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“eBird really needs to add a checklist for mammals!” I tell Braden for the 58th time. What has prompted my sudden outburst? A marmot scurrying off the road in front of us. The truth is that the past seven years of birding have led us to an amazing number of mammal sightings in Montana and beyond—mammals we wouldn’t otherwise have seen if not for birding. Sure, we’ve observed the usual pronghorn, elk, deer, and bison by the hundreds, but it’s those smaller, cooler mammals that I most remember.
Let’s start with moose. Okay, they’re not smaller, but they are way cool—so cool that we remember every single moose location we’ve encountered, from the burn area around Lincoln to the meandering creek near Philipsburg. Coyotes rank similarly high in the mammal standings, whether they be trotting around one of our favorite birding hotspots, the Gravel Quarry, or galloping hell-bent-for-leather across the grasslands of Bowdoin National Wildlife Reserve like the one we saw last week.
Some mammals, though, deserve special honors. For years, I’d been griping about never seeing a live porcupine—a fact that astounded me given how many dead ones I’d spotted over the decades. Shortly after covid hit, however, Braden and I were driving into the Lee Metcalf NWR when I noticed a suspicious shape balled up on a bare branch right above the road. “No, it isn’t. It couldn’t be . . . “ I gasped. It was. A live porcupine. Finally!
A few weeks later, I was hiking up a trail about a mile from our house looking for a Three-toed Woodpecker that Braden had found. Suddenly, a long white shape climbed up onto a rock not twenty feet from me. I stared and it stared back—though not with its mouth open like mine. It was a short-tailed weasel, by far the best look I’d ever seen! And as a bonus (and disadvantage for the weasel), it wore its mismatched winter coat against the snowless ground, demonstrating up-close-and-personal the threats animals face from global warming.
Our mammal list also includes numerous red foxes, bighorn sheep, beavers, hares, otters, mountain goats, bats, muskrats, whales, dolphins, monkeys, raccoons, black and grizzly bears, seals, prairie dogs—even a bobcat in Aransas NWR and our first-ever javelinas down in Texas. And that’s not even mentioning the beluga whales, polar bears, and walrus Braden has seen on nature trips with his grandparents. I admit that we still have never glimpsed a wolf, lynx, wolverine, or thylacine—but we hope to.
Which goes back to my original point: Can’t eBird add a basic mammal checklist, at least for the ABA area? In no time, they’d be collecting millions of invaluable data points for scientists and conservationists. Plus, it would be a lot of fun. I know. I know. Some of you are saying, “Use iNaturalist!” I hear you—but I’m never going to. One app is plenty for my curmudgeonly brain. So what say you Cornell? Are you game—and not just Big Game? I and millions of other birders are waiting!
Wow, that is a truly impressive mammals-while-birding list! Congrats on finally seeing a porcupine. Your coyote looks downright obese compared to the skinny dudes I’ve seen in CA. Must be lots of good eats for them out in your neck of the woods.
Yeah, a mammal component in eBird would be nice. But let’s not hold our breath. There is a birder in Marin county who regularly visits Rodeo Lagoon and always puts something about “mammals of note” in the field for general comments. But I know that doesn’t provide data in a useful way.
Please let me know as soon as you get thylacine photos – I’d really like to see those.
An administrative FYI: the blog has long since stopped notifying me when there are additional comments to a post I follow. So I just need to keep checking the post to see if there are any comments or replies.
Mammal on, dudes.
I will definitely do a thylacine post when I get one. Yeah, most of our coyotes look pretty buff. Years filling in for wolves, I’m guessing. Apologies for the failure to notify. WordPress apparently sucks at this and I’m too lazy to install a plug-in to fix it, but do keep checking back. We love the comments!
Amazing photos, as normal. I’m pretty sure there have been some important dinosaur finds in MT, so you might want to consider throwing in a few fossil finds (Birding for Dinosaurs) with captions like “Here’s a photo of an intact Zooglodon from the Pleistocene ; what do you think about that, Bitches?!”
