Category Archives: Birding

Six Months and 245 Birds

It continues to be a crazy year for everyone, and we feel deeply for all of those who are being directly or indirectly affected by the coronavirus, either through their physical or mental health, loss of employment, or simply missing their friends and family. It stinks. One bright spot is that many people are rediscovering the simple pleasures of spending time outdoors, and for many, birding is a big part of that. A reminder that Braden and I have posted several bird-related educational videos on my YouTube channel, including a Birding Basics that introduces people how to bird and some common birds to look for. Our friend, ornithologist Dick Hutto, and his wife Sue Reel, have also been posting some great short tip videos for you to look at.

**Cassin’s Kingbirds were one of seventy Year Birds we found on our epic Eastern Montana birding safari.**

As you can see from our last post, we haven’t been blogging as much—but we have been birding. In fact, once we returned from Israel, we decided to shoot for 250 Montana birds as our goal for the year. We spent an exhilarating week taking an eastern Montana birding safari, during which we saw more than 180 species of birds—including about 70 Year Birds. Braden also has been conducting an independent bird-related science project for his upcoming senior year of high school. So how are we doing?

**A great thing about climbing a mountain is that it can put you at birds-eye level with spectacular species you usually just see from below. Meet a Townsend’s Warbler!**

By the beginning of this week, Braden had seen 243 species of birds while I was pegged at 234. Now for non-birders it might seem like a shoe-in for us to hit 250, but believe it or not, we were (and remain) more than a little anxious about our prospects. For one thing, we have seen virtually every one of the “easy” species there is to see in Montana. For another, birds are “quieting down” now that they are in the process of, or have already finished, nesting, making them more difficult to find. In other words, every new Montana Year Bird we get from now on will take significant effort, luck, or both. Undaunted, we woke early Wednesday morning to investigate a new birding location for us just west of the town of Lolo. A logging road led up into the high country from there, and even more intriguing, it passed through a two-year-old burn area where we hoped to see one of our most coveted species, the Black-backed Woodpecker.

**On the day, we located five of the dozen or so common warbler species that breed in Montana, including this stunning Yellow-rumped.**

It was a flawless day, and we pulled over a couple of times to listen for birds in green, lusher forest. Thanks to Braden’s sharp ears and ear-birding skills, we immediately picked up a host of species including several kinds of warblers, Swainson’s Thrushes, Warbling Vireos, and a surprise flock of Gray Jays (I refuse to cede this species to Canada!). Driving further, we finally reached a burn area where Braden had seen a Three-toed Woodpecker several days before. The burn had mostly smaller trees and I wasn’t optimistic, but Braden played a Three-toed drumming call and a Hairy Woodpecker immediately responded. Then, a blacker bird swooped in. “Three-toed!” Braden shouted. Ka-ching. A Year Bird for me.

Black-backed Woodpeckers aren’t endangered, but can usually only be found in burned forests 1-5 years old that have NOT been salvage-logged. This one immediately leaped into our Bird of the Year competition!

A mile or so further, we reached an even better burn area with larger-diameter trees. I pulled over and we played a Black-backed drumming call. Within fifteen seconds, a gorgeous female Black-backed arrived to investigate, but that wasn’t all. Another half-mile up the road, we found a yellow-crowned male! “A Black-backed! We found Black-backed Woodpeckers!” Braden exulted several times. They were our first since doing our Big Year in 2016. The day was far from finished, either. Over the next couple of hours, we added Sharp-shinned Hawk to our Year lists, and I added two more that Braden already had: Fox Sparrow and Golden-crowned Kinglet, both of which Braden found me by ear. We also found Wilson’s Warblers on their nesting grounds—our first time doing so near Missoula.

The day brought our totals to 245 and 239 respectively. Will we make it to 250? We’re finally starting to feel better about our prospects, but stay tuned. We still have a lot of birding to go!

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!**

Winter Birding in Israel, Part III: Eilat and the Red Sea

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Our condolences to all those affected by the coronavirus—including those forced to cancel their well-earned vacations. We offer some small consolation by traveling to southern Israel to explore amazing birds of the desert and Red Sea. Enjoy, and don’t forget to share this with your birding buddies. Next week: Wadi Rum and Petra.

After our fabulous day in the Hula Valley, I rewarded myself by—you guessed it—catching the flu. Really. Not my first choice, but after a day in bed, Braden and I continued as planned and headed to Jerusalem for three days. The highlights were seeing a Eurasian Hoopoe on the walls of the Old City and grabbing a new Life Bird, Tristram’s Starling, literally on the Western Wall. Then, mostly recovered from my illness, we headed to more fertile birding territory: Eilat and the Red Sea.

**The International Birding and Research Center (to the left of the closer salt ponds) and nearby Holland Park offer welcome relief to the hustle and bustle of Eilat.**

For those who don’t know it, Eilat is on a major flyway between Africa and Asia and Europe. Some estimates place the number of birds flying through at half a billion per year, and it is especially known for raptor migration. Alas, Braden and I were not visiting during migration, but we still hoped to see some new and cool species. Our first full day there, we caught a cab to the International Birding and Research Center just north of town. The center is on the site of the former city dump and located next to expansive ponds used for salt manufacture. Since 1993, however, the sanctuary has been aggressively rehabilitating the site—something that was still very much in progress when we arrived.

