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Wigeons and Pigeons

Braden here again. The Fort Missoula Gravel Quarry is one of, if not the best, spot to bird in all of the city of Missoula. In the past six months or so, my dad and I have gone there at least four or five times, picking up a lifer every single time. The lifers haven’t been common, either—at least in Montana. Last fall we spotted White-throated Sparrow, Horned Grebe, and Long-tailed Duck, none of which were supposed to be here. I’ll save those stories for another time.

Can you find the Eurasian Wigeon in this photo of American Wigeons and pigeons?

As we headed out this morning, my dad confidently said, “I think we’ll get a lifer today.”

“Really?” I said. “Like what?”

“Eurasian Wigeon.”

“Huh. Aside from Ross’s Goose, which would be a lifer only for me, I guess that’s our best chance.”

On ebird there had been reports of many hundreds of American Wigeons at the quarry recently, but none of the experienced birders who had visited had reported a Eurasian. As we pulled up and exited the car, I began to set up the scope, which we still weren’t very experienced using. All of the ducks were on the close pond, thankfully, so we could view them pretty well through the scope.

Tons of wigeons floated on the pond and fed on the grass nearby with pigeons, flying back and forth randomly. We also spotted Lesser Scaup, Common Goldeneye, Mallards, Redheads, Canvasbacks and a Northern Shoveler.

I began searching for Barrow’s Goldeneye while my dad took a turn with the scope, turning it towards the feeding wigeons.

“I see something…with a red head. Not a Redhead. Could it be something cool?” he asked. My heart jumped.

“Yeah!” I said excitedly, “Lemme see!”

“Okay, its in the scope now.”

I looked through and saw the duck’s red head, yellow forehead and gray sides and back. There was no question as to what this was.

“Eurasian Wigeon! It’s a Eurasian Wigeon!”

I let my dad look again.

“That’s so cool! What did I tell you?” he said.

We watched the bird for a while, both feeding and swimming. I considered this a huge victory for us, not only getting a lifer, but finding a rare bird all on our own! We were moving up!

Even though it’s from a great distance, you can still clearly see the reddish head, gray body, and yellow crown—the field marks of a Eurasian Wigeon.

A Real Wild Goose Chase

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An enormous flock of Snow Geese swirling above the Freezeout Lake area before resuming their migration north. (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

One of Braden’s and my favorite spring traditions is to drive three hours to a place called Freezeout Lake. Why? To watch the annual appearance of white geese that “pit-stop” on their way to northern breeding grounds.

This year we headed out Monday morning, March 26 (Spring Break), hoping to find an abundance of the white birds. We first stopped in Great Falls to observe a good variety of ducks, especially Common Goldeneyes, on the Missouri River. Making our way up to Freezeout, we also encountered 1,000 Snow Geese feeding in fields near Powers, Montana. At Freezeout itself, however, our biggest finds were about 300 Northern Pintails and a few Tundra Swans.

A “small” flock of Snow Geese hunkered on a frozen pond. (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

After spending the night in Choteau, we awoke before dawn and made our way back to Freezeout. We joined several other birders as a blue dawn stretched over the still-frozen ponds. 5-10,000 geese huddled on the ice—far fewer than we had hoped for—but as the sun peeked over the horizon, one flock rose into the air cackling and squawking, putting on a delightful show.

“Well,” I said, “I guess that’s about it for this year.”

Then, I glanced east.

“Look!” I shouted.

My fellow birders spun around to behold thirty to forty thousand more geese approaching. I had no idea where they’d come from, but they filled the skies! They circled around one pond and we thought they would head out to the adjacent fields to feed, but this large group of geese were on a mission to continue their migration. After checking in with the other geese, they bee-lined north in huge, dark flocks until they appeared only as smudges in the sky.

“Wow, that was great,” Braden said.

Before heading home, we observed about 300 Tundra Swans on another pond, and then drove into the neighboring countryside, where we discovered about 10,000 Snow Geese feeding in fields. It was a great way to kick off spring, and the kind of experience that will keep us coming back year after year.

Fattening up in a farmer’s field before continuing north. (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

The Rarest Bird in Brownsville

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Plain Chachalacas at Estero Llano Grande SP.

Braden here. During the beginning of February this year, my dad and I had the great opportunity to visit and bird in southern Texas, one of the U.S.A.’s birding meccas. We saw tons of cool birds in South Texas, including sought-after species such as Altamira and Audubon’s Orioles, Green Jays, Buff-bellied Hummingbirds, Plain Chachalacas and more. We also missed quite a few species, including Green Kingfisher, which was a real thorn in our sides. Our rarest bird, however, was a Common Grackle at Estero Llano Grande State Park near McAllen, Texas. Let me explain.

When we first arrived at ELGSP’s visitor center, we ran into a trio of birders talking and watching birds from the center’s deck. The visitor center was quite possibly the best we had run across so far on the trip, with a gift shop, nice bathrooms, and a huge outdoor deck overlooking a lake. On most sides were also fruit or seed feeders, and at any given time one could pick up 20 species by standing in one place and turning in a slow circle.

One of the birders introduced another as the “legendary” Huck Hutchens, who had helped get the state park started in the first place in the early 21st century. He explained that being a resident, while we were marveling at the Great Kiskadees flycatching over the lake, he was here for one reason: to find a Common Grackle. He had just returned from a trip to Virginia where he had seen thousands of grackles, but here they were a rare sighting; their range did not extend past central Texas. Suddenly, as he was using his binoculars to comb through a large flock of Red-winged Blackbirds gorging themselves on seed, he shouted “I’ve got one!” We all found it, a surprisingly bronze animal among the horde of black. It reminded me of something Noah Strycker, holder of the 2016 Global Big Year Record, had said: Birders went to great lengths to find rare vagrants to their region; why not just go where they’re common? This was also one of his reasons for doing a Global Big Year.

The grackle certainly wasn’t the coolest bird we saw on the trip, or even that day, but it was a very interesting one. What made it even better was that we got to share it with other birders who enjoyed it just as much (or possibly more, in Huck’s case) as we did.

This Northern Parula was another species that we “weren’t supposed to see” on the trip.

A Quest for Snowy Owls

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Greetings Fellow Bird Lovers and Welcome to our first FatherSonBirding post!

My son, Braden, and I decided to create this blog both to share our adventures and to encourage other families to experience the thrills and satisfaction of birding for themselves. By coincidence, we experienced one

Our Lifer Snowy Owl! (photo by Braden Collard)

of our most memorable adventures last weekend. I picked up Braden after school on Friday and we high-tailed it from our home in Missoula, Montana up to Kalispell. Why? To see a bird we’d been longing to see since we began birding: Snowy Owl. Apparently, two of them had been spending the winter near Kalispell, but we didn’t know if we’d find them before they fled back north to breed.

We arrived just before sunset and began driving around the neighborhood where they’d been seen. Nothing. After half an hour, and with darkness closing in, we turned down one last road.

“I think I’ve got something!” Braden exclaimed, peering through his binoculars.

Sure enough, an owl sat on a rooftop a quarter mile away. Even better, it let us approach to within a hundred yards to observe and photograph it. Exhilarating! The next morning, we located the owl again, but from a much greater, inaccessible distance. No matter. We were thrilled by this latest birding adventure. As a bonus, we picked up our Lifer Harris’s Sparrow and got our best looks ever at Common Redpolls. Even if we don’t find exactly what we want, the birds never let us down.

A gorgeous Common Redpoll in breeding plumage (photo by Braden Collard).