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Do you remember listening to American Top 40 as a kid? Sure you do! To celebrate our 100th post, we decided to count down FSB’s All-Time Most Popular Posts—with a video!
Yes, believe it or not, this is FatherSonBirding’s 100th post! Since we seem to be evolving toward a video world, Braden and I agreed that a video post would be a fun way to celebrate our last four years of birding and blogging. Just don’t get used to it! Videos take a lot more effort than regular blogging and, frankly, making videos eats into our birding time!
A few notes about the Top 5. They may not be technically correct since for some of our early posts, we may not have been gathering statistics on views. Also, we had not yet switched to a Payola scheme by which people pay us to make sure that certain posts are more popular. Just kidding! About the Payola, that is. I’ll always be curious just how many views our first post, A Quest for Snowy Owls (published March 13, 2018) has really received!
Also, below are some quick links to the posts mentioned in this blog. They are NOT IN ORDER of popularity so there’s no opportunity for cheating here! You’ll just have to watch the video to find out WHAT IS NUMBER ONE! Also, I have misspelled “Maclay Flat” as “McClay Flats” and other permutations. You’ll just have to forgive me!
Thank you for following our birding adventures. We appreciate you and hope this winter brings you plenty of birding adventures of your own!
Links to Blogs mentioned in the video (not in order of popularity):
(by Braden) By the time our posse of eleven reached Logan Pass at 6 in the morning, the parking lot was already full, though that did not hamper the views. Nick Ramsey and I rushed over to the bathrooms, admiring a view we had not experienced for years (despite having been to the lower-altitude parts of Glacier Park every year since 2017) and nabbing Cassin’s Finch and White-crowned Sparrow, then hopped back into Joshua Wade Covill’s car and headed for the Piegan Pass trailhead.
Nick and I had arrived at Josh’s house in Columbia Falls late the night before after a helping of early-summer shorebirds south of Kalispell and were greeted by not only Josh, one of Montana’s birding mammoths, but also by an assortment of the country’s top birders: Tom Forwood Jr., a southern Montana-based birder well-known for the Big Day records he had set across Montana (some of which had been with Josh) and working at Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park; Marky Mutchler, a recent graduate of Louisiana State University who had been the ABA young birder of the year a few years back and whose six-out-of-five star photos decorated every part of eBird’s website; four field techs currently studying nesting birds like Lazuli Buntings and Spotted Towhees on MPG Ranch, and two more birders, who along with Marky, currently spent their time researching grassland birds like Long-billed Curlews and Sprague’s Pipits out on the American Prairie Reserve. Several of the people I had already met through Facebook, while I was excited to meet others for the first time. I knew I was in the presence of greatness the minute I stepped out of the mini-van and onto Josh’s lawn, where I pitched my tent.
We were all here for one reason: to see Glacier National Park and its birds under the guidance of Josh, who knew the park like a Black Swift knows the underside of a waterfall, and who had, in fact, just started a Glacier-based guiding company! While several of us had been here before, others (including many of the field techs) had never seen this part of the country before, and we were prepared to assist in blowing their minds.
We woke up on Saturday morning at 5, getting into the park before the ticket period started, and were up and over Logan Pass by 6. A MacGillivray’s Warbler sang downslope of us as we bug-sprayed up in the Piegan Pass trail parking lot, and then set off into the forest of Engelmann Spruce and Subalpine Fir. Almost immediately Josh halted the group to point out several White-winged Crossbills singing from treetops, their complex trills a new sound for me. This habitat made much more sense than the cemetery in which I’d gotten my lifers earlier in the year.
My dad and I usually see Pine Grosbeaks at lower elevations during winter, so it was very special to see them at their breeding altitudes.
In a clearing several miles up the trail Josh called in a Varied Thrush for the photographers of the group (several people including Marky, had brought giant lenses) and a pair of Pine Grosbeaks, not wanting to be left out, had decided to forage in the grass and shrubs at eye-level about ten feet from us.
