How many bird species are in Rhode Island?

Rhode Island bird list at a glance

What does Rhode Island’s count include?

• One row per species, each with its English and scientific names and a code from Abundant to Vagrant, and no total or date anywhere: 446 rows, our count, and the same 446 in the spreadsheet the page offers for download.
• 121 species marked Vagrant, which the list's legend defines as accidental, with few modern state records, and 34 marked Casual, birds that don't turn up every year.
• 3 species marked Extirpated, their status in Rhode Island now unknown: the Northern Bobwhite, the Eskimo Curlew and the Monk Parakeet. The Passenger Pigeon, Great Auk, Labrador Duck and Heath Hen, which the state's 2015 Wildlife Action Plan names with the curlew as extinct birds known or thought to have occurred here, aren't on it (our check).
• Birds brought over from other continents, with nothing to set them apart: the Mute Swan, European Starling and House Sparrow are among the 24 species the list marks Abundant.
• All 144 species on the committee's Reviewable List, the rarities it asks birders to report, each shown there with its accepted records before 1900, from 1900 to 2002 and since 2003 (our check).
• Not counted: the review list's Rufous/Allen's Hummingbird, birds identified only as one of the two. The species list has no category for unproven or provisional birds.

Why do other sources give a different number?

Rhode Island's list has grown on the committee's website, and the state's wildlife plan counted by other rules:

• 442. The list as the Internet Archive saved it on December 12, 2025, then titled Rhode Island Checklist, which numbered its species from 1 to 442. By the archive's copy of January 13, 2026, four more stood on it, each an older record: a Snowy Plover of 2017, a Black-whiskered Vireo of 2018, a Heermann's Gull of 2021 and a Corn Crake from before 1900 (our comparison). Source: Rhode Island Checklist (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee), the Internet Archive's copy of December 12, 2025.
• About 431. The bird species reported in Rhode Island by the count in the state's 2015 Wildlife Action Plan: 416 documented with a specimen or photograph and 15 hypothetical, sight reports without documentation. The plan called its own tallies provisional, since several reports were still before the committee. Source: Rhode Island Wildlife Action Plan, Chapter 1: Rhode Island's Fish and Wildlife (Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, 2015), the Internet Archive's copy of March 5, 2026.
• 164. The species found nesting in Rhode Island by its first breeding bird atlas, from 1982 to 1987, the same plan notes: nesting birds only. Even the Herring Gull, which the committee's list now marks Abundant, first nested in the state in 1937. Source: Rhode Island Wildlife Action Plan, Chapter 1: Rhode Island's Fish and Wildlife (Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, 2015), the Internet Archive's copy of March 5, 2026.

Rhode Island’s list follows its own committee’s rules, and so does every other state’s: see why the counts differ from state to state.

Rhode Island records, from a plover seen for moments to a goose that stayed seven weeks

• On April 17, 2017, a Snowy Plover in breeding plumage stood on Goosewing Beach in Little Compton: the state's first, and one of very few ever found in the Northeast. Its finder watched it fly off, and a search the next day turned up nothing. Source: Report Summaries, 2017 (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee), read October 24, 2026.
• A Black-whiskered Vireo, glimpsed at Sakonnet Point on May 21, 2018, and never found again, was another first. The committee read it as a sign of what was coming: Massachusetts recorded its own first on Martha's Vineyard less than a year later, on April 21, 2019. Source: Report Summaries, 2018 (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee), read October 24, 2026.
• In the early afternoon of May 27, 2021, birders found a Heermann's Gull at Horseneck Beach in Massachusetts and followed it west, to Richmond Pond in Acoaxet and over the state line to Sakonnet Point in Little Compton. Photos taken on the Rhode Island side made it the state's first. Source: Report Summaries, 2021 (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee), read October 24, 2026.
• From July 18 to August 12, 2024, an American Flamingo stayed in Briggs Marsh, Little Compton, the state's first and, the committee writes, one of the more famous birds to visit Rhode Island in recent history. Going by the pattern of its molting wing feathers, it was almost certainly the flamingo found at Georgica Pond on Long Island on May 31, which had also slipped away to Cape Cod. Sources: Report Summaries, 2024 (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee); Sixth Report of the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee (Bird Observer 53:5, October 2025), the Internet Archive's copy of April 20, 2026, read October 24, 2026.
• On January 18, 2025, a Tundra Bean-Goose turned up on the Portsmouth High School fields: the first ever seen in Rhode Island or anywhere in New England, and one of very few recorded in eastern North America. Many birders studied it over the seven weeks it stayed, until March 10. Sources: Report Summaries, 2025 (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee); Sixth Report of the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee (Bird Observer 53:5, October 2025), the Internet Archive's copy of April 20, 2026, read October 24, 2026.
• The book on the state's birds was 68 years in the making (our arithmetic): Richard L. Ferren began it as early as 1956, the committee's history says, and Birds of Rhode Island came out in 2024, 576 pages, as the Nuttall Ornithological Club's 27th memoir. Sources: History of RIARC (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee); Publications: Birds of Rhode Island, Memoirs No. 27, 2024 (Nuttall Ornithological Club), read October 24, 2026.

