Category Archives: Backyard Birding

Best Fall Warbler Flock Ever!

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After a couple of slightly disappointing birding outings in a row, Braden and I were feeling a little down, especially because we felt like we’d missed our chances to see some uncommon fall migrants as they make their all-too-brief passages through Montana. Nonetheless, I continued taking my binoculars with me on my morning dog walks just to keep an eye on things and learn more about how fall birds behave. Early last Sunday, I decided to take Lola on one of our Top Secret routes—places we can’t tell you about or we’d have to kill you—and had just started down a street near Pineview Park when I saw activity in weird poplar-type trees up ahead. I unslung my binocs and focused.

You Californians are probably used to this, but sixty Yellow-rumped Warblers in Montana? Almost unheard of!

I saw about eight or ten little birds, and the first two I identified happened to be Ruby-crowned Kinglets, so I at first assumed they were all kinglets. Rookie mistake. Upon further study, I realized that many of them were Yellow-rumped Warblers (Banding Code: YRWA). What’s more, many more birds filled the surrounding trees. “Hm . . . This could be serious,” I thought and settled in for a better look. For the next twenty minutes, I did my best to identify the frantically-moving targets, finding Red-breasted Nuthatches, Black-capped Chickadees, Evening Grosbeaks—and about twenty Yellow-rumped Warblers. As I was looking at the top of a spruce tree, however, a shocking black-and-yellow face suddenly popped up: a Townsend’s Warbler! By now, TOWAs were supposed to be long gone and when I punched it into eBird, well, the app flagged it as RARE.

Anyone know what this tree is? Whatever it is, it apparently hosted a lot of insects because the birds loved it!

Lola and I hurried home and woke Braden. “You don’t have to come,” I told him, “but there’s an amazing mixed-species flock down by Pineview, including a Townsend’s Warbler.” Five minutes later, cameras and binoculars in hand, we zoomed down there in our ’86 4-Runner. To our relief, the birds hadn’t left, and we spent the next seventy minutes following them. My major goal was for Braden to see the Townsend’s, but together, we soon began making other discoveries. For one thing, there weren’t just twenty YRWAs. There were at least sixty of them, along with at least ten Ruby-crowned Kinglets. It wasn’t long before Braden found a Wilson’s Warbler and we both began detecting an occasional Orange-crowned in the crowd. Thanks to Braden’s ears, we also heard Pine Siskins, Red Crossbills, a Song Sparrow—even a pair of Sandhill Cranes in the distance!

Full Disclosure: I still confuse Cassin’s Vireos with Ruby-crowned Kinglets. The white “spectacles” are the key to IDing the Cassin’s.

Not to be outdone, vireos made an appearance. Braden spotted a pair of one of our favorite songbirds, Cassin’s Vireo, while I saw another surprise bird face, that of a Warbling Vireo—also flagged as RARE for this time of year.

The species kept piling up with Hairy Woodpecker, flickers, and another surprise, Red-naped Sapsucker. But where was that sneaky Townsend’s Warbler? Had I been imagining it? Had it struck out on its own? Finally, after almost an hour, Braden shouted, “I’ve got the Townsend’s!” I hurried over and sure enough, there it was. I even managed a poor, but unmistakable, photo of it. As the flock made its way slowly down Rattlesnake Creek, Braden and I climbed back into the 4-Runner. “Wow,” I said, “I think that’s the best mixed-species flock we’ve ever seen in Montana!” After some thought, Braden agreed. It hadn’t provided us any Year Birds or Lifers, but had been something we would never forget—and almost in our back yard. Birding doesn’t get better than that.

Click here for our complete list: https://ebird.org/checklist/S74123665

Townsend’s Warblers are supposed to be long gone by now, but this one apparently liked traveling with the YRWA herd!

Remote Educational Resources for Birds and Birding

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Instead of our usual post this week, we’d like to share some home educational resources we’ve created to help teachers, parents, and kids keep teaching and learning. These can be found on Sneed’s Youtube Channel. Please share this post with as many people as you can think of. We thank you and hope you are staying safe!

Hello everyone! We hope that you are surviving the lockdown through these crazy, unprecedented times. Braden and I send our sympathies to everyone struggling right now, which we know includes a huge portion of humanity. We do recognize some silver linings to the situation, though, including more time with family, rethinking how we’ve chosen to live in the world, and the opportunity to help those around us.

Ultimately, of course, our success as a society depends on education more than anything and we asked ourselves, “What can we do to help?” We decided to put together some videos about birds and birding. Instead of posting a regular blog this week, we’d like to share these resources with you. They include three videos which can be found on Sneed’s Youtube Channel.