**Without a doubt one of our trip’s most spectacular birds, the Green Bee-eater had perched firmly atop our Must See bird list.**

In short order we were rewarded with a double-handful of Life Birds, including Common Ringed Plover, a pair of Common Greenshanks, Blackstarts, Bluethroats, a Green Bee-eater, Marsh Sandpiper, Rock Martin, House Crow, Long-legged Buzzard, and Braden’s Bird of the Day, a Great Gray Shrike! As a bonus, four Greater Flamingos lounged in a salt pond in the distance.

While there, one of the center’s guides confidentially told us that even better birding might be had at a place called Holland Park, a short mile or so walk away. Braden and I set off through the desert—only to end up at a kibbutz nowhere near the park! Some nice kibbutzniks straightened us out, so we resumed our hot march south along the highway. And that turned out to be a great thing because right next to the road, we spotted our only Hooded Wheatears of the trip.

**This Hooded Wheatear introduced us to a totally new group of delightful birds that we’d only been vaguely aware of before the trip.**

Holland Park. What can I say? I think this may be my favorite birding location of the entire trip. Hiking up a dry wadi filled with interesting native plants, Braden and I quickly left the bustle of Eilat behind and felt like we were in authentic habitat. We found only two additional Lifers—Sand Partridge and Mourning Wheatear—but the Blackstarts, Palestinian Sunbirds, Sardinian Warblers and other birds kept us plenty entertained. And our day’s birding hadn’t quite finished.

Israel’s extensive development of its tiny Red Sea shoreline doesn’t leave much room for wildlife, but these shorebirds found refuge behind a fence in a shipping yard. Center are two Common Ringed Plovers. Lower and Upper Left are Kentish Plovers, with Little Stints in between.

That afternoon, Braden cajoled me into taking a walk from our hotel along the Red Sea so that we could look for White-eyed Gulls. We found them, but also happened upon a huge group of Kentish and Common Ringed Plovers, Little Stints, and Dunlins huddled down against a stiff afternoon wind blowing up from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. All in all, it was an amazing day of birding—and far from the last of our trip.

All photos and text on FatherSonBirding.com are strictly protected under U.S. copyright law. To request permission to use, contact Sneed at sbcollardiii+2@gmail.com.

Winter Birding in Israel, Part II: Valley of the Cranes

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This week, enjoy Braden’s Part II of an Undetermined Series of Posts about our recent birding adventures in Israel and Jordan!

Over the next few days, our host family showed us around Northern Israel. We explored Akko, a seaside town with a great market full of delicious Arab and Jewish food and tall, Crusader-era walls. In Haifa, we took a drive around Mount Carmel and dined on amazing pizza and fantastic pistachio ice cream. My dad and I even spotted a Eurasian Griffon soaring over a residential area, a rare species of vulture that nested in the Carmel range.

**A lone Eurasian Spoonbill enjoys refuge in the Hula Valley Nature Reserve, once part of a vast wetlands that covered much of north-central Israel.**

After sightseeing, though, we were ready to do some serious birding. One day, my dad, one of our friends named Noam and I hopped on the train to Haifa (spotting flamingos feeding in salt ponds on the way), where we were picked up by our host’s brother Barak and father Avi. We headed north, stopping only to grab a snack at a roadside falafel & humus stand overlooking the vast Sea of Galilee and its nearby canyons and mosques. Soon, though, we left the mountains, driving past agricultural fields filled with Common Cranes. Eventually we arrived at the Hula Valley Nature Reserve, and were greeted by a large, modern visitor center. The best way to sightsee the refuge was to rent a golf cart, and that we did, setting off around a lake at Formula 1 speeds—about 10 miles per hour. We were soon greeted by hundreds of cranes, as well as various tactics that farmers used to prevent the birds from eating their crops. Every few minutes a gunshot, firework or horn would echo across the landscape (the birds were protected, don’t worry), and we even glimpsed a few people chasing the huge flocks.

**In the Hula, we got our first great look of the trip at what would prove to be one of our Top Five favorite Israeli birds—the White-throated Kingfisher.**

Before reaching the main lake, we stopped at a forested spot and were immediately astonished to see not one, but two birds that we’d been hoping to see: a White-throated Kingfisher and a Eurasian Hoopoe! The large kingfisher showed off its azure wings as it scanned the ground for rodents, while the hoopoe foraged quietly like a flicker, probably looking for ants. Spur-winged Lapwings, birds with sharp patterns of black and white on their wings, stood right by the path, unafraid, and almost every bird in the area allowed us to snap sharp, close-up photos. Before leaving we spotted a pair of European Goldfinches, chirping cheerfully despite their “sunburnt” faces.

