The basic checklist describes your chances of finding different species of birds in the Greater Cincinnati area throughout the year, broken down by week. Knowing what birds to expect, and when to expect them, goes a long way to help identify what you see or hear. You can view the list at the above link, or download a PDF file to view offline. You can also print out a daily checklist, which shows only what birds to expect on any given day of the year, which you can easily take with you in the field.
This is not a complete list of all birds which have ever been seen here. Only species which occur regularly have been listed. The finding codes indicate the chances of seeing or hearing a particular bird during a morning of solid birding. This is not quite the same as describing how common the bird is. The codes presume that the observer is experienced and is in the right habitat. They relate to a “normal” year, if there is such a thing. Many birds vary in their abundance from year to year, sometimes to a considerable degree.
The list covers Hamilton County, along with adjacent counties in Ohio (Butler, Clermont and Warren), Kentucky (Boone, Campbell and Kenton) and Indiana (Dearborn and Franklin), plus extensions to include birding areas that extend into other counties (Hueston Woods, Caesar Creek Lake and Spring Valley Wildlife Area in Ohio, Brookville Lake and Whitewater State Park in Indiana, and Mehldahl Dam in Kentucky). The list follows the nomenclature and taxonomy of the 65th Supplement (July 2024) to the American Ornithological Society Check-list of North American Birds.
This list is based in large part on reports to eBird, which is operated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We thank them for access to their data, without which this list would be much less accurate.
In addition to the basic checklist, we also have a more inclusive annotated list. Besides the birds which occur here regularly, it includes information on every species for which a record has ever been published, at any time going back to the nineteenth century. There is a brief synopsis for each species, as well as a link to a much more detailed account for that species. The latter is a work in progress – only a few species are detailed at this time.
We also have a link to the old Birding in Cincinnati bird sightings archive. From 1997 until the Audubon Society of Ohio web site was set up in early 2015, Ned Keller maintained a web site devoted to birding around Cincinnati. With the rise of Facebook and eBird, that site’s sightings log fell into disuse and became largely obsolete, but the sightings that were recorded then may still be of historical interest.