Here’s another idea. [Don’t you hate hearing others who give you difficult to-do lists? There was a woman from work that would do that but would never want to actually help with any of her own ideas. Once, with the added insinuation that I was sitting on my butt and didn’t help my colleagues, she gave an idea, (a list of interview questions to ask during a particular activity we were tasked to accomplished) and after I presented her idea at a meeting, she complained I merely wanted to add to their burden of busy paper work.]
The other idea: What about a post entirely devoted to one of my favorite birds, the American Dipper, complete with truly awesome underwater photos of the birds walking on a stream bottom and feeding on larvae?
Of course, I would not want to burden a gentleman like yourself with the underwater photography. That demanding activity should be reserved to the youngins, namely Braden. Picture the never-ending joy during your father-son outings – a chilly early morning along a briskly running stream when you look over at your son bundled up in a down jacket and declare, with not the least bit of sarcasm, “Hey kid (I’m sure you don’t refer to him as such and I’d hope using the term would evoke a bristle…) Hey kid, don’t you think its high time you suited up and got those underwater photos of the Water Ouzel?”
You should always use the outdated nomenclature since I sense that Braden might be a bit of a purist and would constantly want to correct you. “Dad, The American Ornithological Society renamed the Dipper DECADES AGO!!!!!!” (eye role, exasperated sigh).
On later birding trips, when you arrive at water, you will always eye each other. You, slightly smiling at the discomfort of your son praying that you won’t make the Water Ouzel joke for the hundredth time, he, trying to stay cool but failing to stop you from being entertained. You will wait to hit him with the joke after he figures that you have tired of it and has let his guard down. You may wait for days, even weeks. “Hey kid…”
Pride will fill your heart the time when he fails to flinch or look up from his binocs when he stings you with an “old fart” snarky reply. You’ll tear up when it happens. Hopefully you won’t choke up when responding, so Braden will clearly hear you. “That’s my boy.”
***
Oh jeez, the emotions… I think I’ll text my son.
Scott, as always we appreciate your spirited reply and unrealistic suggestions–unrealistic, that is, unless YOU are volunteering to come up here in person and chase the elusive water ouzel on its peripatetic, underwater journey! If you are indeed volunteering, please fill out a W-9 and submit your proposal as soon as possible. Already, I can hear our millions of subscribers chanting “SCOTT! SCOTT! SCOTT!” Oh, and hey, did you hear the one about the water ouzel and the caddis fly?
–The Management
Management: Hmm. I actually have a farmer john wet suit and a short sleeve top that would work to keep me alive in the brisk waters of Montana. Send me the best summer months to do the work and confirm in writing that you will provide the underwater camera, and a promise to do the research to ID the best local locations for Dipper photography before I arrive, promise making bbq at least once a week and free lodging in your basement. You will need to set up a nonprofit foundation (focussing on fresh underwater bird biology). I will donate all my labor to the foundation minus the cash i need to pay taxes. Thus, i will deduct the hourly wage or salary i donated to the nonprofit foundation. You will be able to deduct the rent you would have generated but donated to the foundation to house me. Braden of course will be made executive director of the foundation which will look so very cool on the resume. We need to be careful though and make sure none of the money is used for beer money during college in case any family members later decide to run for Congress. I will agree to participating in all video documentaries produced to increase social media interest in the nonprofit and film. (We will essentially video a reality YouTube series on how freaking hard it is to capture Dippers hunting larvae underwater. (Ads will be sold to fund the nonprofit.) Since Braden is the executive director, his salary or, lets be real, his substandard stipend will help with college expenses. Since his salary will be below market comparisons for other exec directors, Braden will claim that the balance between his stipend and market value of an exec directorship is actually the donation of his salary, and will be a deductible on HIS taxes. For the purpose of his resumes or graduate applications, Braden can claim he was both hired as exec director AND donated huge amts of time to the organization simultaneously. Back to the YouTube series. I do have one strict restriction. Although I will agree to participate in all filming stunts to better social media viewership, even embarrassing ones, I refuse to be filmed shirtless UNLESS I am able to reduce the bulk of my man boobs.