Category Archives: Bird Behavior

Cock-of-the-Rock Extravaganza—with Video! (Colombia Birding Part 5)

We wrap up our Colombian birding blogs with a terrific post by Roger Kohn, sharing his recent experiences with one of South America’s most famous birds—the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock. If you’ve been reading recent posts, you know that in addition to being a past guest contributor to FSB, Roger was the evil genius behind getting Sneed to Colombia! Alas, an injury kept Sneed from seeing the cock-of-the-rock this time around, but Roger was able to experience these wondrous birds in full glory. He even took an awesome video of a male Andean COTR that’s almost like being there. Our big thanks go out to Roger, and we know you will enjoy this post. Oh, and be sure to watch the Cock-of-the-Rock video below!

Four a.m. My cell phone alarm chirped and the screen lit up and pierced the early morning blackness, rousting me from a sound sleep. If you want to see one of the iconic birds of the Andes, you’d better be dragging yourself out of bed well before dawn!

**Our guide Luis with Roger before they went slippin’ and a slidin’ down to see one of South America’s most iconic birds.**

Today was one of the most anticipated days of my Colombia birding expedition. Sneed and I would visit “Alto Anchicayá – El Descanso,” commonly referred to as Doña Dora’s place. The owner, Doña Dora, began her business by selling empanadas and coffee to workers on their way to and from a nearby hydro-electric facility. The small restaurant quickly became popular with birders because its location, perched in the cloud forest at about 4,000 feet above sea level in Colombia’s Western Andes, attracts a huge variety of bird species to its feeders and offers some of the best birding in South America. As if that weren’t enough, birders have the opportunity to see the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, a bizarre-looking bird that inhabits narrow ribbons of cloud forest slicing through the Andes of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.

**A male Andean Cock-of-the-Rock in its full, bizarro glory!**

After Sneed and I downed a quick cup of coffee and a muffin, our guide Luis picked us up at the Araucana Lodge (see “Video Post: A Visit to Araucana Lodge”) at 4:30 a.m. Light rain fell as we drove west for about 50 minutes. Our destination? An Andean Cock-of-the-Rock lek located in steep terrain below Doña Dora’s place.

Leks are assembly areas where males of some bird species, including Greater Sage-Grouse and Greater Prairie-Chickens in North America, perform courtship displays to attract prospective mates. At this time of year, we were pretty much guaranteed of seeing the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock between approximately 6 and 7 a.m.; the only question was whether we would see both sexes or only males.

Arriving at Doña Dora’s, the last raindrops fell as we gathered our walking sticks and prepared for the hike down to the lek. I was a little nervous, having heard that the trail is rough and steep. The recent rain added an additional layer of concern. Turning on our headlamps, Luis, David—a visiting birder from Spain—and I departed in the darkness. Sneed, nursing a sore leg and having already seen the Andean Cock-of-the-rock in Peru, opted to skip the hike and instead get an early start birding at Doña Dora’s.

**Tawny-breasted Flycatcher, one of five flycatchers Roger saw on his ACOR trek.**

Fortunately, the trail wasn’t as treacherous as I feared. The ground was damp, but the soil and leaves seemed to have absorbed most of the rainfall, so the trail didn’t have much mud and standing water. Steps built into the trail, along with a rubber handrail, made the descent very do-able. Pausing at the moth trap, a great birding area we would visit on the way back up, we turned off our headlamps as the first light of the day penetrated the cloud forest, and made our final push. About 25 minutes after we had departed, we arrived at the lek, an area with lots of open space for the birds to strut their stuff, and a small shelter with benches for birdwatchers.

**Buff-rumped Warbler, a New World warbler species that does NOT migrate to the US—or anywhere else for that matter.**

Immediately we saw two male Andean Cock-of-the-rocks, then three, and eventually five. These were the strangest-looking birds I’ve ever seen — veritable avian aliens. Bright red on the head and chest, black wings, silver tertiary feathers in the back, large pale staring eyes, a helmet-like round crest on the head with their bills only barely visible at certain angles, and bright orange legs. They perched on branches, and periodically pranced with herky-jerky movements to attract the attention of females. Their periodic calls, which eBird describes as “piglike squeals,” were odd guttural shrieks, comical to the human ear.