Questions people ask about Rhode Island’s birds

Which birds live in Rhode Island?

Mostly birds of the coast and the backyard. The committee's list marks 24 species Abundant, numerous all year, and most are familiar: the Canada Goose, Mallard and American Black Duck, the Mourning Dove, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, American Robin, Northern Cardinal and Song Sparrow, and three gulls, the Ring-billed, American Herring and Great Black-backed. Birds of the shore and the sea are no strangers either: Common Eiders, Purple Sandpipers and Great Cormorants are all marked Common, the Harlequin Duck Uncommon.

Salt marshes matter most for the birds the state works to protect. Its 2015 Wildlife Action Plan calls the Saltmarsh Sparrow the region's highest conservation priority, because a large share of the world's population nests in southern New England's coastal marshes, and the National Audubon Society has named 16 Important Bird Areas in Rhode Island for it and other priority birds. Piping Plovers and Least Terns nest only on beaches, where fencing and predator exclosures around the nests protect them.

Two refuges show the range. Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge in Charlestown, 858 acres that were once part of a Navy landing field, beside Ninigret Pond, the state's largest coastal salt pond, has a list of over 250 species. Block Island's refuge, about 12 miles offshore, is known for the more than 70 kinds of songbirds that pass through each fall: many are young, inexperienced birds that overshoot the mainland and rest on the island before going on.

Sources: Rhode Island Species (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee); Rhode Island Wildlife Action Plan, Chapter 1: Rhode Island's Fish and Wildlife (Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, 2015), the Internet Archive's copy of March 5, 2026; About Us, Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), the Internet Archive's copy of March 9, 2026; About Us, Block Island National Wildlife Refuge (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), the Internet Archive's copy of June 8, 2026, read October 24, 2026.

How did phone calls reveal a hidden Arctic Tern flight over Rhode Island?

On May 13, 2022, hundreds of Arctic Terns flew inland over New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and Rhode Island had its share: seven on the Seekonk River in Providence, at least 25 on Worden Pond in South Kingstown and two at reservoirs in Cumberland. South of their nesting grounds, Arctic Terns usually appear as a few nonbreeding birds along the ocean coast from late May to mid-July, so flocks on inland water in spring made what the committee's sixth report calls a historic incursion.

Phones showed how big it was. That day, committee members and many other birders got texts and calls from friends reporting unexpected numbers of Common Terns on rivers, ponds and reservoirs from Maryland to Massachusetts, and every one proved to be an Arctic Tern. Flights like it could easily have gone unnoticed when news traveled more slowly, the committee reasons; the nearest precedent it found was 16 Arctic Terns on Heard Pond in Wayland, Massachusetts, on May 20, 1979.

Sources: Report Summaries, 2022 (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee); Sixth Report of the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee (Bird Observer 53:5, October 2025), the Internet Archive's copy of April 20, 2026, read October 24, 2026.

Where did Rhode Island's Common Cuckoo come from?

No one knows. From November 1 to 8, 2020, a young Common Cuckoo hunted large caterpillars at Snake Den State Park in Johnston, studied and photographed by hundreds of birders. It was the state's first, and one of very few ever found in North America away from Alaska. The committee still asks whether it crossed North America from East Asia or the Atlantic Ocean from Europe or Africa.

