Birds of Louisiana

Louisiana has 486 species on its state list as of January 2024, according to the Louisiana Bird Records Committee, and 153 of them are accidentals that turned up once or twice from Mexico, the Caribbean or the open Gulf. That is what a coast on a migration route does. The Mississippi ends here in marsh, the Atchafalaya Basin is a river swamp the size of a small state, the southwest is prairie and salt marsh, and the north is pine hills.

In the neighborhoods it is simpler. Cardinal, jay, mockingbird, dove and Carolina Wren lead the album, and a Great Egret in a roadside ditch is the sixth most reported bird.

The Louisiana album

These are the 100 birds people report most often in Louisiana, 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 Louisiana, whistling cheer, cheer, cheer from the crepe myrtle before the heat comes up. The Blue Jay is second, screaming from the live oaks. The Northern Mockingbird is third, and it runs its whole repertoire from the roof ridge, each phrase repeated several times, sometimes all night under a streetlight in April.

The Carolina Wren shouts teakettle, teakettle from the carport in every month of the year, and the Carolina Chickadee gives its fast four-note whistle from the pecans. The Mourning Dove coos from the wire, and in New Orleans the crow with the nasal uh-uh is a Fish Crow, not the American Crow of the uplands.

The regions, by ear

New Orleans and the delta

City, levee, bayou and swamp within a few miles of each other. The Barataria Preserve of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, six miles southeast of the city, has trails and canoe routes through bottomland forest, cypress swamp and marsh. In April the swamp rings with the Prothonotary Warbler singing sweet, sweet, sweet from a hole in a cypress, and the Barred Owl asks who cooks for you all at noon as readily as midnight.

The Atchafalaya Basin

Between Lafayette and Baton Rouge, the largest stretch of the old Mississippi bottomland left: cypress and tupelo swamp, bayous and oxbow lakes. Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge protects more than 15,000 acres of it, with Painted Buntings singing from the brushy edges in summer.

The southwest coast

Cameron Parish is salt marsh, coastal prairie and old rice fields where two flyways meet. Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, set up in 1937 in the marsh between Calcasieu and Sabine lakes, has an auto tour and the Wetland Walkway, where the sound is Red-winged Blackbirds, rails grunting in the grass and alligators bellowing in spring. Cameron Prairie, southeast of Lake Charles, is loud with ducks and geese in winter.

Grand Isle and the cheniers

The coastal ridges of live oak and hackberry, called cheniers, are the first trees a songbird sees after crossing the Gulf. On Grand Isle, a barrier island with a birding trail through six small tracts of woods, a north wind in April can drop tanagers, orioles, buntings and thrushes into the oaks by the hundred, and the island has held a bird festival every April since 1997. North of all this, in the pines, the Chuck-will's-widow calls its name on warm nights.

Best months to listen

March through May is the peak, and April on the coast is the best week of birding in the state, when trans-Gulf migrants pile into the cheniers after a front. The swamps are loudest from late March into June. Summer is early mornings only; by nine the heat and the cicadas take over. Winter is the busy season in the marsh, with ducks, geese and wading birds packed into the southwest refuges, and the mockingbird and cardinal never really stop.

Places worth the drive

• Barataria Preserve, south of New Orleans: boardwalks through swamp and marsh, Prothonotary Warblers and Barred Owls.
• Grand Isle, at the end of Highway 1: spring fallouts in the live oaks, festival in April.
• Sabine and Cameron Prairie refuges, Cameron Parish: marsh birds, wintering waterfowl, an auto tour and a walkway into the marsh.
• Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge, between Lafayette and Baton Rouge: cypress swamp by boat, Painted Buntings in summer.

None of them is required. A yard with a live oak and a ditch gives you the first 25 cards of the Warble album by April.

Listen before you go

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

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.

Mourning Dove song

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Recording by Chase Harris, CC0, via iNaturalist.

Questions people ask

Nearby albums

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