V · New Hampshire birding locations
Not a pin map — profiles. Each of these is a real, established birding site with a reason to go and a season to go in. They're grouped the way New Hampshire birders talk about the state: the Seacoast, the Merrimack lowlands, the Lakes Region, the White Mountains and North Country, and the Connecticut River Valley.
The same sites drive the migration map.
Spruce–fir above, boreal bog below. Alpine breeders on the Presidentials, boreal specialties from Errol to Pittsburg. The species other New England states drive here for.
Sargent's Purchase
The largest alpine area east of the Rockies and south of Canada — and the only place in New Hampshire for its two alpine breeders.
Alpine tundra and fellfield · Krummholz (wind-stunted fir) · High-elevation spruce-fir
Whitefield
The most accessible boreal birding in New Hampshire — walk a flat trail into spruce bog.
Boreal spruce-fir forest · Black spruce and tamarack bog · Big Cherry Pond and Little Cherry Pond · Beaver wetland
Errol
26,000 acres of lake, marsh, and boreal forest on the Maine border — New Hampshire's north-woods wetland at full scale.
Large northern lake · Extensive freshwater marsh · Floating bog · Boreal spruce-fir forest
Big water — Winnipesaukee, Squam, Ossipee — ringed by pine barrens and hemlock. Loons on the lakes in summer; the pitch-pine barrens hold birds you won't find elsewhere in the state.
Ossipee
One of the last pitch pine–scrub oak barrens in northern New England — a fire-dependent habitat with its own bird list.
Pitch pine–scrub oak barrens · Sandy outwash plain · Kettle ponds · Red maple swamp
The western border, low and warm. Floodplain and oxbow, migrant traps, wintering waterfowl and eagles on open river where the rest of the state has frozen.
Hinsdale
The best inland freshwater migration site in southwest New Hampshire — first open water in spring, last in fall.
Connecticut River backwater and setback ponds · Silver maple floodplain forest · Cattail and buttonbush marsh · Agricultural field edge
The populated middle — Concord, the river, orchards on the hills above it. Two of the state's raptor-migration observatories sit here, and most first feeder birds are logged in this band.
Peterborough
New Hampshire's premier hawk watch — thousand-plus Broad-winged Hawk days in mid-September.
Exposed rocky summit · Montane hardwood forest · Open ridge airspace
Concord
A hawk watch you can bird from a platform with a doughnut, ten minutes from downtown Concord.
Working apple orchard · Hilltop field · Hedgerow and edge · Mixed woods
Franklin
The Merrimack Valley's Common Nighthawk funnel — a few hundred an evening in late August.
Pemigewasset River floodplain · Flood-control impoundment · Riverine woods and shrubland · Wet meadow
Eighteen miles of it — the shortest coastline of any ocean state, and the busiest few miles of birding in New Hampshire. Rock, salt marsh, mudflat and open ocean within one walk.
Rye
The highest bird list of any single site in New Hampshire — seven habitats on one walk.
Rocky intertidal shore · Cobble beach · Salt marsh · Freshwater marsh
Newington
A 1,000-acre tidal estuary — New Hampshire's inland saltwater, and a raptor magnet in winter.
Tidal bay and mudflat · Salt marsh · Freshwater impoundment · Grassland
Hampton
The state's biggest salt marsh, a working harbor, and the most reliable winter Snow Bunting ground in New Hampshire.
Sandy ocean beach · Dune and beach wrack · Tidal harbor and mudflat · Extensive salt marsh