At the lake itself bird activity increased substantially. Raptors were abundant, including Black and Black-winged Kites, Eurasian Marsh-Harriers, Common Buzzards and Eurasian Kestrels, all flying over the marshes. One kestrel even posed for us on a sign, devouring a mouse right in front of us! The species diversity of ducks was low, but those that were here, primarily shovelers, mallards and teal, foraged in the fields in huge numbers, and Eurasian Coots, Eurasian Moorhens and Little Grebes floated on the water. Shorebirds and waders also were present, and we spotted a few Glossy Ibises, Black-winged Stilts, Ruff and a single Eurasian Spoonbill by the shoreline. Gray Herons, Great, Cattle and Little Egrets and Great and Pygmy Cormorants topped every bare branch and island in the area.

**As this Eurasian Kestrel can attest to, there’s nothing like a good stretch after tearing the head off a mouse!**

At a lookout a helpful naturalist pointed out several harder-to-see species to us, including Black-tailed Godwits and Northern Lapwings hiding in the distance among the huge numbers of cranes. I snapped photos of several raptors that flew by, later identifying them as eagles! The two we spotted were Booted and Greater Spotted, just a small percentage of the eagle species the Old World supported. Pied Avocets floated on the waves of the pond like ducks.

Sing along with us: “One of these things is not like the other. One of these things is not the same. One of these things—” Oh, you get the idea. It’s hard to blend in with 30,000 Common Cranes!

We completed our loop, tracking down cranes for better photos and spotting a Common Kingfisher skulking in the brush back at the visitor center, the only one we’d see for the rest of the trip! This little refuge, surrounded by farmland, was all that remained of the huge wetlands that had once covered much of this area and supported hippos, ostriches and cheetahs. While much of the diversity of the past had disappeared, Hula still provides habitat for thousands of birds during all seasons and efficiently allows the public to experience them. The day had not disappointed.

All photos and text on FatherSonBirding.com are strictly protected under U.S. copyright law. To request permission to use, contact Sneed at sbcollardiii+2@gmail.com.

Winter Birding in Israel, Part 1: Neighborhood Birding

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Alert: the hackers are back. We’ve had a number of suspicious sign ups recently so if you really have subscribed in the last three months, please shoot Sneed a confirmation email at collard@bigsky.net and I will make sure that you stay subscribed. Meanwhile, feel free to share this post with all the wonderful birders in your lives. Thanks!

If you are an avid fan of FatherSonBirding—and let’s face it, who isn’t?—you’ll know that Braden and I recently had an adventure of a lifetime in Israel and Jordan. Over the next few posts, we’d like to share that adventure, starting with ordinary neighborhood birding, and what any casual visitor might expect to see in Israel in January.

**The Hooded Crow not only was our first Israeli bird, it was one that would provide constant entertainment and companionship throughout our trip.**

Before flying to the Holy Land, Braden and I had already learned the value of studying up on birds of a new area, so when our flight touched down in Tel Aviv at 2 a.m., we hit the ground running. Well, sort of. First, we got on a train and traveled to our friends’ house in the pleasant coastal town of Binyamina. As soon as we’d showered and eaten breakfast, our hosts’ 14-year-old son, Noam, led us out on a tour of the neighborhood.

Now, I have to preface this by saying that Israel is the only place I know where if you go out birding, you not only have a chance of encountering some amazing historic site, you are almost guaranteed it. Only a block from his house, Noam led us to a remarkable Ottoman well that was 400-plus years old. Braden and I would have been more in awe if we weren’t already mesmerized by the variety of birds we were seeing! Our first Israeli bird? Hooded Crow, a handsome and charismatic corvid that would become a regular companion on our trip. This was soon followed by other delights including Great Tits, White-spectacled Bulbuls, Graceful Prinias, and Common Chiffchaffs, none of which we really expected to see! The most “crowd-pleasing?” The Palestinian Sunbird, an analog to American hummingbirds. We saw several, in fact, hovering to slurp up the nectar of some bright red flowers.

**The Middle East’s “hummingbird”, the Palestinian Sunbird. The convergence of both habits and appearance of these guys with our own hummers is remarkable.**

Once we passed the Ottoman well, we headed out to open farmland where we encountered a totally different suite of birds, starting with the same Rose-ringed Parakeets we’d seen in Amsterdam literally hours before (see our post “Layover Birding in Amsterdam”). Here we also encountered a charming little flycatcher called the European Stonechat—another frequent companion for our next two weeks. In the distance, we saw our first Black-winged Kite and Common Buzzard—Europe’s “Red-tailed Hawk.” Near a pond, we spotted several Glossy Ibis in flight and then came the punctuation of our first birding experience: a flight of four Great White Pelicans that flew right over us.

**Besides having a great name, the European Stonechat is a great behavioral study as it behaves very similarly to American flycatchers.**

Our first bird list totaled a satisfying twenty-one species, many of which we wouldn’t have recognized if we hadn’t done our homework ahead of time. Best of all, there was much, much more to come! Stay tuned . . .