Birds Smell
The old answer was: not really. Birds were considered essentially anosmic — without meaningful smell — and this was taught in ornithology for much of the 20th century. John James Audubon did experiments in the 1820s that seemed to show vultures couldn’t detect hidden carrion, and that framed the question for generations.
The old answer was mostly wrong.
Audubon’s vultures were Turkey Vultures, and the experimental design had problems. More rigorous work done in the second half of the 20th century, and particularly in the last two decades, has shown that many birds have functional olfactory systems and use smell for real tasks.
What We Actually Know Now
Birds have olfactory bulbs — the brain structures responsible for processing smell. The size of these bulbs varies considerably between species and correlates reasonably well with how much a species appears to use smell.
Seabirds have large olfactory bulbs. So do kiwis. Songbirds tend to have smaller ones. Raptors are variable. The variation suggests smell plays different roles in different species — which makes sense, because different birds live in different environments and face different problems.
Birds That Clearly Use Smell
Turkey Vultures
The species Audubon tested. Later, better-designed experiments showed clearly that Turkey Vultures locate carrion by smell, not just sight. They can detect the ethyl mercaptan produced by decomposing flesh at extremely low concentrations — parts per trillion in some studies. Natural gas companies have actually used this fact to locate pipeline leaks: they add ethyl mercaptan to the gas and watch where Turkey Vultures circle.
Black Vultures, by contrast, have smaller olfactory bulbs and poorer smell. They find food by watching Turkey Vultures, then displacing them.
Seabirds
Petrels, shearwaters, and albatrosses navigate across featureless ocean using smell to locate food patches and — in some species — their own nest burrows. Leach’s Storm Petrels return to their burrows at night using olfactory cues. Tube-nosed seabirds as a group are among the best-smelling birds known.
Kiwi
Kiwi are the most obvious case — their nostrils are at the tip of a long bill designed for probing soil, and they locate earthworms underground by smell. The only bird with this particular arrangement.
Birds Smell
European Starlings and Some Songbirds
Research in the 2000s showed that some songbirds use smell to select nest materials, particularly aromatic plants that may deter parasites. European Starlings incorporate aromatic herbs into their nests, and the behavior correlates with reduced ectoparasite loads. This is more subtle than “smelling food” but it’s genuine olfactory behavior.
The Human-Scent Myth
The widespread belief that parent birds will abandon their young if a human touches them — because they’ll “smell the human” — is not supported by evidence. Birds have limited ability to detect human scent, and parental behavior is not disrupted by brief human handling of chicks or eggs in most species.
This myth probably persists because it discourages well-meaning people from handling baby birds unnecessarily, which is a good outcome — but the reasoning behind it is wrong.
If you find a nestling that has fallen from a nest, you can return it to the nest without worrying about the parents rejecting it. The limitation is usually practical — whether you can reach the nest — not whether handling the chick will cause rejection.
What Birds Rely On More
Vision is dominant in most birds. The avian eye is remarkable — many species see ultraviolet light, have significantly higher visual acuity than humans, and some have specialized areas of the retina for different kinds of visual tasks. Hearing is the second major sense for most species, particularly important for nocturnal birds and for detecting calls and songs.
Smell being less prominent in most birds doesn’t mean absent. It means less central. For species like songbirds where vision and hearing handle most of the important tasks — finding food, detecting predators, communicating — a highly developed sense of smell would be redundant. For species that need it — vultures navigating to carrion through dense forest, seabirds finding food and home across open ocean — it developed.
FAQ
Can birds smell?
Yes, most can. The ability varies significantly by species. Turkey Vultures, seabirds, and kiwi have well-developed olfactory systems. Most songbirds have functional but less prominent smell. The old idea that birds are essentially anosmic was incorrect.
Do birds smell humans?
To a limited degree, but this doesn’t cause parent birds to abandon their young if chicks or eggs are briefly handled. The abandonment myth is not supported by evidence.
Which birds have the best sense of smell?
Turkey Vultures and tube-nosed seabirds (petrels, shearwaters, albatrosses) are generally considered to have the most developed olfactory systems among birds.
How do Turkey Vultures find food?
Primarily by smell — specifically detecting ethyl mercaptan produced by decomposing flesh. They can detect it at extremely low concentrations and locate hidden carrion that isn’t visible from the air.
For more on bird biology and behavior, see our guides on black vulture vs turkey vulture and how long birds live.
MD Imdadul Haque is the founder of BirdzFly, a research-backed resource on North American backyard birds. Drawing on years of independent study into bird identification, behavior, and migration patterns, he writes in-depth guides designed to help US birders understand the species in their own backyards — from common feeder visitors to seasonal migrants passing through.