Ever wonder what male Andean Cock-of-the-Rocks do at their leks besides drink beer and boast about past conquests? This highly-classified video gives you a behind-the-scenes look! (Copyright Roger Kohn)

We did not see any females, which are brownish and look more like a conventional bird species, but we assumed they lurked nearby. Despite the absence of the females, I felt privileged to witness this display and add this remarkable Andean cloud forest dweller to my Life List. It was a sublime encounter that I will always treasure.

**Andean Cock-of-the-Rock female (photo taken at Machu Picchu, Peru, copyright Sneed B. Collard III)**

A huffy puffy ascent awaited us—but also a treat about a third of the way back to the top: the moth trap. The trap is a large white canvas sheet suspended vertically, and is a birder’s delight. Moths and other insects land on it, providing a feasting opportunity for resident cloud forest birds, which converge and gorge on bugs they pick off of the canvas. Pausing here, we racked up 15 species in 20 minutes of very fun birding. They included four species you can find in the United States: Summer Tanager, Canada Warbler, Acadian Flycatcher, and Blackburnian Warbler. The rest were species I’ve never encountered before. We saw five flycatcher species, including great looks at a handsome Tawny-breasted Flycatcher. Four warbler species graced us with their presence, including a very cooperative Buff-rumped Warbler. A Yellow-throated Chlorospingus, a yellowish “tanager-like sparrow” (eBird), dined on a big fat moth.

**A Yellow-throated Chlorospingus, a member of a bird group Sneed & Roger had never heard of before the trip.**

The superstar of the show was a Squirrel Cuckoo, a large dull orange bird with a yellow bill and a long black and white tail. It flew in and perched on a branch out in the open right in front of us, giving us fantastic looks and unbeatable photo opportunities. It would be my only sighting of that species during my 16-day Colombian adventure.

**Is this a good-looking bird or what? Squirrel Cuckoos are quite common throughout Latin America, with a range extending from Argentina all the way up into Mexico.**

Elated, we climbed up the remainder of the trail, arriving back at Doña Dora’s place, where a pile of scrambled eggs and a full morning of world-class birding awaited us. If you ever have the chance to take a birding trip to the birdiest country on earth, do not miss the opportunity to visit this cloud forest gem.

https://ebird.org/checklist/S215430499

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out our previous Colombian birding blogs:

Video Post: A Visit to Araucana Lodge (Colombia Birding Part 4)

Antpittas and Tody-Flycatchers (Colombia Birding Part 3)

Owl’s Watch Ecolodge (Colombia Birding Part 2)

Layover Birding in Bogota, Colombia

The Shorebirds of North America (Book Review)

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With spring shorebird migration coming on, we take a break from our Colombian birding series to review a new book that will help prepare you for the exciting, sometimes daunting task of identifying and enjoying some of the world’s most spectacular long-distance migrants. Bird—and read—on!

Legions of FatherSonBirding readers have probably noticed that Braden and I have increasingly become interested—nay, obsessed—by shorebirds over the years. See, for example, our posts

Montana Shorebird Surprise

Abbotts Lagoon, Point Reyes National Seashore (or Chasing Migrants, Part II)

Our fascination may seem odd given that Montana is hardly the world’s epicenter of shorebird activity. Then again, their very rarity here renders them all the more alluring to find and learn about. A natural birding progression also is at work. When beginning one’s birding journey, we birders naturally focus on common, familiar species. As confidence, curiosity, and ambition grow, so does the desire to learn about and identify more difficult groups of birds. When we first began birding, Braden and I focused on woodpeckers, thrushes, waterfowl, waders, owls, and other easier-to-identify species. Over the years, we have plunged into increasingly challenging groups including warblers, sparrows, flycatchers (Braden), gulls, and perhaps more than anything, “shorbs.”

**A flock of Western Sandpipers at Point Reyes during my September visit to California with Scott Callow.**

When out scanning beaches or shallow lakes, the most common phrase Braden repeats to me is “Shorebirds are tough.” This usually happens when I am whining about the difficulty in distinguishing between off-season Least and Semipalmated Sandpipers, or White-rumped and Baird’s Sandpipers—especially at a distance. But many shorbs are relatively easy to identify, and over the years both Braden and I have come to appreciate—nay, savor—the entire breadth of these fascinating, superbly adapted critters. Imagine my joy, then, when a brand new, beautifully photographed book about shorebirds arrived on my doorstep: Pete Dunne’s and Kevin T. Karlson’s The Shorebirds of North America: A Natural History and Photographic Celebration (Princeton University Press, 2024).

