Prominent among a great variety of song-birds and insectivorous birds are the robin, blue bird, cat bird, sparrows, meadow-lark, bobolink, thrushes, chickadee, wrens, brown thrasher, gold finch, cedar wax-wing, flycatchers, nuthatches, flicker (golden-winged woodpecker), downy and hairy woodpeckers, rose-breasted grosbeak, Baltimore oriole, barnswallow, chimney swift, purple martin, purple finch (linnet), vireos and several species of warblers.
Other prairie birds are the prairie chicken, and there are a great many birds that sing while flying; among them are the horned lark, bobolink, Smith's longspur and chestnut collared longspur, lark-sparrow, lark-bunting and Sprague's pipit.
Many species of ducks are also still found; and the reed-bird (bobolink), " partridge " (elsewhere called quail or " Bob White "), ruffed grouse (elsewhere called partridge), woodcock, snipe, plover and Carolina rail still abound.
It has few distinctive species, but within its borders the southern mole and cotton-tail rabbit of the South meet the northern star-nosed and Brewers moles and the varying hare of the North, and the southern bobwhite, Baltimore oriole, bluebird, catbird, chewink, thrasher and wood thrush are neighbors of the bobolink, solitary vireo and the hermit and Wilson s thrushes.
Under certain circumstances, however, the native animals may recover, for in some cases they even profit by man's advent, and at times themselves become pests, like the Kea parrot (Nestor notabilis), which attacks sheep in New Zealand, and the bobolink or rice-bird (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) in North America.