Georgia is blessed with numerous natural habitats that attract over 340 bird species. You’ve probably been visited by many of them if you set up feeders in your backyard.
It’s so interesting and fun to know how to identify your feathered visitors and learn about their behaviors. In this article, you’ll learn about 20 common backyard birds of Georgia.
Let’s begin!
20 Most Common Backyard Birds of Georgia
This list consists of the most common birds that are frequent visitors to backyard feeders in Georgia. You’ll find information on how to identify them, how they sound, and their behaviors.
1. Northern Cardinal
Northern Cardinal is one of the most common backyard birds in North America.
It’s easy to recognize male Northern Cardinals with their bright red plumage and their black masks. Females are duller. They have pale brown plumage with red highlights.
Top Tip: The easiest thing to notice about the Northern Cardinals is their mohawks and their short pink peaks. They’re found all year round in Georgia.
You can attract these beautiful birds with sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, peanuts, millet, and corn. Put them in hoppers or trays.
Sit back and enjoy a red Northern Cardinal eating sunflower seeds like a pro.
Fun fact: both males and females Northern Cardinals can sing.
2. Carolina Wren
The Carolina Wren is a smaller bird with a round body that weighs less than an ounce, however, it’s bigger than others in the wren species.
It’s a shy bird and might be hard to spot, but it’s easy to hear its teakettle-teakettle call. This wren has a rich cinnamon upper body and buffy orange belly.
Their white eyebrows and long, slightly curved bills make Carolina Wrens easy to identify. Although they live in forests and vegetated areas, they’re common backyard birds in Georgia.
The easiest way to attract them to your backyard is by placing a suet feeder. And if you want to show more love to these wrens, put up a nest box for them in winter or during the breeding season.
3. Carolina Chickadee
The beautiful Carolina Chickadee looks a lot like the Black-capped Chickadee. This chickadee is tiny with a large head and a long, narrow tail.
Its cap and bib are black separated by white cheeks and its back, wings, and tail are all soft gray.
Luckily, this bird is highly common in Georgia. It lives in forested areas, parks, and backyards. To attract Carolina Chickadee to your backyard, put up feeders filled with sunflower seeds, suet, and peanuts.
4. Tufted Titmouse
This little bird is a Georgia resident all year round. It lives in deciduous and evergreen forests, but it’s also a common backyard visitor, especially in winter.
Tufted Titmouses have silvery-gray upper bodies and white bellies. They also have a rush color down their flanks.
Top Tip: It’s easy to identify them with their silver-gray mohawks, big eyes, and black patch right above their bills.
These songbirds might be shy but they do like to bless our ears with their vocals. They love black oil sunflower seeds, so make sure to leave some for them.
5. Mourning Dove
Mourning Doves are the most widespread backyard birds in most of the United States. You see them everywhere in Georgia, on telephone wires, high trees, or walking on the ground looking for food.
They’re definitely a delight to see with their beautiful plumage. They have buffy tan plumage with black spots on their wings and black tail tips bordered with white color. And their pink legs and blue eye rings are pretty distinctive.
An easy way to attract these beautiful birds to your yard is to scatter some millet on the ground.
Keep in mind to keep your cats inside while there’s a Mourning Dove visitor. Doves are vulnerable to prowling cats as they spend a lot of time on the ground.
6. Blue Jay
Blue Jays are common all year round in Georgia. You’ve probably seen their beautiful blue upper bodies and white bellies before.
Blue Jays can win the best mohawk prize with their blue crest. If you’ve never seen them, then you’ve probably heard their vocals.
Author Note: Blue Jays are quite noisy. Sometimes, they mimic a hawk’s call, especially the Red-shouldered Hawk. By doing this, they alarm other Blue Jays if there’s a hawk nearby and also deceive their predators.
These large songbirds stuff food in their throat pouch to store in cache for later. To make blue Jays frequent visitors to your backyard, provide peanuts or acorns in tray feeders or hopper feeders.
Be careful, the large songbirds can bully other birds and eat their food. So, maybe provide mesh cages around smaller feeders for other small birds.
7. Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpeckers are delightful backyard visitors, with their beautiful plumage and high-pitched calls. They have pale plumage with distinctive black and white stripes on their backs.
The pale red color you see on their bellies is what gives them their name although it’s not easily seen.
