Common Grackle
Long-tailed blackbird with a pale eye, bronze gloss, and a rusty mechanical voice
Arkansas, United States: places and wildlife — page 2
Browse the published Explore collection for Arkansas, United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
American Goldfinch
Small bouncing finch with black wings, a musical flight call, and dramatic seasonal plumage
House Sparrow
Chunky introduced sparrow closely tied to buildings, livestock areas, sidewalks, and busy human settlement
European Starling
Glossy introduced bird with a pointed bill, triangular wings, and astonishingly coordinated winter flocks
Muskrat
Stocky aquatic rodent with a vertically flattened tail, compact lodge, and busy wetland feeding routes
American Mink
Dark, low-slung mustelid moving quickly along water edges while hunting on land and underwater
Prairie Vole
Small blunt-faced vole hidden within woven runways beneath dense grass, seldom crossing open ground
Bullsnake
Large blotched snake that hisses loudly, imitates a rattlesnake convincingly, but remains nonvenomous
Prairie Mole Cricket
North America’s largest cricket sings from a carefully shaped prairie burrow rather than from a grass stem.
Southern Plains Bumble Bee
This long-faced native bumble bee connects deep prairie flowers to an underground social colony that lasts only one growing season.
Western Soapberry
Clusters of amber soapberries glow like marbles after the leaves fall, making this modest plains tree easiest to recognize in winter.
Nebraska Conehead
A loud summer katydid reveals itself by a buzz longer than a second, repeated about every two seconds, before its black-bottomed head cone comes into view.
Eastern Redcedar
Eastern redcedar can be both winter shelter and ecological warning: a useful native tree that transforms grassland when fire disappears.
Ozark Swallowtail
The Ozark swallowtail is a subtle regional specialist whose identity depends as much on place and behavior as on wing pattern.
Periodical Cicadas
Missouri’s periodical cicadas are not an annual attraction: the forest-wide chorus arrives only when a mapped 13- or 17-year brood emerges.
Common Eastern Firefly
The familiar summer flash is a coded courtship signal, with each species using its own timing, height, and shape in darkness.
Luna Moth
A luna moth’s luminous green adult life lasts roughly a week, devoted entirely to finding a mate rather than eating.
American Burying Beetle
North America’s largest carrion beetle converts one small vertebrate carcass into an underground brood chamber, then does something exceptional for an insect: both parents tend and feed the larvae.
Missouri Evening Primrose
Its lemon-yellow flowers open toward evening, transforming a harsh limestone glade just as sphinx moths begin to fly.
Big Bluestem
Missouri’s prairie giant builds a warm-season canopy above the flowers and a far larger architecture belowground, where dense roots helped create and still stabilize tallgrass soil.
Purple Coneflower
A familiar garden flower becomes more interesting in the wild, where its stiff cone feeds pollinators in summer and finches in winter.
Cardinal Flower
Few Missouri flowers match cardinal flower’s red, a color and tubular shape tuned especially well to hummingbird vision and bills.
Rose Verbena
From a distance Rose Verbena can masquerade as a patch of phlox; at knee level, its hairy trailing stems, rooted nodes, and opposite three-part toothed leaves give the glade plant away.
Flowering Dogwood
Dogwood’s famous white “petals” are actually bracts framing a compact bouquet of tiny true flowers.
Shortleaf Pine
Shortleaf pine once shaped vast Ozark landscapes, and restoration is rebuilding the open, fire-influenced woodland beneath its crowns.
Ozark Chinquapin
Once a canopy tree, Ozark chinquapin now often survives as repeated sprouts fighting the introduced chestnut-blight fungus.
Eastern Black Walnut
Black walnut combines valuable dark timber with a green-husked fruit whose hidden shell demands patience from squirrels and people alike.
American Black Bear
America’s most widespread bear is often easier to recognize by tracks, clawed logs, and overturned stones than by a direct sighting.
Osprey
Dark eye stripe, kinked long wings, and reversible outer toes identify the fish specialist nesting beside Oregon waters.
Largemouth Bass
A jaw extending behind the eye, deep body, and dark side stripe separate largemouth bass from their smaller-mouthed relatives.
Bluegill
A deep compressed body, dark ear flap, and blue-green cheek identify a widespread sunfish that rewards close looking.
Monarch Butterfly
Orange wings with heavy black veins identify a migrant whose caterpillars can eat only milkweeds and whose journey outlasts any one summer adult.
Common Green Darner
Large size, bright green thorax, and a dark bull’s-eye on the forehead help identify a darner capable of continental movement.
Black Swallowtail
Paired rows of yellow spots and an orange-centered hindwing eye distinguish a butterfly whose striped caterpillar feeds on carrots’ wild relatives.
Say’s Firefly
A dark firefly with pale margins and an angular shield pattern, Say’s firefly turns summer dusk into species-specific communication.
Large-flowered Trillium
Three broad leaves, three white petals, and a flower held above a single whorl mark Ohio’s woodland wildflower.
Common Milkweed
Opposite broad leaves, milky sap, round pink flower clusters, and warty pods identify a plant central to monarch development.
American Holly
Spiny evergreen leaves, pale bark, and red winter fruit identify a native holly once central to Delaware wreath making.
Northern Red Oak
Bristle-tipped leaf lobes, shallow-striped bark, and broad acorns distinguish New Jersey’s state tree from rounded-lobed white oaks.
Tulip Tree
Four-lobed leaves with a notched flat tip and green-orange tulip-like flowers identify one of eastern North America’s tallest hardwoods.
Red Maple
Red buds, flowers, leaf stalks, and paired winged seeds recur across the year on Rhode Island’s adaptable state tree.
Indian Blanket
Oklahoma’s state wildflower brings red-and-yellow color to dry roadsides for months, but its common name should not be treated as a generic Indigenous design license.
Post Oak
Post oak forms the stubborn skeletal framework of the Cross Timbers, where slow growth records drought, fire, and poor soil.
Blackjack Oak
Thick leathery leaves and a scrappy crown let blackjack oak occupy soils where richer forest trees grow poorly.
Ozark Big-eared Bat
Enormous ears make this rare bat visually unmistakable, but entering its cave to confirm a sighting can threaten the very colony being sought.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Five centuries of American art, daring architecture, and wooded trails meet around spring-fed ponds in Bentonville.
Hot Springs National Park
A national park woven into downtown, where protected thermal water, mountain trails, and Bathhouse Row share one compact valley.
Buffalo National River
A free-flowing Ozark river winds beneath towering limestone bluffs, linking paddling reaches, wilderness trails, gravel bars, and old homesteads.