Backyard Birds in Missouri: A Field Guide to the Species at Your Feeder

My cousin lives just outside St. Louis, close enough to the Mississippi that in late fall you can stand in her backyard and watch bald eagles drift south along the river corridor — dozens of them some winters, a sight that still catches people off guard the first time they see it. Missouri sits right at a genuine geographic crossroads, where the Great Plains, the Ozark highlands, and the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys all meet, and that mix shows up in the birds.

The state’s official bird, fittingly, is one that shows up in almost every backyard here regardless of which part of Missouri you’re in.

The State Bird: Eastern Bluebird

Missouri’s state bird is the Eastern Bluebird, and the state has taken that title seriously — Missouri has one of the country’s most active bluebird nest box networks, run largely by volunteers who check and maintain trails of boxes across farmland and parkland every spring.

Winter Eagle Watching

The bald eagle gathering along the rivers each winter is genuinely one of the best free wildlife spectacles in the Midwest — the birds fish the open water below the dams and lock-and-dam structures, and several state parks run organized eagle-watching events from December through February.

Ozark Specialties

Down in the Ozark highlands in the southern part of the state, the forested hills and clear spring-fed streams bring in species you won’t see as often up in the northern prairie counties — Louisiana Waterthrush along the creeks, and Summer Tanagers in the oak-hickory canopy. It’s a genuinely different feel from the flat farmland up near the Iowa border, even though it’s the same state.