These large backyard birds are usually found in woodlands and forests, but they also love to visit backyard feeders, too. Their favorite backyard food is suet, peanuts, and sunflower seeds.
8. American Crow
American Crows are those large, all-black birds with a gloss that we see everywhere. They’re sociable birds and thrive around humans.
You’ll be impressed by how smart these birds are. They’re problem solvers and can use tools and even recognize human faces.
Besides that, they’re pretty aggressive. They can scare off larger birds, such as hawks and common owls.
American Crows are the scavengers of the bird world. They feed on almost anything including insects, seeds, fruit, small mammals, and even garbage.
These crows don’t regularly visit backyard feeders, but scattering some peanuts in an open place might do the job.
9. Northern Mockingbird
Northern Mockingbirds are common all year round in Georgia, blessing us with many bird calls. They’re skillful in mimicking other birds’ calls.
A male Northern Mockingbird can mimic up to 200 other birds calls. Not only that, he sings day and night.
These mockingbirds are grayish-brown overall but slightly paler on their bellies. They have two distinctive white bars, one on each wing, that are more visible in flight.
They’re found almost everywhere in the state of Georgia. They’re common backyard visitors, but they don’t often eat from feeders.
Providing fruiting trees and bushes will encourage them to visit your backyard.
10. Eastern Towhee
Eastern Towhees are likely to visit backyards and maybe even live in them.
To attract them, consider growing brushy or overgrown borders. They love rummaging in the undergrowth looking for insects or fruits.
They don’t always eat from feeders, but they’ll eat the fallen seeds under the feeders.
Top Tip: It’s easy to recognize these birds with their black upper bodies, white bellies, and rufous sides. Females have brown upper bodies instead of black.
11. Downy Woodpecker
Downy Woodpeckers are among the most common backyard birds in Georgia. They come for suet feeders, but they also love black oil sunflower seeds, chunky peanut butter, and millet.
It’s always a delight to see them with their white and black checkered wings and striped head. They also have white stripes in the center of their backs and white bellies.
These small birds might be confused with Hairy Woodpeckers. However, Downies are smaller. They’re also found mixed with chickadees and nuthatches.
Once you learn the Downy Woodpecker call, you’ll listen to it everywhere you go.
12. Eastern Bluebird
This is one of the most beautiful birds in the entirety of North America. Males have vivid, deep blue upper bodies with rusty color on their throats and breast and white bellies, while females are more grayish above with blue wings and tails.
These beautiful birds are often found perching on telephone wires, posts, or tree branches looking for their prey on the ground. Then, they drop down to the ground to catch their prey.
Eastern Bluebirds forage on insects, invertebrates, and berries. They won’t visit your backyard unless you provide their favorite backyard food, mealworms.
These birds are perfect to have living in a nest box in your backyard. This way, you can enjoy seeing and listening to their beautiful calls every day.
13. Yellow-Rumped Warbler
This bird isn’t a constant resident of Georgia, but they bless our winters with their pleasant sight. It’s a fairly large warbler with dark gray upper bodies, white flashes on its wings, and yellow patches on its face and sides.
Yellow-rumped Warblers prefer open areas in winter, such as open woods and parks. They might also visit backyard feeders if food is provided.
They love feeding on sunflower seeds, suet, peanut butter, and raisins. These warblers are active birds and like to catch flying insects.
14. American Robin
Luckily for Georgia residents, this beautiful bird can be found all year round. You get the spring vibes when you hear their whistle-like calls.
American Robins are large songbirds with round bodies. They have gray-brown upper bodies and warm orange bellies.
They also have a distinctive white patch on their lower bellies and underneath their tails. These birds can be found everywhere from deciduous woodlands to parks and lawns.
The lovely songbirds aren’t shy around humans and tend to nest near them, showing off their sky blue eggs.
Top Tip: You can attract American Robins to your backyard with mealworms and other insects. They can even eat mealworms directly from your hands.
15. Eastern Phoebe
Even though Eastern Phoebes aren’t the most colorful birds, they’re among the cutest birds in the world. They’re plump songbirds with a short, thin bill perfect for catching flying insects.
They have brownish-gray upper bodies and off-white bellies. Their head is the darkest. Sometimes, they raise their head feathers into a peak.
Pheobes are known for their unique vocalizations that are more common in winter in Georgia. They’re common near humans. You can find their nests in the nooks of houses or bridges.
