Birds of Theodore Roosevelt National Park
The 9 birds you can find at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, like the American white pelican — sizes, diets, and whether you should worry.
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Bird American white pelican
Pelecanus erythrorhynchos
A huge white bird with an orange throat pouch that fishes in groups and nests on tiny islands in Yellowstone Lake and other high-country waters.
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Bird Black-billed magpie
Pica hudsonia
A black-and-white corvid with a tail as long as its body, common on fences and roadsides across the northern Rockies and Great Plains.
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Bird Burrowing owl
Athene cunicularia
A small owl that nests underground in old prairie-dog burrows and hunts in daylight across Western grasslands, unlike most owls.
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Bird Great horned owl
Bubo virginianus
A big night hunter with feathery "horns" and a deep hoot, found from the saguaro desert to the Everglades, hunting after dark on silent wings.
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Bird Mountain bluebird
Sialia currucoides
A sky-blue thrush of high, open country, the only bluebird seen regularly above 5,000 feet, nesting in lava-rock crevices at Craters of the Moon.
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Bird Red-tailed hawk
Buteo jamaicensis
The hawk most often recorded in Yellowstone. We watched a hawk take a pika near the Roosevelt cabins and could not tell you which hawk it was.
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Bird Sharp-tailed grouse
Tympanuchus phasianellus
A prairie grouse that dances on open ground at dawn, stamping its feet and inflating purple air sacs on its neck to attract a mate.
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Bird Turkey vulture
Cathartes aura
A large, dark soaring bird with a bare red head, circling on thermals over open country, using one of the sharpest noses of any bird.
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Bird Western meadowlark
Sturnella neglecta
A grassland songbird with a yellow throat and a black V on its chest, the state bird of Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota.