United States of America

The United States of America (USA) commonly known as the United States (US) or just ‘America’, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federation of 50 states, a federal capital district (Washington, D.C.), and 326 Indian reservations. Outside the union of states, it asserts sovereignty over five major unincorporated island territories and various uninhabited islands. The country has the world’s third-largest land area (over 8 million Km² c.3m square miles), second-largest exclusive economic zone, and third-largest population, approaching 342 million people. The capital is Washington DC with less than three-quarters of a million people, the largest cities are New York City, NY (c. 9m), Los Angeles, California (c.3.8m), Chicago, Illinois (c.2.6m) and Houston, Texas (c.2.4m).  One of the world’s most developed countries, the United States has had the largest nominal GDP since 1890 and accounts for 15% of the global economy (2024). It possesses by far the largest amount of wealth of any country and the highest median income per capita of any non-microstate.

The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way to inland forests and rolling hills in the Piedmont plateau region. The Appalachian Mountains and the Adirondack massif separate the East Coast from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi River System, the world’s fourth longest river system, runs mainly north-south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking at over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and Chihuahua, Sonoran, and Mojave deserts. In the northwest corner of Arizona, carved by the Colorado River over millions of years, is the Grand Canyon, a steep-sided canyon and popular tourist destination known for its overwhelming visual size and intricate, colourful landscape.

The Grand Canyon ©Niagara66, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast. The lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States are in the state of California, about 135 km (84 miles) apart. At an elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190 m), Alaska’s Denali is the highest peak in the country and continent. Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska’s Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The super-volcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent’s largest volcanic feature. The United States had 8% of global permanent meadows and pastures and 10% of its cropland.

With its large size and geographic variety, the United States includes most climate types. East of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The western Great Plains are semi-arid. Many mountainous areas of the American West have an alpine climate. The climate is arid in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon, Washington, and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Hawaii and the southern tip of Florida are tropical, as well as its territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific. States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world’s tornadoes occur in the country, mainly in Tornado Alley. Overall, the United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country.

The US is one of 17 megadiverse countries containing large numbers of endemic species. About 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland. The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 birds, 311 reptiles, 295 amphibians, and 91,000 known insect species.

Birding the United States of America

There are 63 national parks, and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas, managed by the National Park Service and other agencies.  About 28% of the country’s land is publicly owned and federally managed, primarily in the western states. Most of this land is protected, though some is leased for commercial use, and about 1% used for military purposes.

The US is split into 48 contiguous states, Alaska and the Islands of Hawaii. Each have their own Fatbirder page. States are introduced by local residents and are greatly more comprehensive than this national overview.

Below are links that either cover the whole US or regions larger than a single state, and the recommended books also cover areas larger than a single state.

A number of birding organisations span the entire US – it makes sense for every birder to be a member of a national organisation, a state one and their own local club. Being a member of an Audubon or other society is not just about what it can do for you but, to misquote the former president John Fitzgerald Kennedy, it is about what you can do for it, and through it, the welfare of birds everywhere.