You can set up a nest box to attract a breeding pair. Also, provide some mealworms and a birdbath for them to drink from.
16. House Finch
House Finches are new to eastern North America. People tend to love these birds because of their beautiful plumage and their twittering songs.
Male House Finches have rosy red faces and upper breasts, with streaky upper bodies and tails. Females lack the red color. Instead, they’re grayish-brown with thick streaks.
There are other red finches common in the US. However, House Finches are the most sociable ones that can be found in residential areas.
They love collecting their food from backyard feeders. Just fill your feeder with small, black oil sunflower seeds and enjoy this bird inviting his flock to join him for the meal.
17. Chipping Sparrow
Chipping Sparrows are found throughout the state of Georgia all year round. They’re common backyard visitors and are easy to attract with some mixed seeds scattered on the ground.
Summer Chipping Sparrows have more bright colors. They have frosty underparts and faces with distinctive black lines through their eyes. Also, they have brown wings with black streaks. Winter Chipping Sparrows are typically duller.
18. American Goldfinch
Once you set your eyes on an American Goldfinch, you’ll fall in love with it. The bird is the state bird for Washington, New Jersey, and Iowa.
In the summer, males are bright yellow with black foreheads and black wings with white markings. Females are olive above with duller yellow underparts.
In the winter, males look more like their females.
Goldfinches can be found in weedy fields, roadsides, cultivated areas, and backyards. To attract them to your backyard, consider planting native thistles and milkweed.
You can also fill your feeder with sunflower seeds and nyjer.
19. Brown Thrasher
And here we come to the state bird of Georgia, the Brown Thrasher. This bird is found in the state all year round where there are dense tangles.
It’s hard to spot this beautiful bird as it spends most of its time hiding in shrubby tangles. But it’s common to hear its beautiful musical phrases.
Brown Thrashers are foxy brown overall with dark streaking on their underparts. They have distinctive bright yellow eyes.
These birds will visit your backyard eating fallen seeds under your feeders. They’re most likely to visit you if there’s a dense cover nearby.
20. Brown-Headed Nuthatch
The last bird on our list is the Brown-headed Nuthatch. This is a common bird in Georgia that loves living in pine forests.
Brown-headed Nuthatches are bluish-gray with white underparts and brown heads. They mostly feed on spiders, park-dwelling insects, and, of course, pine seeds.
They can be attracted to your backyard with a suet feeder and a nest box for a breeding pair.
It’s so much fun to observe these tiny birds climbing up and down tree trunks and branches looking like a professional rock climber.
They’re noisy birds and most likely to be found in groups. Another one of the most common backyard birds of Georgia!
The Wrap-Up
This is our list of the 20 most common backyard birds of Georgia. All of these birds are always a delight to see in a backyard.
Hopefully, with the aid of this guide, you’ll be able to spot and distinguish between the birds that frequent your backyard.
FAQ
The Northern Mockingbird is one of the most abundant and widespread birds in Georgia. They are known for their distinctive, melodic songs and their ability to mimic other birds’ songs and sounds. Northern Mockingbirds are year-round residents in Georgia and can be found in a variety of habitats, including suburban areas and city parks.
he Eastern Bluebird, Wood Thrush, and Tufted Titmouse are all native species to Georgia. Eastern Bluebirds are a brightly colored bird, with a blue back and rusty-red breast. They prefer open woodlands and pastures for their habitat. Wood Thrushes are found in dense, moist forests and are recognized for their beautiful, flute-like song. Tufted Titmice are gray birds with a distinctive crest of feathers on their heads, and are commonly found in deciduous forests.
The black birds commonly found in Georgia are likely either Grackles, Starlings, or Crows. Grackles are known for their iridescent black plumage and long tails. Starlings are also all black, with a distinctive yellow beak and a glossy, iridescent sheen. Crows are large, all-black birds with distinctive caws and a hearty appetite. All three species can be found in a variety of habitats, from woodlands and parks to urban areas, and are known to be adaptable and abundant in many parts of Georgia.
Over 400 species of birds have been recorded in Georgia, making it one of the most diverse states for birding in the country. The state’s diverse geography and range of habitats, from the Atlantic coast to the Appalachian Mountains, provide a rich variety of birds to observe, including songbirds, waterfowl, and birds of prey.
