The Birds of Novato

The following list contains birds that can be regularly found in Novato. Some are more abundant than others and some can be more easily found in other parts of the county. Uncommon and locally rare species are excluded from this list. What constitutes “rarity” is of course subject to interpretation, so this is by no means an official list of any kind, but rather aims at conveying what an interested amateur would be able to see in a given year with a moderate amount of effort and persistence. 

If you’d like to check off your progress, you can download a printable version of this list here, also including birds from San Rafael. If you’d like a little more guidance on where to start exploring, check out our listing of local birding sites or our flyer on Birding Northeast Marin for a list of top sites and some special birds to seek out.

Seasonal movements are represented by (s) for summer, (w) for winter, and (m) for a few birds seen most regularly migration, but there are many variations among different species that are not captured by this general indication: for instance, some birds are widespread in winter, but become much less common in spring. For shorebirds with brief arctic nesting seasons, southbound migrants often first appear in July, so “winter” status may more or less mean that they are quite uncommon in May and June, while most wintering ducks typically arrive later, from September through November.

If you’d like more details on seasonal occurrence and locations, or to explore the birds beyond our immediate home region, you can explore the vast information available through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s citizen science project eBird.org. For those who like old-fashioned physical objects, the Marin Audubon Society also publishes a checklist of the county’s birds with a month-by-month abundance chart.