Last night I did a map for plants, so tonight I thought I’d look at birds. Edit: Since I made this post, I’ve also posted some fungi/lichen maps, and some butterfly/moth maps.
Same as yesterday - the grey states have unique top observations (see table below), and the colored ones share with at least one other state.
Wyoming was very easy to guess, I remember going to Yellowstone as a kid and being very impressed (and a bit jealous, coming from CT) of just how big and clever those birds are. I imagine a lot of other tourists have the same reaction. It’s hard not to be impressed by them, other corvids may be similarly intelligent but when its the size of a raven and friendly due to illegal feedings, they are brave enough to let you watch them goof off from a few feet away.
Its going to be Trametes versicolor, Cerioporus squamosus, or Amanita muscaria on the top for a lot of states, with a few outliers in like, the desert states
I was curious so I checked Nevada’s top fungi. #1 is Podaxis pistillaris. Seven of the top ten are lichens. Trametes and Amanita are way down the list and we don’t have Cerioporus squamous at all.
Not surprising at all. The only natives I could potentially see even cracking the top 10 is the Nene or the Koloa. All the others are too rare or rely on special habitats.
Yeah. You really have to work to photo a native bird in Hawaii. Even while there is a diversity of birds around you.
The Utah bird photographers need to up their game if Rock Pigeon is their top bird.
For my state (New Mexico), I guess it’s not surprising that House Finch would be the top bird photo’d. It’s attractive and common in both urban and exurban environments. Interesting that it didn’t top out in any other state. Although Roadrunner, the state bird, is common enough and easily photo’d so it likely ranks high for NM.
Also interesting that House Sparrow didn’t make the top of any state’s list.
Some states are at a disadvantage in that regard as their state birds are going to be captive/cultivated. The Rhode Island Red and Delaware Blue are chicken breeds which are their namesake states’ state birds.
As someone who grew up there, can confirm that the vast majority of birds one sees day to day are non-native. Probably the only commonly-seen native species on all islands is the Kolea, and it’s migratory.
3 native birds actually make the top 10. Kolea is 4th. Nene is 7th and Black-crowned Night-Heron is 8th. The top native honeycreeper is 'Apapane at #21.
I am pleasantly surprised that the Red Tail Hawk is California’s top iNat bird observation. Not what I would have guessed.
Roughly speaking, I used to see 20 California quails for every red tail hawk spotted. I do believe it’s probably the reverse now. But I’m still surprised the red tail hawk came out on top of all the common birds here.
One (somewhat) interesting difference between the state bird map and the state plant map: all the top nationwide birds make it. The earliest nationwide “misses” are #7 House Finch and #10 Red-Winged Blackbird. With the plants, the “misses” are earlier - #2 Eastern Poison Ivy and #3 Common Yarrow.
Haha - I wanted it to be New York’s top bird, but it’s just #2.
This is what I love about iNaturalist. I didn’t wake up this morning expecting the be looking at the frequency of native Hawaiian bird species observations, but here we are!
The top birds are so much more uniform than the top plants, since birds have much wider ranges than plants (owing to the fact that dispersal is much easier for a bird than it is a plant). You could scramble up the birds and states and this list would still be believable, since most of these birds occur continent-wide.
Hawaii and Florida are really the only ones that give themselves away, since Hawaii is the only place in the US where Red-crested Cardinal occurs, and Florida is the only state where White Ibis is common (although is does still occur in other states).
