Iowa Birds & Birding
Your site devoted to all about Iowa birds
Welcome to the Iowa Ornithologists' Union website. We hope you will find useful information in our site and will join in the fun of adding your important records to our data as we learn together more about our state's avian life.
News
The latest news in Iowa birding
Help Support the IOU - If you purchase optics from Eagle Optics or frequently order through Amazon, using the links in our website helps support the continuation of our website and listserv. Just go to our Nature Store page and click the links. When ordering by phone from Eagle Optics, be sure to mention the IOU and ask that we be credited with your purchase. Thanks for your support!
Call for IOU Project Grant Applications - The Iowa Ornithologists Union Projects Committee is accepting requests for funding from various entities for bird-related activities through March 1, 2015. These requests may include providing match money for habitat acquisition, projects to improve important bird habitats, publishing related to birding in Iowa research projects, or anything else that meets the mission of the Iowa Ornithologists' Union. To download the grant application form, click on the yellow IOU tab, then the Leadership tab, then Projects Committee. Look for the “grant application” link.
Our Other Important Sites
More birding content from the IOU
Ann Barker Library
A searchable library of past issues of Iowa Bird Life from
1931 - 2012.
This great resource was made possible by a bequest from former president
Ann Barker and was created as a memorial to her.
Iowa Breeding Bird Atlas
The second atlas project is capturing data on breeding birds from 2008 through 2012.
Iowa birders enter their data in this application and everyone can follow the progress
in real time. Be sure to check out the distribution changes since the first project
in 1985 - 1990 with the overlay map.
Iowa's Important Bird Areas
In partnership with Iowa Audubon, IOU members have nominated and then provided data
to support designations of IBAs in Iowa. Continued monitoring of these areas
are supported by data entered into the IOU seasonal field reports.
Hot Birds
Those birds that create some excitement in our world
From IA-BIRD Posts
Click on the "where" link to get directions from the gazetteer. Also check out our
photos of current Iowa rare birds.
| Harlequin Duck |
Des Moines
| 1/15/2015 |
| Great Black-backed Gull |
Mississippi River Lock & Dam No. 14
About six miles upriver from Bettendorf in Scott Co. The best waterfowl viewing is from the Illinois side, 1.5 miles downriver from I-80 along Ill. Hwy. 84, on the pier at Fisherman’s Corner South R.A. You can walk out the pier after parking. Gull viewing is good here, too, but probably best from the official L&D 14 park on the Iowa side. That park's entrance is about two miles south along U.S. 67 from I-80. You can walk in quite close to the lock, and there are backwaters at the park that often hold gulls as well.
| 1/11/2015 |
From eBird Entries
Latest IOU Poll
see how you stack up against other birders
Which species of bird would you most like to see this winter?
