Environmental disturbances influence the distribution of species across space and time, with important implications for community structure and patterns of biodiversity. For example, both abiotic and biotic short-term disturbances flush concealed prey, providing important food resources to attending species. Disturbance foraging is widespread across diverse animal taxa, yet we currently lack a systematic understanding of how the behavior varies ecologically, geographically, and taxonomically on a global scale. Here, we conducted a systematic literature review of disturbance foraging behavior among birds. We documented disturbance foraging in at least 375 (~4%) species representing 29% (73) of all avian families and 56% (23) of all avian orders. The primary sources of disturbance were biotic, namely terrestrial mammals (~40%) and arthropods (~40%), followed by birds (~11%) and aquatic mammals (~6%). The behavior was most common in forest bird species (? 50% of all observations), followed by savanna/grassland species (~16%) and marine/coastal species (~11%). Geographically, the behavior was much more prevalent in tropical regions, with more than 90% of all observations occurring in the Neotropics (~50% of all observations) and the Afrotropics (~40%). Our findings represent the first global synthesis of disturbance foraging in birds and confirm its prevalence across the avian tree of life.