This morning I was wondering which state has recorded the most bird species. Which led to wondering which state has the second-highest total. Which led to wondering where my home state of New Jersey ranks. Which led to….well, you get the idea. I could never stop with a single simple question, so I had to assemble a table listing the number of species recorded in each state. The totals were obtained from Wikipedia and therefore they are not all up-to-date. But at least it is a start.
As expected, California and Texas were at the top of the list. Arizona and New Mexico (ranked #3 and #4 respectively) fare incredibly well considering that they don’t have a coast. Only two of the top ten states are from the east (do you sense my bird envy rising?). NJ ranks at #16…not bad for such a small state. But there were some surprises for me as well. I would not have expected Oregon to have recorded more species than Alaska with its enormous size and all its Asian rarities. It was unexpected to me that relatively small Massachusetts tops more than 500 species. My current home county (Ocean County NJ) has recorded at least 410 species, which is a higher species total than eight states. Maybe you’ll find some surprises in this list too.
Of course, this makes me wonder how many species have been seen in every country.
But I’m not going there. That’s enough numbers for today. Time to go out and find some birds.