The Most Commonly Seen Bird In Arkansas Is Not The State Bird

Did you know that the most commonly seen bird in Arkansas is not the Mockingbird?

So I have to admit something to you. I did not know that the state bird of Texas and Arkansas is the Northern Mockingbird. I have lived in Arkansas for over 15 years and I had to look it up.

Both my mother and my in-laws are big bird folks. They both have feeders and birdbaths. One day my mom and I were talking and the question came up what bird she saw the most in her back yard and she told me it was the Blue Jay, then Blackbirds, with a Cardinal next.

The website gardensalive has a big map with the most seen bird in every state.

Gardensalive.com said that they used information from the American  Breeding Bird Survey from 2019 to help determine this map. As you can see the Red Wing Blackbird is listed as the most commonly seen bird in Arkansas and Louisiana. In Texas, it is of course the Northern Mockingbird. In Oklahoma, it is the Mourning Dove.

I am not so sure about this information, so I called up a friend that lives in the Little Rock area and he actually backs up their data. He told me that yes the Red Wing Blackbird is very common in central and northern Arkansas. As for the Texarkana area, I will say that the Northern Mockingbird is number one followed by the Robin, Blue Jay, and the Cardinal.