Complete field guide to every bird species recorded in Pennsylvania. Browse by name, filter by taxonomic family or order, and tap any species for photos, range maps, songs, and identification tips.
All sighting data is sourced from eBird, the world's largest citizen science database for birds. Use this guide to discover what birds live in Pennsylvania, learn their calls, and plan birding trips to the best hotspots in the region.
Pennsylvania's official list stands at nearly 450 species, but the state's real signature is its geography: parallel Appalachian ridges that act as highways for migrating raptors. Hawk Mountain, on the Kittatinny Ridge, became the world's first refuge for birds of prey in 1934, and its lookouts still deliver September Broad-winged Hawk kettles and one of the East's best late-season Golden Eagle flights.
Beyond the ridges, the variety is remarkable. Presque Isle juts into Lake Erie and traps spring migrants the way coastal points do; Middle Creek stages a late-winter spectacle of 100,000-plus Snow Geese that ranks among the great wildlife shows in the East; and the state's vast interior forests hold some of the continent's healthiest breeding populations of Scarlet Tanagers, Wood Thrushes, and more than two dozen warbler species.
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Where to bird in Pennsylvania
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary
The world's first raptor sanctuary: September Broad-winged kettles, mid-fall accipiter and falcon flights, and Golden Eagles riding the Kittatinny Ridge from late October into December, all from boulder-field lookouts with sweeping views.
Presque Isle State Park
A sandspit curling into Lake Erie that concentrates migrants like nowhere else inland: May warbler fallouts, shorebirds on Gull Point, loons and ducks offshore, and a rarity list that rivals coastal hotspots.
Middle Creek WMA
From late February into early March, more than 100,000 Snow Geese and thousands of Tundra Swans stage on the lake — sunrise liftoffs here are one of the great birding spectacles in the eastern United States.
John Heinz NWR at Tinicum
America's first urban refuge, minutes from the Philadelphia airport: marsh boardwalks with bitterns, rails, and gallinules, mudflat shorebirds in late summer, and warbler-filled woodland edges in May.
Waggoner's Gap
The Kittatinny's other great hawkwatch, north of Carlisle — a rocky summit that tallies some of the highest Golden Eagle counts in the eastern U.S. each November.
Conejohela Flats
Mudflat islands on the lower Susquehanna near Washington Boro: the state's premier shorebird stopover, with egrets, terns, and the occasional avocet or godwit among the peeps.
Powdermill Nature Reserve
Carnegie Museum's research station in the Laurel Highlands, home to one of the longest-running bird-banding programs in North America — visit in migration and the surrounding Westmoreland County forests sing with breeding warblers.
Ricketts Glen State Park
Old-growth hemlock ravines and 20-plus waterfalls where Blackburnian and Black-throated Blue Warblers, Winter Wrens, and Hermit Thrushes breed — high-elevation forest birding at its best in June.
Yellow Creek State Park
Indiana County's inland migrant trap: the premier western-Pennsylvania spot for waterfowl, loons, and grebes in March and November, with a habit of pulling in storm-blown rarities.
Pennsylvania birding by season
Spring (March–May) — Snow geese first, warblers after
Middle Creek's goose spectacle peaks in early March, waterfowl push through the lakes, and by mid-May Presque Isle and the ridgetop forests are alive with warblers — 30-species mornings are possible on the best days.
Summer (June–August) — The big woods in full song
Pennsylvania's forests host some of the continent's densest breeding populations of Scarlet Tanagers and Wood Thrushes, with Cerulean and Golden-winged Warblers in the right habitats — June mornings in the Laurel Highlands or the PA Wilds are a chorus.
Fall (September–November) — Raptors ride the ridges
September Broad-wing kettles at Hawk Mountain give way to October accipiters and November's Golden Eagles at Waggoner's Gap — pick a day behind a northwest cold front and the ridge does the rest.
Winter (December–February) — Finches, owls, and open water
Winter finches drop in when the northern cone crop fails, Short-eared Owls hunt reclaimed strip-mine grasslands at dusk, and the lower Susquehanna's open water holds gulls and waterfowl — then Middle Creek's geese return before winter ends.
All 506 bird species recorded in Pennsylvania
Every species on this list has been recorded in Pennsylvania on eBird. Tap any bird for photos, range maps, songs, and identification tips.