12 Awful Birds That Don’t Deserve the Power of Flight

Birds can be majestic creatures. Key words in that sentence: “can be.” They can also be horrific, stalking monsters of the sky that make you understand just how much dinosaur blood is in them.
Here are 12 birds in particular that look simply, awful…
Andean Condor

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I don’t know what made multiple birds’ evolutionary lines think that “tumor on head” was somehow going to be a crucial feature for the future, but they’ve pushed a lot of chips onto that square.
Shoebill Stork

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I understand that this bird has a bit of a cult following, but I’d argue that they’re the beneficiary of only very specific angles being chosen for Instagram. In too many pictures, they still look like a snapshot from the last 10 seconds of a curse that turns a man into a bird.
Tawny Frogmouth

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They look like they’d be an owl’s annoying, weird little lackey. As if when the owl’s ripping apart a mouse, this guy's there saying, “Yeah! Get ‘em!”
Marabou Stork

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I imagine that this bird’s appearance is a defense mechanism so that predators see it and immediately think, “Well, I don’t want whatever he has.”
Vulturine Guineafowl

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I’m torn here. It’s so close to looking genuinely awesome. Then, that head. It’s far too small. It’s like a medieval drawing of a regular bird, back before they understood proportion.
Helmeted Guineafowl

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The brother of the last bird that got all the recessive genes.
Jacobin Pigeon

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This guy looks like a straight up asshole. Private-school-ass bird.
Long-Wattled Umbrellabird

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Okay, that’s enough of that. We can’t let this sort of stuff happen. A bird that looks like a rockabilly penis? No dice.
Helmeted Hornbill

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“Hey guys! You forgot to tell me what bar you were going to next! Lucky I found you!”
Greater Sage-Grouse

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I’m expecting some real salt-of-the-earth game bird. Instead I’m presented with a bird that looks like it would sentence me to death if it could? It looks like a king that would die in a coup.
Greater Prairie-Chicken

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Okay, this is clearly a Pokemon. Don’t piss on my head and tell me that it’s raining.
Red-Headed Vulture

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Look, I didn’t want to include the classic vulture in here, because it felt too easy. At the same time, credit has to be given to the O.G. ugly birds. Horrible head, horrible feet, and even worse, their head is that ugly so that it’s easier to stick into rotting animal carcasses. 0/10, see me after class.