Even naming it took care, because the Oriental Cuckoo looks much the same. Photos and careful written analyses settled it: the bird showed nine bars on one outer flight feather, the eighth primary, where an Oriental Cuckoo has at most seven.

Source: Report Summaries, 2020 (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee), read October 24, 2026.

Which rare shorebirds turned up on Rhode Island's south shore in 2020?

Six birds of Europe and northern Asia in one summer, on one short stretch of shore. First came a Terek Sandpiper at Napatree Point in Westerly, from June 28 to 30, only the third ever recorded on the Atlantic coast of North America. By the end of July the shore from Napatree Point to the Charlestown Breachway had added two Ruffs, two Little Stints and the state's first Red-necked Stint, a run the committee calls unprecedented.

Birders were watching in the right places: Napatree Point and the Charlestown Breachway are the two Rhode Island sites counted for the International Shorebird Survey, the state's 2015 Wildlife Action Plan notes. Big flocks are not the draw there. The plan says Rhode Island lacks the stopover grounds of places such as Monomoy in Massachusetts, and mixed flocks of more than 1,000 shorebirds are unusual in the state.

Sources: Report Summaries, 2020 (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee); Rhode Island Wildlife Action Plan, Chapter 1: Rhode Island's Fish and Wildlife (Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, 2015), the Internet Archive's copy of March 5, 2026, read October 24, 2026.

Where is the official Rhode Island bird list, and how often is it updated?

On the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee's own website, ri-avianrecords.org, under RI Species: a web page with every species, its scientific name and a code for how often it occurs, and a link to download it as a spreadsheet, but no total and no date. In the Internet Archive's copy of December 12, 2025, it was titled Rhode Island Checklist and numbered its species to 442; every copy from January 13, 2026 on, like the page we read on October 24, 2026, has 446 unnumbered rows (our count).

The committee was formed in 2008 to carry on what the Rhode Island Ornithological Club had done since Harry S. Hathaway died in 1946: collect and weigh the evidence behind reports of rare birds. It covers the state and its nearby ocean waters, and its reports appear in the journal Bird Observer; the sixth, in October 2025, judged 61 records, most of them from 2022. Sightings of review species go to it through the Rare Bird Reports page on its website, with a written description and any photos.

Sources: Rhode Island Species (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee); Rhode Island Checklist (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee), the Internet Archive's copy of December 12, 2025; Rhode Island Species (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee), the Internet Archive's copy of January 13, 2026; History of RIARC (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee); Sixth Report of the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee (Bird Observer 53:5, October 2025), the Internet Archive's copy of April 20, 2026; Submitting a Rare Bird Report (Rhode Island Avian Records Committee), read October 24, 2026.

How do you count your own Rhode Island list?

Your Rhode Island list is every species you’ve seen in Rhode Island. eBird can filter your life list to Rhode Island, and your eBird data download gives the state of every sighting. On paper, count the species you’ve seen in Rhode Island; what is a life list? explains how birders keep their lists.

With 446 species on Rhode Island’s list, 121 of them strays the committee marks as vagrants, a guide to all of North America helps; our comparison of the best bird books of 2026 shows which one suits a beginner.

To print your whole list, Rhode Island birds and all, see how to print your bird life list, or let Birdfolio make it a hardcover book.

Rhode Island’s state bird

Rhode Island’s state bird is the Rhode Island Red, the state bird since 1954. Its story, the state flower and animal, and a free picture card for a report are on our Rhode Island state bird page.

Christmas Bird Count in Rhode Island

Rhode Island had 6 Christmas Bird Count circles on Audubon’s map last winter, each counted on a single day between December 14 and January 5. Our guide shows where to find Rhode Island’s counts and how to join one; it’s free, and beginners are welcome.

More about bird counts

• How many bird species are in each state: Rhode Island beside all 50 states, DC and Canada.
• Bird lists of nearby states: Connecticut and Massachusetts.
• State birds of all 50 states, Rhode Island’s Rhode Island Red among them
• How many bird species are in the US and Canada
• Bird splits and lumps

If you’re shopping for a birder in Rhode Island, our gift guide for birders and our pick of coffee table bird books are good places to start.