Find Nature In Virginia

Additional Wildlife of Virginia

To flesh out your understanding of the region’s natural history, here is a breakdown of the specific taxa you can expect to encounter in the Old Dominion.

Birds (Avifauna) Virginia is the northern limit for many southern species and the southern limit for northern ones. The Northern Cardinal is the state bird, ubiquitous in backyards, but the real avian treasures are found in the high-elevation spruce forests where the Blackburnian Warbler and Canada Warbler breed. On the coast, the Tundra Swan is a winter icon; thousands migrate from the Arctic to the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, filling the estuaries with their distinctive, haunting calls.

Mammals The Virginia Opossum is North America’s only native marsupial, a biological curiosity that carries its young in a pouch and has a prehensile tail. In the western mountains, the Northern Flying Squirrel (specifically the subspecies fuscus) was recently delisted from the Endangered Species List, a conservation success story driven by habitat protection in the high-elevation conifers. The Black Bear is thriving in the Blue Ridge, with Shenandoah National Park having one of the densest bear populations in the U.S., allowing for frequent sightings of sows with cubs.

Insects The Southern Appalachians, including western Virginia, are the global center of diversity for salamanders, but in the insect world, the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (the state insect) is a dominant pollinator of the tulip poplar forests. In the evenings, the Blue Ridge mountains host a spectacular diversity of Fireflies, including the “Blue Ghost” firefly which glows with a continuous blue light rather than a flashing pattern.

Plants The Flowering Dogwood is both the state tree and state flower, an understory specialist that blooms in early spring before the canopy leaves out. In the mountains, the Catawba Rhododendron creates massive “heath balds” on high peaks, putting on a spectacular purple floral display in June. The Running Buffalo Clover, once thought extinct, has been rediscovered in the state, relying on disturbances (historically bison, now hiking trails or skidders) to open the canopy for sunlight.

Fungi Virginia’s mixed oak-hickory forests are prime territory for the Lion’s Mane mushroom (Hericium erinaceus), a shaggy, white fungus that grows on dying hardwoods. The Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) is ubiquitous on fallen logs, displaying beautiful concentric rings of brown, blue, and tan. In the limestone valleys, Morels are the prize of the spring, emerging near dying elm and ash trees in a symbiotic response to the tree’s root system decay.

Virginia Biodiversity Profile

Virginia is a biological cross-section of the Eastern United States, unique in that it encompasses five distinct physiographic provinces that create a ladder of habitats from the Atlantic Ocean to the Appalachian Plateau. The Coastal Plain (Tidewater) is a flat, terraced landscape defined by four major tidal rivers—the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James—which dissect the land and create massive peninsulas. This region is heavily influenced by the Chesapeake Bay, serving as a critical nursery for marine life and a wintering ground for migratory waterfowl. The hydrology here is tidal freshwater and brackish marshes, supporting a high density of aquatic species.

Moving westward across the “Fall Line”—the geological boundary where waterfalls prevented early navigation—you enter the Piedmont. This rolling landscape of ancient, eroded metamorphic rock is the state’s largest province. Historically an oak-hickory forest, much of it is now a mosaic of successional fields and mixed woodlands. It serves as a vital transition zone, hosting species that require both the deep forests of the mountains and the warmer climates of the south.

The spine of the state is the Blue Ridge Province, a narrow band of mountains that includes Shenandoah National Park. These peaks are some of the oldest on Earth, rounded by eons of erosion. They host high-elevation “sky islands” of red spruce and balsam fir, remnants of the last Ice Age that support cold-adapted species found nowhere else in the state. To the west lies the Valley and Ridge, characterized by long, parallel mountain ridges separated by fertile limestone valleys like the Shenandoah Valley. This limestone geology creates a “Karst” landscape riddled with sinkholes and caverns, which serve as evolutionary laboratories for specialized, cave-dwelling invertebrates and bats.

Finally, the Appalachian Plateau in the far southwest is a rugged, dissected highland. This region is part of the mixed mesophytic forest system, one of the most biologically diverse temperate forest types in the world. The deep, cool hollows here act as climatic refuges, allowing plants and animals to persist even as the regional climate warms.