The first is an entertaining virtual version of one of the author visit talks I give when I visit schools in person. This one focuses on our trip to the Galápagos Islands and especially goes along with my book One Iguana, Two Iguanas: A Story of Accident, Natural Selection and Evolution.

The second is a short video of me just reading aloud my book Birds of Every Color. It’s perfect for young kids to watch—and as a great follow-up birding and adaptations study activity. And yes, I will forgive you if you think my voice sounds like Mr. Rogers!

The third video, which Braden and I are perhaps most proud of, is “Birding Basics with Sneed and Braden Collard.” This video helps get young people excited about birding, shows them what they need to begin, and introduces many common birds that can be seen almost anywhere in North America. Even better, I have put together a study guide and lesson plan that can be downloaded from my website.

We hope that you find these resources useful, and ask you to please share the links with everyone you know: teachers, parents, librarians, anyone. Even better, ask them to share. We do not have 50,000 YouTube and Twitter Followers to help get the word out, so depend on the word-of-mouth from people like you.

Since this is a very different post for us, we’re going to leave you with a very different picture: a short-tailed weasel I encountered while hiking recently—a hike I wouldn’t have taken without the lockdown. It helps show you that while many things change, other things stay the same—including the simple message: keep getting out into nature!

Many people are noting that wildlife seems more common since the lockdown. Less noise may be luring animals closer—but it also could be that we’re just paying better attention!

The Backyard Jungle

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Braden is currently in Iceland, where he is birding with mom and grandparents—and will undoubtedly write some great upcoming posts about that—so I thought this would be a great time to talk about backyard bird habitat.

When we moved into our neighborhood in 2006, we faced a daunting task: transforming our property from a biological desert that had been scraped clean by bulldozers into something that not only looked nice, but provided habitat for native animals and plants. It hasn’t been easy. Aside from the usual tasks of battling weeds and keeping plants alive, we’ve faced a ravenous army of deer that consistently ignore signs that read “Deer-Resistant Plants.” Finally, after twelve years, however, we are enjoying a yard that truly resembles the habitat we set out to create.

A pair of Red-breasted Nuthatches took immediate advantage of this new bird condo in our messy yard this year. Audubon, I will expect my product placement check soon. (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

Food has certainly been a key to our success. Through luck and persistence, we’ve managed to establish a wide variety of plants that provide berries, nectar, seeds, and insects to multiple bird species. Oh yeah, and a backyard sunflower seed feeder doesn’t hurt!

One thing I underestimated when we began is the importance of structure. Sure, we planted trees, some of which have reached twenty feet or more, but we also have an array of buffalo berry, maple sumac, ocean spray, golden currant, and mountain mahogany that have proved extremely “bird popular” for their cover as much as for their food. We’ve also been helped by a row of lilacs along the back fence that were already here when we moved in and serve as a vital launch pad for birds wanting a turn at the feeder.

Female to Male Tree Swallow at our front birdhouse: “Hm, honey, I like the neighborhood, but the front door is a little small.” (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

One final thing we did just this year is put in two chickadee houses. Within days, one had been staked out by Black-capped Chickadees and the other by Red-breasted Nuthatches. For further fun, Violet-green Swallows nest under our eaves while a surprise robin pair has raised a family in a bordering fir tree. We believe that a Song Sparrow pair has also successfully raised chicks, but we’re not sure where!

The end result is that this year has seen an explosion of birds around our house—more than forty species to date, shattering our previous record. The most common residents have been the nesting birds, Evening Grosbeaks, Cassin’s Finches, Song Sparrows, Cedar Waxwings, Pygmy Nuthatches, Flickers, and yes, those pesky House Finches and House Sparrows. We’ve also made sightings of Pileated and Hairy Woodpeckers (thanks to the ponderosa pines behind the house), Common Nighthawks, American Goldfinches, Western Wood Pewees, and Rufous Hummingbirds.

One of this year’s delights has been the daily appearance of our first, apparently resident, Song Sparrows. (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

Sadly, few of our neighbors have followed our example in creating habitat, most sticking with pointless lawns and non-native shrubbery that is virtually useless to native animals. I like to hope, though, that our “messy” yard of diverse and unruly plants inspires at least the occasional passerby to boldly go where traditional landscape companies fear to tread. After all, those of us lucky enough to own a home with a yard have a responsibility to give back to the plants and animals that our extravagant human “nests” have displaced.