A Birder's Guide to Minnesota: A County-by-County Guide to Over 1,400 Birding Locations

Explore the best birding locations in Minnesota with this county-by-county guide.

Whether you’re new to birding or have been enjoying your backyard visitors for years, it’s time to take bird-watching to another level. Bring your love of birds on the road, and discover more than 1,400 of Minnesota’s best birding locations! A Birder’s Guide to Minnesota is a county-by-county guide to finding birds for every birder and bird photographer—residents and tourists alike.

Kim Richard Eckert served for 20 years as naturalist at Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve, taught bird identification classes for a decade, and led countless birding tours. Now, he’s sharing his expertise with you in this truly comprehensive book. It is lavishly illustrated with more 180 color bird photos and nearly 100 detailed maps. Plus, an exhaustive annotated list to all 447 of Minnesota's bird species contains valuable field identification tips.

A Birder’s Guide to Minnesota is easy to use. Simply by scanning one of the many QR codes, you can even access maps of specific birding locations.

Kim Richard Eckert’s interest in birding was sparked in the Chicago area during a 10th-grade biology class—the only biology course he would ever take. Kim became an English major at St. John’s University in Minnesota and then taught English (with some first-year French on the side) during the 1970s. But he turned to a career in birding after moving to Duluth, Minnesota, in 1977, where he served as Naturalist at Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve (for a total of 20 years), taught bird identification classes for a decade, and started leading birding tours (including 30 years with Victor Emanuel Nature Tours). In 1986, he created the Minnesota Birding Weekends & Weeks program of tours throughout Minnesota and elsewhere in the US and Canada.

Kim has written numerous articles for The Loon and other publications; plus Birding by Hindsight, a compilation of The Loon’s series of 70 bird ID articles; and four previous editions of A Birder’s Guide to Minnesota.

After 45 years, he still lives in Duluth, where he muses about the Great Plains, prefers not to take anything too seriously, finds joy in not knowing where he is going, reminisces about the times with Bob and Panda... and thinks about things.