Backyard Birds of Texas: Common Species Across the State

Why Texas has so many different birds

The official Texas list, kept by the Texas Bird Records Committee, includes more than 660 species, one of the highest totals of any US state. Texas is huge and sits where eastern forests, western deserts, Great Plains grasslands and the subtropical scrub of northeastern Mexico meet. It also lies under one of North America’s busiest migration routes.

Because of that, a backyard in Beaumont and a backyard in El Paso can have very different birds. This guide starts with birds found across most of the state, then looks at each region.

Birds found across most of Texas

Northern mockingbird

Texas chose the mockingbird as its state bird in 1927. It is a slim gray bird, 20.5–28 cm (8–11 in) long, with white wing patches and white outer tail feathers that flash in flight. Males copy the songs and calls of other birds and even mechanical sounds, and a single bird may know somewhere between about 40 and 200 song types (more in how many songs mockingbirds know). Unmated males often sing late into the night in spring, and pairs boldly chase cats, hawks and sometimes people away from their nests.

Northern cardinal

The cardinal lives in most of Texas but is scarce or absent in some of the driest parts of the far west. Males are brilliant red; females are tan with a red-orange bill. In South and West Texas it shares yards with its gray desert relative, the pyrrhuloxia.

Great-tailed grackle

Few birds are as typical of Texas towns as the great-tailed grackle, a large blackbird 38–46 cm (15–18 in) long. Males are glossy purple-black with a long, keel-shaped tail; females are smaller and brown. Both have bright yellow eyes. Grackles were once found mainly in Mexico, Central America and the far south of Texas, but between about 1880 and 2000 their breeding range spread far north across the United States, helped by irrigation, farms and cities. In the evening, hundreds or thousands may gather to roost in trees over parking lots, filling the air with whistles and clacks.

On the upper Texas coast, the similar boat-tailed grackle also lives in marshes. In Texas, boat-tailed grackles have dark eyes, while great-tailed grackles have yellow eyes.

Doves

Texas yards often host several doves at once:

• White-winged dove: gray-brown with a bold white stripe along the wing edge, red eyes and a hooting “who-cooks-for-you” call. Once mainly a bird of South Texas, it has spread into cities across the state; San Antonio alone had over a million in 2001.
• Mourning dove: slimmer, with a long pointed tail and no white in the wing.
• Inca dove: a tiny dove, about 16.5–23 cm (6.5–9 in) long, with a scaly pattern and a two-note call often written as “no hope.”
• Eurasian collared-dove: a pale, introduced dove with a black half-collar, which spread from Florida after escaping in the Bahamas in the 1970s and is now common in Texas towns.

Wrens

The Carolina wren is common in the east and center of the state, singing a loud “teakettle” song. In the west it is replaced by Bewick’s wren, which has a longer tail it flicks sideways. In South and West Texas, the cactus wren, the largest wren in the United States at 18–19 cm (7–7.5 in), builds football-shaped nests in cactus and thorny shrubs.

House finches, house sparrows, European starlings, blue jays in the eastern half, and the greater roadrunner, which often walks through yards in the south and west, complete the list of widespread birds.

East Texas and the Gulf Coast

The Piney Woods and the humid Gulf Coast have birds similar to those of the southeastern US: blue jays, tufted titmice, Carolina chickadees, red-bellied and downy woodpeckers, eastern bluebirds, and brown-headed nuthatches in pine forests. The ruby-throated hummingbird is the nesting hummingbird here; see our ruby-throated hummingbird profile.

In spring, the upper coast is famous for migration. Songbirds that have flown across the Gulf of Mexico from the Yucatán Peninsula land in the first trees they reach. At High Island, wooded sanctuaries run by Houston Audubon attract birdwatchers from mid-March to mid-May, and in bad weather the trees can fill with tired warblers, tanagers, buntings and orioles.

Central Texas and the Hill Country

Central Texas is where eastern and western birds overlap. The black-crested titmouse replaces the tufted titmouse in central, southern and western Texas, and the two hybridize in a narrow zone. The golden-fronted woodpecker, with a golden-yellow nape, replaces the red-bellied woodpecker, whose nape is red.

The black-chinned hummingbird is the common nesting hummingbird of the Hill Country. Males have a black throat with a thin violet band at the bottom that only shows in good light. Lesser goldfinches, with dark backs and yellow underparts, are common year-round.

The Hill Country is also the only place in the world where the endangered golden-cheeked warbler nests, in mature juniper and oak woodland. It is not a feeder bird, but it can be found in spring in several state parks and natural areas.

South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley

The Lower Rio Grande Valley has birds found nowhere else in the US except as rare visitors:

• Green jay: a 25–29 cm (10–11.5 in) jay with a green back, yellow underparts and a blue and black head. It has even hybridized with blue jays where their ranges meet.
• Great kiskadee: a large, loud flycatcher with a black and white striped head and bright yellow belly that shouts its name, “kis-ka-dee.”
• Plain chachalaca: a long-tailed brown bird about the size of a small chicken that lives in trees and fills the morning with a loud, rhythmic “cha-cha-lac” chorus.
• Buff-bellied hummingbird: a 10–11 cm (4–4.3 in) hummingbird with a green throat, red bill and buff belly, common in the far south and along the lower coast.
• Altamira oriole: a large orange and black oriole that weaves very long hanging nests.

Wildlife refuges and parks such as Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge are good places to see these species, and many also visit gardens in Valley towns.

West Texas and the Panhandle

In the dry west, the pyrrhuloxia, sometimes called the desert cardinal, is gray with red on the face, crest, breast and wings and has a stubby yellow bill. Curve-billed thrashers, cactus wrens, Say’s phoebes, scaled quail and lesser goldfinches are common in brushy desert yards. House finches are often the most numerous feeder bird. In the mountains of the Trans-Pecos, more hummingbird species appear in summer and fall.

Seasonal visitors

Summer brings painted buntings, whose males have a blue head, green back and red underparts, to brushy yards across much of the state. Scissor-tailed flycatchers, which are Oklahoma’s state bird, perch on fences and wires; males can reach about 38 cm (15 in), much of it tail. Purple martins nest in multi-room birdhouses, and chimney swifts chatter over towns.

Winter brings yellow-rumped warblers, ruby-crowned kinglets, orange-crowned warblers, American goldfinches, cedar waxwings and several sparrows, including chipping, white-crowned and white-throated sparrows. Rufous hummingbirds pass through in late summer and fall, and a few stay through the winter.

Tips for identifying Texas backyard birds

• Mockingbird or shrike? The loggerhead shrike, common on Texas wires in winter, has a black mask and a hooked bill; the mockingbird has no mask.
• Female cardinal or pyrrhuloxia? The cardinal’s bill is red-orange; the pyrrhuloxia’s is yellow and parrot-like.
• Black-chinned or ruby-throated hummingbird? Males are easy in good light: violet band versus ruby-red throat. Females are very hard to separate, so location is a good clue.
• Tufted or black-crested titmouse? Look at the crest: gray on the tufted titmouse, black on an adult black-crested titmouse.