About These Guides

A Birder’s Guide to Missouri Public Lands is a serially updated compilation of descriptions of public lands with site information from a birding perspective.

These descriptions are similar to the hunting/fishing oriented blurbs for each site in Missouri’s Conservation Atlas and on the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) website. A Birder’s Guide to Missouri Public Lands appears in serial form in The Bluebird, the quarterly journal of the Audubon Society of Missouri (ASM), and as a frequently-updated cumulative set of entries on ASM’s website, www.mobirds.org.

Although MDC conservation areas comprise the bulk of the entries, the series also includes state parks and historical sites, national wildlife refuges, national forests, university-owned lands, city parks and other public lands open to birders. The purpose of this guide is to provide birders with basic introductory information about sites.  It is not a step-by-step, stop-by-stop “how to bird” site manual.  For greater details for some of these sites and many others, birders should consult A Guide to Birding in Missouri, compiled and edited by Kay and Bill Palmer, published by the Audubon Society of Missouri, 2001.

Directions to the sites in A Birder’s Guide to Missouri Public Lands are detailed and up-to-date as to road names and numbers at the time the entry was written.  Other sources may have out-of-date road designations and/or vague, even misleading directions.

Entries are intended to answer birders’ questions as they consider a site visit.  Is there a road through it?  Are there trails?  Are there special features of interest to birders? Are there toilets?Are there hazards?   Do conditions or other birders’ experiences suggest unusual species might be present?  Is the site worth a visit anytime of year, or would a visit at a particular season be especially rewarding?

Go to the list of available Birder's Guides