The St. Croix Riverway may host the most diverse birdlife of any of the nine Great Lakes Network parks. Flowing through two broad habitat types known as the boreal hardwood transition and the prairie hardwood transition, one can see birds of the far northern boreal forest such as Canada Warblers and Northern Parulas, the more temperate hardwood forests (Wood Thrush and cuckoos), prairies and savannas (Grasshopper Sparrow and Lark Bunting), and those who sing from within the vast, tangled backwaters of the lower St. Croix River like the Prothonotary Warbler.
This place offers a unique birding experience, and we monitor some of that with annual songbird surveys conducted at set points along the river. This is the only park where surveys are done by canoe, and given the 200-mile length of the river, it’s the only place where only half of the six transects are done each year.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
