Large print bird word search

The rules

• Ten words are listed under the grid, all from the list named above it. Find every one.
• A word runs left to right, top to bottom, or diagonally down to the right. It is never backwards.
• The grid is twelve letters wide and twelve tall, and words of up to nine letters are used.
• Words can cross. Each listed word appears exactly once in the grid.

Finding ten birds in a bigger grid

A grid of this size holds one hundred and forty-four letters, so reading every row for every word is slow. It is better to search by letter. Go down the list and pick out the words that contain a letter you do not see often: the K in KESTREL, JACKDAW or SISKIN, the Z in BUZZARD, the V in VULTURE or AVOCET, the W in WREN or CURLEW. There will be only a handful of each in the whole grid, and each of those is worth a look.

When you have found the rare letter, remember that it may be in the middle of the word, not at the start. Check the letter before it as well as the one after, along the row, the column and the down-right diagonal.

Bird names are full of double letters, and a pair stands out well in large print: SPARROW, SWALLOW, CUCKOO, PUFFIN, GANNET, PARROT, HORNBILL, MALLARD, LINNET, DUNNOCK. Sweep the grid for any two identical letters side by side or one above the other, then see which word on the list they belong to.

Leave the four-letter birds, such as WREN, ROOK, CROW, TEAL and COOT, until last. A short word has many false starts in a field of letters, and by the end the looped words have covered much of the grid.

Tips for printing and playing

• The list in use is named above the grid: garden birds, water birds, big and bold birds, or words to do with birds.
• With twelve letters across, the print is smaller than on the garden word search. Print one sheet and check that it suits before printing a batch.
• Found words are crossed out in the list on screen. On paper, put a tick beside each word as you loop it.
• A bird book or a view of the feeder goes well with this puzzle; several of the names are birds people may not have heard for a while.
• Reveal one highlights a word you have not found, in a different shade from your own finds.

How these puzzles are made and checked

A separate scan reads the finished grid from every cell in all eight directions. Every listed word must be found exactly once, at the stored position, and the grid must not spell a word from our deny list outside the listed words.

The puzzle of the day is chosen by the date on your device: puzzle 1 was the puzzle for 1 January 2026, and the number goes up by one each day. 366 puzzles, so the same puzzle comes round again after 366 days. Every number stays open in the archive control above the grid. More detail is on the page how the puzzles are made, checked and printed.