*The Shorebirds of North America* by Pete Dunne and Kevin T. Karlson (Princeton University Press, 2024)

To say that The Shorebirds of North America is ambitious would be like calling the 18,000-mile round-trip migration of a Red Knot “neat” instead of “epic” or “mind-blowing.” This terrific addition to birding literature not only gives a wonderful overview of the lives of shorebirds, it provides specific accounts of all the shorebirds likely to interest you. That makes this book a wonderful, highly readable reference for both beginning and advanced birders.

The bulk of the book consists of species accounts of 52 kinds of shorebirds known to breed in North America and my guess is that you, like me, will skip directly to species that happen to interest you at the present time. This is a great approach. One of the first shorebirds I looked up was Black-bellied Plover, a bird I have become more and more enthralled with the past several years. As I started to read, my understanding of this handsome creature immediately swelled. I didn’t realize, for instance, that it is one of the world’s most widely distributed shorebirds, or that it is called Grey Plover outside of North America. What really tickled me was learning how fearlessly aggressive these birds can be:

“On the high Arctic tundra breeding grounds,” the authors write, “this sturdy plover is a fierce protector of its large nest area, and it strikes fear into aerial predators as large as gulls and jaegers. Woe to any flying predator if it hears the whistled alarm call of Black-bellied Plover as it flies swift and low across the tundra before rising to spear the intruder in the belly with its strong bill . . .”

The 4-letter breeding code for Black-bellied Plovers is BBPL. After reading the entry for the bird in *The Shorebirds of North America*, however, I realized that BBPL could easily stand for “Bad-ass-bellied Plover”.

Who knew that one of my favorite birds is such a bad-ass? Similarly delightful “reveals” can be found in each account, many of them based on the authors’ own personal and scientific experiences with the birds.

Far from just being pretty to look at, the book’s incredible photos add real understanding of each species by showing them in a variety of plumages and situations. I enjoyed just quizzing myself on the photos as I made my way through the book, testing and expanding my knowledge as I went. I cannot imagine the effort Kevin T. Karlson and the book’s other photographers invested in creating what may be the world’s finest collection of shorebird photos.

Another thing I learned from *The Shorebirds of North America* is that the bills of oystercatchers are laterally compressed. You can’t tell this from the typical side view, but this compression turns the bills into excellent chisels for prying limpets, snails, and chitons off of rocks.

As delightful as the species accounts are, I strongly urge readers to read the entire first section straight through. In this section, the authors provide excellent perspective on all shorebirds including their remarkable adaptations, habits, diversity, and evolution. Fascinating anecdotes abound, such as the story of B-95, a banded Red Knot known to have traveled more than 400,000 miles during his 21-year lifetime. The authors don’t bother to hide their admiration for these birds:

“Challenged to design the perfect bird, we would without hesitancy delve into ranks of shorebirds and reach down to the Scolopacidae (sandpipers), the largest of the roughly six or seven family groups in the shorebird order Charadriiformes.”

Another fascinating fact I picked up from *The Shorebirds of North America* is that the curved bills of Long-billed Curlews are almost perfectly designed to snatch fiddler crabs from their long, curved burrows. They’re also great for picking off grasshoppers without alerting them to their imminent doom.

I could keep singing this book’s praises, but really, if you have even the tiniest, nascent interest in shorebirds, you should order a copy yourself. Given its length and full-color format, I expected the book to sell for at least fifty or sixty bucks, but at the time of this posting it can be had for a bargain $35. That puts it within reach of most people—and makes it an investment in your birding future you won’t regret.

One-Sentence Summary: A highly-readable, indispensable resource for both beginning and advanced shorebird enthusiasts.

Overall Rating (on a scale of cool birds): Piping Plover (highest)

You can order The Shorebirds of North America from your local independent bookstore, or directly from Princeton University Press. Please tell them we sent you!

(Except for the cover image, photos in this post are copyright Sneed B. Collard III. Review copy of The Shorebirds of North America provided by the publisher.)

