Kansas knows how to attract birds. Located in the very center of the North American continent, it straddles the Central Flyway, one of the primary migration "highways" between Canada and South America. It also contains a broad spectrum of habitats, including deciduous forest, grassland, sagebrush, and a remarkable system of internationally important wetlands. As a result of this unique combination of natural features, Kansas attracts most of the eastern bird fauna and many of the western and southern species, as well as those northern birds that either winter on the central plains or pass...

When you think of birds, you think of songbirds, bluebirds, robins, bluejays, chickadees and that group of birds, the passerines, is featured in Volume II of Birds in Kansas.

Of the 424 bird species that have been recorded in Kansas, 208 are passerines, commonly known as songbirds or, more accurately, perching birds. (Many so-called songbirds, like crows, have terrible voices and can't sing a note, but all of them can "perch.") They include most of the birds you'll see at your feeder, and many you won't: flycatchers, larks, swallows, jays and crows, titmice, wrens, thrushes,...