The American South is a global birding hotspot. The variety of habitats that stretch across the region, from high mountain forests to salt marshes to expansive grasslands, play host to all manner of resident and migratory birds—many of them so rare, striking, or hard to spot that they appear on birders’ lifer lists.
There’s the Kirtland’s warbler, for example—one of the rarest songbirds in North America, which passes fleetingly through Florida on its migratory route; the too-colorful-to-be-true painted bunting of the Carolina Lowcountry; the vibrant green jays at the southern tip of Texas; the array of raptors, including swallow-tailed kites and American kestrels; and hyper-secretive marsh birds like the American bittern.
Below, find seven more spectacular avians that top every Southern birder’s bucket list.
Eastern Black Rail
In the marshes of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, black rails live out their low-profile lives among cattail, sedge, and other tall grasses, foraging for aquatic beetles, spiders, snails, and small crustaceans. At roughly the size of a sparrow, these are the smallest rails in the country—and the most elusive member of a famously elusive family. They’re active around dusk and dawn, and your best chance of spotting them comes in the breeding season from March to July, in coastal places like South Carolina’s ACE Basin or Galveston Island, Texas—and there’s even a Black Rail Trail near Port Richey, Florida.
Cerulean Warbler
This migratory songbird is the color of the sky, and every spring it makes the journey from its wintering grounds in Central and South America to the southeastern United States to breed, nest, and spend the summer. The species loves Appalachian old-growth forest with giant trees and thick underbrush, as found in Western North Carolina, Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, and the Greenbrier Valley of West Virginia. Since the 1980s, the species’ population has dropped by 70 percent, and that decline—coupled with the birds’ tendency to spend time high in the canopy—makes them an exciting tick for birders.
Whooping Crane
Crowned with red feathers and standing at a towering five feet fall, this is a bird that requires a pilgrimage but offers a guaranteed sighting. Only one wild, self-sustaining population remains—numbering some five hundred birds—and every winter they arrive to the coastal plains of Texas’s Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. A February festival celebrates their presence and brings people from all over the world to hear their bugling call and observe them as they traverse the salt marshes in search of blue crabs, acorns, and Carolina wolfberries. By April the birds are heading north to their summering grounds in Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park.
Burrowing Owl
Seeing any owl is always a treat, but spotting a burrowing owl is a particularly unique experience. These petite, yellow-eyed, long-legged birds spend their time on the ground—or underground, in their extensive burrows—in grasslands, deserts, and other open habitats, the better to hunt insects and rodents. Florida’s Cape Coral boasts the state’s largest population, and the little owls live all over Texas, too, especially in the high plains of the Panhandle and Trans-Peco regions.
American Woodcock
There’s no conventional beauty here: The woodcock is outfitted with a bulbous body, beady eyes, and a long bill, and they conduct a strutting walk to help them find earthworms that is as endearing as it is absurd. But the absurdity is the appeal, as is the fact that their mottled feathers help them blend seamlessly into the forest floor as they poke around for earthworms. Look for them in forests, old fields, and wet meadows all over the Southeast, especially in the spring, when the males vocalize and perform some aerial acrobatics called a “sky dance” for the females.
Scarlet Tanager
We’re back to the usual beauty standards with this neotropical migrant; male scarlet tanagers turn a brilliant red with jet-black wings in spring and summer when it’s time to attract a mate. Twice a year they fly across the Gulf of Mexico, shuttling between their breeding grounds in the deciduous forests of eastern North America and their wintering grounds in South America. They stay high up in the trees and can be difficult to spot, so listen for their distinctive chick-burr call, and keep in mind that the females are yellow and olive.
Red-Cockaded Woodpecker
As a whole, woodpeckers are a charismatic group, but the South claims one especially rare species: the red-cockaded woodpecker, a denizen of the sun-soaked longleaf pine forests that once blanketed the region from Texas to Virginia. This federally endangered avian is nicknamed the Yankee Doodle bird for the tiny strip of red on the males’ head, but it’s easier to identify them by their large white cheek patch and the black-and-white ladder pattern on their backs. To spot one in Georgia, try Tavia’s Trail at Moody Forest in Georgia, the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge in Hillsboro, or Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. In Florida, Apalachicola National Forest and Blackwater River State Forest are good bets.