The Gull Guide (Book Review)

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You may have noticed more references to gulls in our recent posts (see, for instance, “Birding Race Point” and “In Search of the Marbled Murrelet”). Or maybe not. Either way, Braden’s and my interest in gulls has been on the rise in recent years, and for good reason. Gulls are fascinating, beautiful, adaptable creatures worthy of attention. “So why didn’t you pay more attention to them before?” Roger, Scott, and some of our other loyal (and snarky) readers may ask. The reason is simple: gulls are hard. Many of the adults look similar, but if that isn’t perplexing enough, most gull species go through multiple molts which make them look radically different seasonally and from year to year—and frustratingly similar to other gulls in their various molts. The bottom line: to even approach competence identifying gulls, you have to devote a LOT of time to it, and finally, after about a decade of birding, Braden and I have felt ready to dip our toes into this task. Imagine our delight, then, to discover the release of a brand new book from Amar Ayyash, The Gull Guide: North America (Princeton University Press, 2024).

As soon as I heard about The Gull Guide, Amy and I bought a copy for Braden for Christmas. I quickly realized, however, that I wanted a copy of my own, so I contacted Princeton University Press and asked if they would like me to review the book. A week later, my own fresh copy arrived. Flipping through it, I recognized that I may have taken on more than I bargained for. The Gull Guide, I saw, is no mere specialized guide to a group of birds. It is a magnum opus—or in this case, a magnum gullpus—by one of the world’s foremost authorities on a subject. But let’s get to it . . .

First Impressions: attractive design; gorgeous photographic illustrations; logically and intuitively organized; comfortable to hold in your hands (really!).

My first casual flip through The Gull Guide conjured up a deep feeling that I was holding the Rosetta Stone to an important part of the birding universe. Upon the author’s suggestion, I started by reading the introduction and, I gotta say, this alone made the book worth buying. To wit, even though I knew that gulls seem to thrive in human-created places such as garbage dumps and parking lots, I had no idea just how successful and adaptable they are. To quote the author, “No gull species is known to have gone extinct for as long as modern taxonomy has kept records (Dee 2018). In many ways, they are similar to Homo sapiens: omnivores exploiting and consuming whatever they cross paths with.”

The first gull I looked up in *The Gull Guide* is one of Braden’s and my favorite species, Heermann’s Gulls. I learned that these handsome rascals are known for landing on the backs of Brown Pelicans—and stealing fish right out of their pouches! **They nest primarily on a single island in the Gulf of California.**

About fifty species of gulls inhabit the planet (fewer than I would have guessed), and The Gull Guide provides coverage of thirty-two that have a presence in North America. The author divides these into three categories:

Small Tern-like and Hooded Gulls

Gulls in the genus Larus

The Herring Gull complex (which is also made up of Larus species, but stands out for the difficulty in identifying and classifying them)

This last fall, I spent a lot of time looking at Glaucous-winged Gulls, part of the “Herring Gull complex”—a large group of beefy white-headed gulls. Adult Glaucous-wingeds can usually be ID’ed by the gray-and-white wing tips. However, this entire group of gulls is especially known to hybridize with each other, often making them notoriously difficult to identify.

If I had any hope that The Gull Guide would help me learn to easily identify all of these different species, the author quickly laid that fantasy to rest. “It is important to accept that identifying every gull 100 percent of the time is an impractical undertaking,” he states early in the book. “The sooner we come to terms with this, the sooner we’re able to enjoy gulls for what they are. Struggling with an identification should be looked at as an opportunity to grow and cultivate our craft.”

Yeah, sure. Easy for him to say! For my part, I was eager to start building my skills. I therefore proceeded to read the excellent chapters on gull body parts, molts, and overall identification features. Then, I swooped into chapters on individual species.

Loyal FSB readers will recall that we got our lifer Ivory Gull on Flathead Lake on Braden’s birthday in 2020. Hundreds of birders from Montana and several other states made the pilgrimage to see this rare Montana vagrant.

As you would expect, for each species the author provides a basic overview followed by detailed information on the bird’s range, identification, molts, and hybrids—an especially important discussion since gulls are famous for hybridizing with each other in ways that are often difficult, if not impossible, to figure out. Part of what makes the book so impressive, though, is the inclusion of up to dozens of color plates for each species. These show each bird in different molts as well as geographic variation within the species, and abundant examples of hybridization as well.

Although The Gull Guide is very useful for beginning birders, it is clearly written and designed to accommodate expert birders, including those who wish to make the study of gulls one of their primary birding pursuits. As someone in between those two extremes, I have been using the book to tease out some of the gull challenges I have myself encountered—distinguishing between hybrid Glaucous-winged Gulls and Herring Gulls, for instance, or Franklin’s versus Laughing Gulls.

