How long do birds really live? For wild birds, the first year is especially perilous

When birds reach adulthood, they stop aging. Amazing! It’s yet another thing to admire about our feathered friends.

I’m kidding, of course. Birds do get older, but they don’t show it. A 3-year-old cardinal looks just like a 7-year-old cardinal.

My scant knowledge of avian longevity was tested recently at a book talk. An audience member wanted to know how long birds live. I kind of knew there was no simple answer to the question. Pardon me, is there an ornithologist in the room?

After the event I did some digging. Curiosity is a birder’s friend.

Most wild birds do not live much beyond birth. First-year mortality is said to be around 75%. Juvenile birds are nearly defenseless against predators and lack experience in finding food and shelter.

For those that survive, life is challenging.

“If they make it to their first breeding season, songbirds generally have about a 50% chance of surviving each year,” wrote David Sibley in “What It’s Like to Be a Bird.”

With those odds, he said, only one songbird in a thousand lives to be 10 years old.

It’s fun to look up the old-age records for different species. We must keep in mind, however, that the longevity champions tend to be extreme outliers, such as the 26-year-old Blue Jay in the accompanying table. A list of average lifespans would be more useful but my search for one came up empty.

Expected lifespans vary significantly by bird families. In general, the larger the bird, the longer it lives. Raptors, for example, outlive warblers. Gulls outlive finches.

Why is this so? Larger birds have fewer predators and tolerate bad weather and food scarcity better than small species. Their lifestyles (and metabolisms) are slower paced, putting less stress on their bodies.

Birds with rigorous spring and fall migrations pay a price. Their long journeys are physically taxing and fraught with danger. On the other hand, nonmigratory birds must sometimes endure brutal winters and food shortages. Survival is a game of trade-offs, governed by evolution and perhaps increasingly by climate change.

Small birds, migratory or not, have a tougher time. So do species that live and nest on the ground — predation of eggs, chicks and adult birds is always a threat. Wild Turkeys are large birds but seldom live beyond five years. Hungry coyotes are always a threat.

Scientists concur that most birds, after reaching maturity, are long-lived given their size, activity levels, and the daily stress they endure. They generally outlive similarly sized mammals.

In “Methuselah’s Zoo,” author Steven Austad notes how birds have a knack for staying healthy throughout their lives. To help improve or extend human health, he thinks medical researchers should devote more resources to studying the remarkably slow aging process in birds.

Banding — the placement of numbered or color-coded rings on the legs of birds by field ornithologists — accounts for much of what we know about avian lifespans. Few banded birds are ever seen again, unfortunately.

But the ones that are recovered, observed, or recaptured can yield valuable data about habitat preferences, migratory patterns and longevity.

Thanks to banding, we know that the oldest known wild bird is a Laysan Albatross living on Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The legendary “Wisdom” was banded in 1956 as an adult, which makes her at least 75 years old. She was confirmed alive earlier this year.

Birds that live and nest on islands live longer than mainland species. Banding records also reveal that seabirds with all-fish diets and living in tropical climates live longest.

Albatrosses, shearwaters and frigatebirds are in this group. Among the raptors, eagles, hawks and owls can live into their 20s and 30s.

Captive birds usually outlive wild ones. They benefit from a lack of predators, constant food supply, and medical care when needed.

You may remember (or even have met) the oldest bird on record, a Major Mitchell’s Cockatoo called Cookie who lived at Brookfield Zoo. He passed away in 2016 at age 83. Cookie’s name is in Guinness World Records and on a park bench at the zoo.

My knowledge quest into the topic of bird longevity is not over. I’m still curious about some things. But if I’ve learned anything from this exercise, it’s that birds age much differently than humans. They are incredibly resilient. Oh, and I probably need to eat more fish.

• Jeff Reiter’s column appears regularly in Neighbor. You can reach him via his blog, “Words on Birds.”

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Record-setting birds

Oldest recorded ages for 15 common species.

Bald Eagle: 38 years

Sandhill Crane: 38 years

Canada Goose: 33 years, 3 months

Ring-billed Gull: 31 years, 6 months

Red-tailed Hawk: 30 years, 8 months

Great Horned Owl: 28 years, 10 months

Mallard: 27 years, 7 months

Blue Jay: 26 years, 11 months

Great Blue Heron: 24 years, 6 months

Northern Cardinal: 15 years, 9 months

Red-winged Blackbird: 14 years, 11 months

Black-capped Chickadee: 11 years, 9 months

Ruby-throated Hummingbird: 11 years, 1 month

American Goldfinch: 10 years, 11 months

House Wren: 9 years

Source: North American Bird Banding Program Longevity Records, Version 2025.1