You are here

Home » Birding in the National Parks

Birding in the National Parks

Birding In The National Parks: A "Big Year" In The National Parks

I’ve written a few times about the national parks I consider the best for birding, but several readers have asked which would be the best to visit to maximize the diversity of birds seen. When we talk about number of different birds seen, I always think about a big year. During a big year, a birder tries to see as many birds as possible in one calendar year within a certain geographic range, or under certain conditions.

Birding In The National Parks: Working To Build Whooper Populations

It’s a safe bet that not too many travelers reading this post have visited Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park. It’s Canada’s largest park and one of the largest national parks in the world at nearly five times the area of Yellowstone, but to say it’s a thirty-hour drive northeast of Seattle is an understatement of its remoteness.

Birding In The National Parks: Parks Strangely Overlooked By Birders

I’ve talked at length about the best parks for birds and the parks where all the birders go. Everglades National Park usually tops that list. Big Bend and Acadia are also extremely popular birding parks. But which of the 59 national parks gets the least birding attention? That’s tough to quantify, but I’ve made an educated guess from perusing eBird data.

Birding In The National Parks: Identifying Birds In A Split Second

Over the last decade, the explosion of books related to birding has seen the formation of a subgenre focused on the GISS concept. GISS (typically pronounced jizz) is an acronym for General Impression, Size, and Shape. This refers to the method of identifying a bird by visible features other than the color and markings. It’s how most seasoned birders make split-second identifications in the field. Over time, GISS has come to be a catch-all term for the holistic approach to bird identification where distribution, time of year, habitat, and behavioral considerations blend with size and shape (and good old fashioned field marks!) to make a bird knowable in an instant.

Birding In The National Parks: Where Should You Look For Finches This Winter?

Predicting the winter movements of semi-migratory birds can be tricky business. Sometimes birds move south because food has become scarce in the north, as was the case with Pine Siskins last winter. Other times, an abundance of food creates a hyper-successful breeding season that results in overpopulation and migration south.

Birding In The National Parks: Mixing Birding With Leaf-Peeping

If “October” and “travel” are in the same story, odds are good that it’s an article about the best places to see fall foliage. Of course, to those of us with birds perpetually on the brain, October is the conclusion of fall migrant season. With that in mind, I got to wondering about the best national park to maximize migrant-watching and leaf-peeping in one trip.

INN Member

The easiest way to explore RV-friendly National Park campgrounds.

The Essential RVing Guide to the National Parks

Here’s the definitive guide to National Park System campgrounds where RVers can park their rigs.

Our app is packed with RVing- specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 national parks.

You’ll also find stories about RVing in the parks, tips helpful if you’ve just recently become an RVer, and useful planning suggestions.

The Essential RVing Guide to the National Parks

FREE for iPhones and Android phones.