While it’s a treat to catch Bonaparte’s Gulls as they move through Montana, Braden and I had a great chance to observe them on the East Coast this past fall. The distinct black “dot” behind the eye is a good way to ID these widespread gulls in non-breeding plumage. In breeding, it has a totally black head. It is the only gull to nest largely in trees.

I especially pored through the gulls we have here in Montana, beginning with our most common species, the Ring-billed Gull. Here, I noticed something that could use correction, or at least more explanation. Ring-billed Gulls can be readily found in many parts of Montana throughout the year, and yet the range map for the species shows them as “year-round” only in certain Great Lakes locations. Braden confirms they are also on the eastern seaboard throughout the year, and eBird bar charts also show them as present throughout the year in many other states. I’m sure the author knows this, so in the next edition, to avoid confusion, I’d like to see his reasoning or methodology for how the range map is created.

That aside, I am sure that The Gull Guide will become a dog-eared companion for both Braden and me as our expertise and interest in this fascinating group of birds continues to grow. This isn’t the first reference book a beginning birder will want to buy, but I highly recommend it for anyone expanding birdwatching beyond their backyard feeders, or for those intrigued by gulls and their fascinating biology.

Overall Rating (on a scale of cool birds): Ross’s Gull (highest)

You can order The Gull Guide from your local independent bookstore, Buteo Books, or directly from Princeton University Press. Please tell them we sent you!

In Search of the Marbled Murrelet (Birding Victoria, Part II)

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After three nights in Victoria (see last week’s post “Birding Victoria, BC”), Amy and I headed up the Vancouver Island coast toward a spot where we had spent our first nights together as married folk—a lovely establishment called the Point No Point Resort. On the way up, I bamboozled Amy into stopping at one of the most well-known birding hotspots in the area: Whiffin Spit Park. As its rather humorous name implies, the park is a narrow spit of land stretching about a kilometer across the mouth of the bay where the town of Sooke is located, and it has recorded an impressive list of birds.

**Whiffin Spit is perhaps the most well-known place to observe ocean and shore birds between Victoria and Port Renfrew. Alas, the many free-roaming pet dogs makes it less than ideal for shorbs.**

As Amy walked ahead, I schlepped my scope, zooming in on anything promising. Over the next hour, I found Red-breasted Mergansers, more Harlequin Ducks (Yay!), Surf Scoters, Common Loons, and most exciting, a pair of Pacific Loons. Along the path, I also got excellent looks at Black Oystercatchers and Black Turnstones. Alas, the numerous unleashed dogs did not create a bird-friendly environment, and chased off the birds several times. (Our dog, Lola, by the way, informed me that she would never engage in such unruly behavior—cough, cough.)

The longer we stayed on Vancouver Island, the more Pacific Loons I got to see. I have learned to identify these handsome birds by their silvery heads and neck postures, which remind me of cobras ready to strike. Up close, the dark “chin strap” is also diagnostic.

Despite these good birds, I had by now firmly set my mind on seeing alcids, a group of sea birds affectionately dubbed the penguins of the northern hemisphere. These birds include murres, guillemots, Razorbills, Dovekies, and puffins, but the ones I most wanted to see were murrelets. Two kinds frequented the area: Ancient and Marbled. My new birder friend John (see this recent post) had told me that Ancient Murrelets tended to fly around in groups while Marbled Murrelets were most often observed as loners floating on the surface. Either species would be a lifer for me, and I would have been ecstatic to find one. Alas, the task was proving much more difficult than I had hoped. I totally struck out in Victoria, and now I “whiffed” at Whiffin Spit, too.

Perhaps my best photo ever of an adult Common Merganser, hanging out on the bay side of Whiffin Spit with an equally stunning female.

The Point No Point Resort helped ease my disappointment. The cabins and rooms are all cleverly designed for privacy and each looks out over the spectacular Strait of Juan de Fuca (part of the Salish Sea). The sun was setting by the time we checked in—just time for me to set up my spotting scope and find a raft of about forty Surf Scoters floating below us. They would become regular companions of our stay. I also noted a few cormorants and other birds, but alas, no alcids.

**Our room at the Point No Point not only offered a mesmerizing view of the Olympic Peninsula across the water, but a chance to scope for more seabirds.**

Undaunted, I rose the next morning to hit two nearby spots that had been recommended as great seabird locations: Otter Point and Muir Creek. The birding gods seemed stubbornly pitted against me. I saw a few more loons, including my first Red-throated Loon, along with my first Pacific Wren and a dozen or so species I’d been seeing for the past few days, but nothing that really got my heart racing.

