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 (e.g. fire) and biotic (e.g. army-ants) 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 (n = 118 studies, 976 observations) of disturbance foraging behavior among birds (class Aves). 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 (principally the orders Primates and Artiodactyla; ~40% of all observations) and arthropods (principally army-ants; ~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. Even so, disturbance foraging associations, especially obligate foraging relationships, were most common in tropical forests, providing support for the longstanding hypothesis that ecological specialization is greater in the tropics.