Birds in Tennessee

Tennessee's state bird is the Mockingbird, selected as the official state bird in 1933; it is ashen gray above with darker, white-edged wings, about 10 inches long including the tail, and one of the finest singers among North American birds, noted for its skill in mimicking the songs of other birds. The Bobwhite Quail has been the official state game bird since 1987 ².

The backyard cast is classic eastern woodland. On eBird, the most-reported birds in Tennessee are Northern Cardinal, Carolina Wren, Carolina Chickadee, American Crow, and Blue Jay, followed by Tufted Titmouse, American Robin, Mourning Dove, Red-bellied Woodpecker, and Northern Mockingbird; Eastern Bluebird ranks twelfth ⁸. Note that the chickadee here is the Carolina Chickadee; the Black-capped Chickadee is a rare bird in Tennessee ⁸, found at high elevation in the Smokies ³.

Those high elevations are the state's special habitat. Great Smoky Mountains National Park has more than 240 documented bird species; approximately 60 live in the park year-round while nearly 120 nest there in the warmer months, and Kuwohi Road is known for high-elevation species such as the Canada Warbler and Black-capped Chickadee ³.

eBird's Tennessee records are heaviest in May, April, and March, and lightest in July and August ⁸. The year-round residents dominate the top of the list, so the seasonal signal comes from two groups: winter visitors such as Yellow-rumped Warbler and Dark-eyed Junco, reported mainly from late fall through early spring, and summer breeders such as Ruby-throated Hummingbird, present from May through September ⁸.

West Tennessee adds a wintering spectacle. Reelfoot Lake, born from the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 and the only large naturally occurring lake in Tennessee, is where visitors go to observe American Bald Eagles ⁴, and the national wildlife refuge on its upper third is a wintering ground for migratory waterfowl and bald eagles ⁵.

For backyard birders this means hummingbird feeders from May to September, and a winter feeder season from November to March when juncos and Yellow-rumped Warblers join the cardinals, wrens, chickadees, and titmice that never leave.

The four sites below run from the Mississippi bottomlands to the Smokies, and one of them sits inside Nashville's city limits ⁶.

Species rankings, seasonal status labels, and the monthly calendar on this page are derived from the eBird Observation Dataset published by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and distributed through GBIF under a CC BY 4.0 license, using Tennessee records from 2020 through 2024 ⁸. A species' seasonal status is judged from its own monthly share of all Tennessee records. The state list total, the state birds, and every site fact come from the primary sources listed below.

EOD – eBird Observation Dataset, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, via GBIF.org (CC BY 4.0). Tennessee records 2020–2024, retrieved 2026-09-17.

1. Tennessee Ornithological Society — Official List of the Birds of Tennessee (December 2024, PDF)
2. TN.gov — Tennessee State Symbols
3. National Park Service — Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Birds
4. Tennessee State Parks — Reelfoot Lake State Park
5. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge
6. Tennessee State Parks — Radnor Lake State Park
7. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — Hatchie National Wildlife Refuge
8. EOD – eBird Observation Dataset, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, via GBIF.org (CC BY 4.0); Tennessee records 2020–2024