pulverize lizards and rats to make them easier to eat.

They’re also known to keep their mouth open and let insects come to them, snapping the mouth shut when a tasty treat comes their way. The tawny frogmouth lives in Australia, blending in seamlessly with local trees.

These Hawaiian birds are known for their distinct red color and unusual beaks, which are used for harvesting nectar. Though the bird is revered by native Hawaiians, the species is threatened by disease. It has the ability to hover in place, a trait it shares with the hummingbird, though the ‘i’iwi is more closely related to finches.

Most owls live in trees. Go ahead and guess what sets the burrowing owl apart.

This owl, which is native to the Americas, takes over the ground burrows of small mammals like prairie dogs and ground squirrels, claiming them as their own and hissing like a rattlesnake when their home is threatened.

They have an omnivorous diet that includes prickly pears, insects, seeds, rodents, and more. To punk fans, they’re perhaps most immortalized in the song “Stuart” by the Dead Milkmen.

Scops owls are the genus of owls exclusive to the Old World, and the Indian scops owl has a distinctive antenna-like brow. At around 10 inches, they’re still one of the larger old-world owls. Their eye color also sets them apart from other scops species—while not entirely unique to old-world owls, their inky black eyes break from the more typical yellow-and-black of other owls.

Mostly found in Indonesia, the Western Parotia is a sexually dimorphic Bird of Paradise, meaning the male and female birds have different characteristics, beyond just their sexual organs.

The male birds are entirely jet black, save for their white forehead stripes and an emerald green breast shield. They also feature wiry appendages that stick up from right behind each eye, lending to their name—sefilata, the name of the species, is a Latin word that means to possess six threads.

Females, meanwhile, have black heads, speckled throats, and a stripe on the face. The rest of the body is brown.

If there’s one bird on the list you don’t want to encounter in the wild, it’s the southern cassowary, the largest bird in the cassowary genus. These natives to Australia and Oceana are part of the larger family of ratites—giant birds like emus, ostriches, rheas, and the much-smaller kiwis.

The southern cassowary is known for its territoriality, and when provoked can use its large claws to maim or even kill humans. Part of the fatal blow is attained through their speed, which tops out just a hair over 30 miles per hour. Combine that with a sharp talon and you have a recipe for destruction.

Though it’s within the larger family of birds of paradise (all of whom are quite striking), the king of Saxony bird of paradise is the only member of its particular genus. While the coloration of the bird is quite striking, the most notable characteristic is two large plumes extending from the back of its head, measuring up to 20 inches long in some cases.

The plumes are used to attract females, with the male Kings of Saxony singing a distinctive song to lure in females, using the ornamental plumes as part of an elaborate mating dance.