Birds of West Virginia

The West Virginia Bird Records Committee of the Brooks Bird Club listed 354 species as of July 2021, with 65 of them rare, 5 introduced and 2 extinct. It is a smaller total than the states around it because West Virginia has no coast and no big lake, but what it has instead is elevation: the state climbs from the Ohio River to Spruce Knob, 4,863 feet up in the Allegheny Mountains, and the birds change with every thousand feet.

In the towns, in Charleston, Huntington and Morgantown, the everyday album is a southeastern one: cardinal, crow, jay, robin, Song Sparrow, titmouse and wren. Drive an hour east into the highlands and you can hear Hermit Thrushes in red spruce, a sound most people have to go to New England for.

The West Virginia album

These are the 100 birds people report most often in West Virginia, 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 leads, singing from late winter through summer and chipping from the brush the rest of the year. The American Crow and the Blue Jay are next, the caws and screams that carry across a valley, and the American Robin sings its rolling phrases from the first light in April. The Song Sparrow rounds out the top five, three clear notes and a jumble from the roadside brush and the creek banks.

The Tufted Titmouse whistles peter, peter, peter through the oaks, and the Carolina Wren shouts teakettle from the woodpile in any month. The Mourning Dove coos from the wire, the American Goldfinch calls po-ta-to-chip overhead, the Red-bellied Woodpecker rolls a churr from the trunks, and the White-breasted Nuthatch gives its nasal yank, yank while walking headfirst down the bark.

The regions, by ear

The Ohio River and the western hills

Low, folded hills, farms and river towns. This is where the album's top twelve were recorded, with Eastern Towhees in the brushy hillsides, Indigo Buntings on the power lines from May, and Yellow-throated Warblers singing from the sycamores along the river.

The coalfields and the New River

Deep gorges and steep hardwood forest in the south. The New River Gorge is warbler, vireo and thrush country from May, with Peregrine Falcons back on the cliffs. The Wood Thrush at dusk in the gorge is one of the best sounds in the state.

The Allegheny highlands

Red spruce, northern hardwoods and high bogs. The Monongahela National Forest, established in 1920, covers more than 921,000 acres and has 230 known bird species, 159 of them breeding, with Spruce Knob as its high point. Dolly Sods, 17,371 acres of wilderness, and the Cranberry Glades are the places where the forest opens into heath and bog. Up here the dawn chorus is Hermit Thrushes, Veeries, Winter Wrens, Blackburnian and Canada Warblers and Dark-eyed Juncos, with Golden-crowned Kinglets lisping in the spruce tops.

Canaan Valley

A high bowl in Tucker County at 3,200 feet, holding the largest high-elevation wetland complex in the state, about 8,400 acres. Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, established on August 11, 1994 as the 500th refuge in the national system, manages 5,225 acres of wetland, forest and shrub and 13 miles of the Blackwater River, with plants and animals normally found much farther north. The sound is Alder Flycatchers calling free beer from the shrubs and American Woodcocks peenting at dusk in April.

Best months to listen

Late April into May is the peak in the valleys, with the residents on territory and the warblers arriving. The highlands run two or three weeks behind: late May and June are the months for the spruce country, and the thrushes are still singing at dusk in Canaan Valley in early July.

Winter in the lowlands is cardinals, titmice, nuthatches and wrens at the feeder. In any season, be out at first light; by mid-morning the hollows go quiet.

Places worth the drive

• Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, Tucker County: high wetland at 3,200 feet, northern birds, woodcocks at dusk in spring.
• Dolly Sods and Spruce Knob, Monongahela National Forest: Hermit Thrushes and northern warblers in red spruce, June.
• Cranberry Glades: bog birds and a boardwalk, with Swainson's Thrushes nearby in the big hemlocks.

None of it is required. A hillside yard in Beckley or Parkersburg, with one oak and a feeder, hands you the first 20 cards in Warble.

Listen before you go

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

Canada Goose song

0:12

Recording by Chase Harris, CC0, via iNaturalist.

Mallard song

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

Rock Pigeon song

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Recording by Richard Littauer, CC BY 4.0, via iNaturalist.

Questions people ask

Nearby albums

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