Important Bird Areas: Central Hardwoods

The sites listed here come from The American Bird Conservancy Guide to the 500 Most Important Bird Areas in the United States (2003). The Central Hardwoods region encompasses southern Illinois and Indiana through Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee to northern Arkansas and Alabama, an area of oak-hickory forest where Louisiana Waterthrush and Cerulean and Worm-eating Warblers nest and the "Eastern" Bewick's Wren has its last stronghold. Wood Duck nests here, but the region holds more significance for waterfowl as a migratory staging area, with the floodplains of river systems harboring a diversity of habitats (floodplain forests, emergent wetlands, submerged aquatic beds), all used by migrating waterfowl. Some of the largest remaining native grasslands east of the Mississippi River can also be found here, which serve as nesting areas for Henslow's Sparrows.