**At Muir Creek, I was pleased to get an actual look at a Pacific Wren. Amy and I heard them several other times, but the birds like their privacy!**

This pattern repeated itself for the next couple of days as Amy and I explored several more places between Sooke and Port Renfrew. Honestly, the birds that most excited me were Short-billed Gulls (formerly Mew Gulls)—birds that I had never seen in such numbers, and had only recently become skilled at identifying myself.

Gulls are notoriously difficult to identify—something I’ll tackle in an upcoming post—but the Short-billed Gull stands out for its smaller size, yellow legs, and overall “cuteness,” as Braden puts it. In breeding, its bill lacks any kind of marking, though as you can see in this photo, adults sport a faint ring at other times of the year.

Before we knew it, we arrived back at the Point No Point for our last luxurious evening of watching the sea and enjoying the view of the Olympic Peninsula across the water. As we prepared to soak in our private hot tub, though, I picked up my cool new binoculars (see our last post) for one final look at the ocean below us. In the rapidly fading light, I spotted our loyal raft of Surf Scoters, along with gulls and cormorants. Then, I noted a tiny speck in the breaking waves close to shore, and quickly focused in on it. I guessed it was a piece of kelp or driftwood, but then, through the lenses, the unlikely shape of a bird emerged!

My heart accelerating, I frantically set up the scope which lay at my feet and zoomed in on the shape. “No friggin’ way!” I exclaimed. Honestly, I didn’t know exactly what I was looking it, but I felt sure I hadn’t seen it before. I was also sure I needed some photos, no matter how crummy, so I switched out my scope for my camera on the tripod, and captured a few quick images through our windows before, to my disappointment, the bird drifted out of view behind some trees.

By this time, after a quick consult with my Sibley app, I felt positive that the tiny bird had indeed been a murrelet, but which kind? Studying my horrible photos and comparing them to Sibley, I noted the white patches on the shoulders and near the tail. That ruled out Ancient Murrelet. I also checked the illustrations for all the other alcids that might be in the area. Only one matched my photos: Marbled Murrelet! Even better, ten minutes later the bird reappeared below our window. By now, the light had grown truly dim, but I took my tripod and camera out onto the deck and managed some slightly better shots.

My fellow birders can imagine how that one bird pretty much made the entire trip for me. Everything else was just lovely, too, but a Marbled Murrelet? That put the icing on the cake, or for me, the chocolate chips in the cookie. It also sent my imagination racing, seeing that tiny bird deftly negotiate the waves crashing into shore. It was just so comfortable in an environment that would have snuffed me out in a matter of minutes.

Marbled Murrelets defy the imagination for another reason. Unlike other alcids, they nest not in burrows or on cliffs, but in trees! In fact, the nesting location of this bird remained a great ornithological mystery for more than a century as biologists looked everywhere (but not in the tops of trees, evidently) for a Marbled Murrelet nest. “Finally,” recounts Cornell Lab’s Birds of the World, “in 1961 and 1974, the first verified and published nests were reported in Asia and North America, respectively.”

Amazing.

Unfortunately, the birds prefer old-growth coastal forest, forests that have experienced extreme logging pressures over the past century. The birds have also been impacted by fishing gear, forest fires, and other hazards. As a result, the bird is listed as endangered or threatened throughout its North American range. That made it all the more remarkable that one had deigned to show up right below our picture window—almost as if following some kind of cosmic movie script. I felt very fortunate.

**Yay! More Harlequin Ducks! During our last session at Clover Point, these stunning birds really put on a show, chasing each other around and posing for one visiting birder.**

The next day, Amy and I returned to Victoria and another round of birding at Clover Point—my best session there yet. Pacific Loons, Buffleheads, Harlequin Ducks, and Surf Scoters seemed to be everywhere, and I was thrilled to find a pair of immaculately-feathered Long-tailed Ducks far out on the water. Though we would not head home until the following day, it was a great way to wrap up a trip that proved delightfully unexpected in so many ways. Huge gratitude goes to my wife and partner, Amy, for giving me such a wonderful surprise. And now, it was time for us to go celebrate with stiff umbrella drinks and a plate full of chicken enchiladas.

Bird of the Day honors for our last day in Victoria went to these Long-tailed Ducks. Adult male LTDUs (left) are especially striking in full plumage, and I at first assumed that the one on the right was a female. The rich brown back and bold, well-defined white face patch, however, suggests a first-year male.

