Birds of North Dakota

The North Dakota Game and Fish Department's April 2016 checklist, with a few additions from the state records committee, puts the state list at 420 species. Most of them are here because of water: the eastern two thirds of the state sit in the Prairie Pothole Region, a belt of glacial wetlands across the northern plains, and every slough with a ring of cattails is a duck factory in May.

For most people the state is Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks or Minot, a shelterbelt of cottonwoods and a lot of horizon: robins, blackbirds, doves and geese at home, and a meadowlark within a mile of any front door.

The North Dakota album

These are the 100 birds people report most often in North Dakota, 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 American Robin leads the album, singing from the cottonwoods before dawn from April to July, and the Red-winged Blackbird is second, which tells you how much water there is: conk-la-ree from every cattail ditch as soon as the ice goes out. The Mourning Dove coos from the wires, and Canada Geese and Mallards hold every pond and stubble field in the state.

The Common Grackle creaks like a rusty gate from the spruce in town, the Black-capped Chickadee whistles fee-bee through the winter at the feeder, and the Killdeer shouts its own name over the gravel lots from March. The Western Meadowlark itself sits eighth on the album, which for a bird that lives almost entirely outside town says a great deal.

The regions, by ear

The Red River Valley

Flat, black soil and shelterbelts along the Minnesota line. Robins, grackles and House Sparrows in town, blackbirds and meadowlarks in the ditches, and Snow Geese overhead in huge, noisy flocks in April and October.

The Drift Prairie and the potholes

The middle of the state, rolling and pocked with sloughs. Mallards, Gadwalls, Blue-winged Teal and Canvasbacks on every wetland, Yellow-headed Blackbirds grinding from the reeds, Marbled Godwits and Willets calling over the grass, and Bobolinks tumbling over the hayfields in June.

The Souris River loop

Up near the Canadian border the Souris River loops through three refuges. J. Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1935 two miles north of Upham in the old bed of glacial Lake Souris, is river-valley marsh bordered by wooded bottomland, floodplain meadow and native prairie sandhills, with more than 250 bird species, including the Black Tern, a marsh bird in decline. Des Lacs National Wildlife Refuge near Kenmare is 10,500 acres of natural lakes and managed wetlands along the Des Lacs River, known for Western Grebes running across the water in their spring courtship, with four other kinds of grebe, American White Pelicans in summer and 150 to 200 giant Canada Goose goslings a year.

The Missouri and the Badlands

West of the Missouri the land breaks up into buttes and coulees. In Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Golden Eagles, Wild Turkeys, chickadees, nuthatches and Great Horned Owls stay all year, flycatchers, warblers and swallows come for the summer, and big flocks of Sandhill Cranes pass over in spring and fall, croaking from so high you hear them before you find them.

Best months to listen

Late April brings the meadowlarks, the blackbirds and the geese back almost at once, and the sound of a prairie slough in May, with ducks, grebes, blackbirds and snipe winnowing overhead, is the best thing the state does. June is the peak for song on the grasslands: Bobolinks, godwits and meadowlarks from first light, which comes before five. July fades fast. September and October are geese and cranes on the refuges and the stubble. Winter is long, and the album shrinks to chickadees, House Sparrows, crows and the occasional Snowy Owl on a fence post, which is a fine card to have.

Places worth the drive

• Des Lacs National Wildlife Refuge, near Kenmare: Western Grebes dancing in May, pelicans in summer, 10,500 acres of lake and marsh.
• J. Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge, near Upham: more than 250 species along the Souris, Black Terns over the marsh.
• Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Medora: Golden Eagles and Sandhill Cranes over the Badlands.
• Any gravel road in the pothole country in June, windows down.

None of it is required. A yard in Bismarck with a slough at the end of the street hands you the first 20 cards in Warble.

Listen before you go

Three of the common North Dakota 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.

Mallard song

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

Ring-necked Pheasant song

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Recording by dugald, CC0, via iNaturalist.

Questions people ask

Nearby albums

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