Birds of Iowa

Iowa sits between the Mississippi and the Missouri, and almost everything between them was once tallgrass prairie. Less than a tenth of one percent of that prairie is left, so the state now sounds like what replaced it: farm fields, shelterbelts, small towns full of maples, and creek bottoms with cottonwoods. The Iowa Ornithologists' Union counts 432 species on the state list, a long list for a place with no coast and no mountain.

The everyday birds live in yards and hedgerows. Cardinal, robin, jay, chickadee and goose lead the album, and the blackbird in the roadside ditch is never far behind.

The Iowa album

These are the 100 birds people report most often in Iowa, ranked by how frequently they turn up. The common and uncommon ones are shown; the rare and legendary cards stay face down until you catch them in the game.

Backyard birds you will hear first

The Northern Cardinal is the most reported bird in Iowa, whistling cheer, cheer, cheer from the top of a spruce in February when everything else is quiet. The American Robin starts before dawn from April into July, and the Blue Jay screams from the oaks. The Black-capped Chickadee is the fourth most reported bird and the first one most children learn, because it says its own name and then whistles a clean two-note fee-bee from January on.

The Red-winged Blackbird sings conk-la-ree from every cattail ditch along every gravel road from March to July. The Downy Woodpecker whinnies, the Red-bellied Woodpecker rolls a churr, the crow argues, and the American Goldfinch dips overhead in July with its four-syllable flight call. The Canada Goose complains from every farm pond and retention basin, and in fall the whole flock argues overhead at night.

The regions, by ear

The Missouri River and the Loess Hills

Western Iowa has a strange landscape: a 200-mile ridge of wind-blown silt, the Loess Hills, running along the Missouri with some of the last prairie in the region on its slopes. The river valley is a raptor highway, and hawk watchers at Hitchcock Nature Center have counted 20 species of raptor in one season and a record 16,000 birds in 2005. On the floodplain, DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, 8,365 acres of bottomland forest, prairie and wetland on both sides of the state line, has Dickcissels buzzing, orioles whistling from the cottonwoods, Yellow-headed Blackbirds squawking in the marsh, and thousands of migrants along the river in spring and fall.

The prairie remnants and the Des Moines lobe

Central Iowa is flat, wet and farmed, but Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, 6,000 acres set aside in 1990, has replanted about 4,000 acres of tallgrass prairie, oak savanna and sedge meadow from local seed, with bison and elk grazing it. It sounds like the state used to: meadowlarks whistling from the fence line, Bobolinks bubbling over the grass in June, and Dickcissels saying their name from the bluestem.

The Mississippi bluffs

The east edge of the state is limestone bluffs, backwater sloughs and floodplain forest along the Mississippi. Bald Eagles sit in the cottonwoods below the locks and dams in winter, Pileated Woodpeckers laugh from the bluff woods, and in May the ravines fill with warblers moving up the river.

Farm country

Everywhere else: corn, soybeans, a windbreak and a farmhouse. Horned Larks tinkle over bare fields in March, Killdeer cry from the gravel, and Barn Swallows chatter in every machine shed.

Best months to listen

Late April through early June is the peak, when residents are on territory and warblers are moving up both rivers. June is prairie month: the grassland birds at Neal Smith sing hardest in the first hours of light. July belongs to the goldfinch. Fall is long and quieter, with hawks over the Loess Hills from September into November and geese overhead at night. Winter is eagles along the rivers and chickadees, nuthatches and juncos at the feeder.

Places worth the drive

• Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, central Iowa: 6,000 acres of restored prairie and savanna, bison, and grassland birds in June, with walking trails and a five-mile auto tour.
• DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, on the Missouri near the Nebraska line: an oxbow lake, bottomland forest, migrating waterbirds and Bald Eagles.
• The Loess Hills, western Iowa: prairie ridges over the Missouri valley and a fall hawk watch at Hitchcock Nature Center.
• The Mississippi bluffs, eastern Iowa: eagles in winter, warblers in May.

None of them is required. A yard with a spruce, a feeder and a ditch full of cattails hands you the first 25 cards of the Warble album by June.

Listen before you go

Three of the common Iowa birds, so the first songs you hear outside already ring a bell.

Canada Goose song

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Recording by Chase Harris, CC0, via iNaturalist.

Wood Duck song

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Recording by Chase Harris, CC0, via iNaturalist.

Mallard song

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Recording by Fionn Ó Marcaigh, CC BY 4.0, via iNaturalist.

Questions people ask

Nearby albums

Album data: public bird observations aggregated through GBIF, ranked by report frequency in Iowa. Updated September 30, 2026.