Plenty of Partridges: Braden & I Kick Off Another Year of Birding!

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Braden and I kicked off our 2025 at one of our favorite western Montana birding spots: Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge. While mainly envisioned as a duck factory, the surrounding farms and grasslands provide plenty of grassland bird habitat and raptor hunting grounds, so in winter that’s what we mainly search for. We began the day by looking for Short-eared Owls at a “vole-opolis” our neighbor Tim, a game bird hunter, told us about last year (see our post “Lost in Owls”). Sure enough, we got distant looks at three of these mesmerizing, long-winged raptors as they cruised low over a tapestry of grass and cattails. They were joined by a trio of Northern Harriers, birds that are so similar to Short-eared Owls in appearance and habits that they offer an almost perfect lesson in convergent evolution—the incidence of two unrelated species being shaped in similar ways by natural selection.

Braden celebrating seeing Short-eared Owls in 2025!

After our time with the owls and harriers, we set out on a leisurely cruise northward on dirt roads with the spectacular snow-capped Mission Mountains majestically gazing down on us. The raptors continued to please, with great close-up looks at our first Golden Eagle of the year, three or four Rough-legged Hawks, a couple of American Kestrels, two Merlins, plenty of Red-tailed Hawks, and no fewer than a dozen Bald Eagles.

**This Northern Harrier is seriously eye-balling a group of Gray Partridges below, but decided not to go for it.**

I’ve been worried about a dearth of small song birds all year, and that continued today. Usually, we at least see some waxwings or American Tree Sparrows at Ninepipe, but not today. I’m hoping the warmer winter somehow explains it, but I am especially concerned about the pervasive use of neonicotinoid pesticides and their deadly effects on birds. A future blog post, perhaps.

While songbirds were few and far between, we encountered a veritable population explosion of a bird we usually see only once or thrice a year: Gray Partridges! In the space of an hour or two, we saw these birds at least half a dozen times in groups ranging from four to more than a dozen. “I think I’ve seen more Gray Partridges today than in the rest of my life,” I told Braden, and it might have been true, as we totaled almost seventy of these birds. As with the rest of the day, I managed only lousy photos, but we delighted in watching these introduced, but charming, orange-faced critters.

Another fuzzy shot, but entertaining just the same—a Gray Partridge zooming toward us. These birds are unusually difficult to photograph, and I doubt I’ve ever gotten a good shot of them.

We finished the day scouring the southern shore of Flathead Lake near Polson. We had to look pretty hard, but finally found good numbers of waterfowl and gulls at Ducharme fishing access. Here we were rewarded by more than five hundred Common Mergansers, and much smaller numbers of wigeons, Mallards, Buffleheads, Green-winged Teal, Northern Pintails—and a lone Redhead. Braden also picked out several Tundra Swans from the more numerous Trumpeters.

Tundra Swans on Flathead Lake. These birds can be hard to distinguish from Trumpeter Swans, but they have small yellow patches forward of their eyes, and often have overall whiter heads and necks than Trumpeters.

Perhaps my favorite part of this last big session was focusing in on a group of seventy or eighty gulls out on a frozen edge of the lake. Part of my enthusiasm was having just received a review copy of Amar Ayyash’s epic new book, The Gull Guide: North America. I plan to write a full review of this remarkable book soon, but my first perusals have gotten me super excited to learn more about gulls. Even better, as Braden and I studied the group in front of us through our scope, we picked out both Ring-billed and Herring Gulls. Then, I paused on a gull that looked unlike any others. It had pink legs, medium gray wings, dark eyes, light head streaking, and a single red spot on the bill. It also was noticeably smaller than the Herring Gull next to it. Braden suggested a Thayer’s Iceland Gull and I have to say that I agree with him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get decent photos and gulls are notoriously hard to ID, so we didn’t record it. Still, I’m thinking Thayer’s is what we saw.

**Ring-billed and Herring Gulls on Flathead Lake. It’s easy to pick out the Herring Gulls by their large sizes. Maybe I’ll even find some other species after studying The Gull Guide in depth!**

And so it begins . . . a great new year of birding! I hope you’ve all been able to get out and enjoy the remarkable avian wildlife our planet is blessed with. In fact, if you haven’t already done so, I urge you to support one or more of the terrific conservation groups working to make sure birds are always with us. For more info, see our post “Saving Birds. It’s Time.” Thanks for reading and I hope to see some of you out there birding soon!