The National Audubon Society has mapped hundreds of birding sites from the river's headwaters in northern Minnesota south more than 2,000 miles toward Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico , calling it the Great River Birding Trail. To date, Audubon and its partners have produced and distributed nearly 500,000 paper maps of parts of the trail, which follows the Great River Road , a system of scenic byways through 10 states. These paper maps cover much of the trail in the upper parts of the Mississippi Basin . More recently, focus shifted to digital mapping of birding sites along the Lower Mississippi River and display of this information on the internet. Now, Audubon is working to display birding information on the web for the entire river. We hope, eventually, to create a simple and dynamic way to see and enjoy the birds of the entire Mississippi river region using the information resources available on our web site.
Getting Started:
The Great River Birding Trail consists of three different levels of maps.
The first level is the national scale map as seen to the right here. Clicking on any of the blue areas will bring you to the second map level. A small “slider” map on the right may be used to navigate up and down the river to show the blue areas currently accessible for the entire river.
The second level contains a closer view of the river area of the states currently logged and registered into the online database. Clicking on a county will bring you to the third level of maps.
The third level of maps consists of individual county maps. On these maps are shown every Great River Birding Trail site contained within that county. Highlighting them shows you the site's amenities and clicking on any site goes to a site's individual page.
Ready? Click on the map below to select your state.