As we hiked, I learned about the individual research projects that each of the field techs were looking at on the APR, which included Long-billed Curlew migration patterns and parasitism on grassland birds by Brown-headed Cowbirds. We talked about top birding spots everywhere from New Mexico to Missouri and exchanged stories about how everyone had gotten into birds. It was particularly fun visiting with Tom and Josh, as they seemingly had an answer to everything I wondered about along the trail. Tom didn’t just know the birds—he identified every flower and butterfly we came across, and he and Josh pointed out the glaciers and peaks around us as we rose in altitude, many of which they had individually hiked to. They also had a wealth of knowledge of birding Latin America, specifically Costa Rica, something I was incredibly interested in.
After about three miles we rose above the stunted forest marking the end of the subalpine zone and were hiking along scree fields and across lingering snow patches. A Golden Eagle soaring high above welcomed us to the alpine zone as pikas mewed at us from their rocky burrows, and the bird community changed abruptly. Rather than crossbills and grosbeaks, Gray-crowned Rosy-finches filled the finch role up here, and all of us were shocked to encounter a Brewer’s Sparrow belting out a song from a patch of young trees! A rare subspecies of Brewer’s Sparrow, known as the Timberline Sparrow, lived above the tree line in Glacier Park and in mountain ranges farther north, a rather strange change from the normal sagebrush habitat the species used elsewhere in its range. No one in the group had ever seen one before, including Tom and Josh, which meant that everyone had gotten at least one new bird out of the hike!
This surprise Timberline Sparrow (a subspecies of Brewer’s Sparrow) was a Lifer for our entire group!
Speaking of new birds, I was here for my Montana life bird #299: White-tailed Ptarmigan. These cryptic, high-altitude game birds only lived in the northwest part of the state, and only in Glacier were they easily-accessible. As we reached Piegan Pass, Josh pointed out a large snowfield. We would be walking around the base of the field after a quick lunch, as it was perfect ptarmigan habitat: it turns out that most alpine habitat was unsuitable for ptarmigan. These picky birds require access to water, shade (i.e. low cliffs) to hide from the sun, and vegetation (i.e. moss) for food. If a site does not have one of these three things, it’s unlikely to contain ptarmigan.
After a lunch full of various mammals from Least Chipmunks to Hoary Marmots trying to steal our food, we set off in a large search line to try to find ptarmigan as an American Pipit displayed in the air high above us, an activity shared with the Sprague’s Pipits my dad and I had found earlier this year. After about fifteen minutes, Skyler Bol, one of the MPG Ranch field techs, yelled, “Got one!”. We all maneuvered across the rocks over to where he stood, and sure enough, there sat a surprisingly small game bird, half-white and half-brown, curiously staring up at us.
It had taken me more than seven years for me to finally see a White-tailed Ptarmigan, but I couldn’t have asked for a better experience—or company—in finding my 299th Montana bird species!
Everyone whipped out their cameras and settled around the fairly unconcerned bird, and soon Skyler spotted another one sitting on a small waterfall nearby! We basked in the ptarmigan glory for at least an hour, then wished the small birds good luck and cold temperatures, and headed back down the trail.
Once we were firmly in the subalpine forest again, we began stopping periodically and playing for Boreal Chickadee. It was great habitat for them, and several members of the group had never seen them before. You might call it “pushing our luck”, but hey, it worked! About two miles from the parking lot after hearing a Mountain Chickadee and several Canada Jays impersonating Yellow-throated Toucans, Josh decided to play for them and a pair of Boreal Chickadees showed up! I had not expected to see them again this year after nabbing my lifer in May and it was great to watch them from a distance as other people took photos of their very first of these boreal birds.
Though our goal was to see White-tailed Ptarmigan, the day facilitated several epic QUACHs as well!
After spying a trio of Golden Eagles again at the parking lot, we headed back to Josh’s house, stopping briefly for a Chestnut-backed Chickadee (there would be several QUACHs completed today) at Avalanche Campground. I had to head home but many of the others stayed another day, and I would soon hear stories of Black Swift, Spruce Grouse and American Three-toed Woodpecker.
As we left the Piegan Pass trailhead, Josh mentioned that he thought it had been his best day of birding in the park, and I would have to agree. And not just because of the great and cooperative birds we saw—because of the people. I had learned so much from everyone as we hiked, and had really gotten to experience what the community I would soon be immersed in would be like. Everyone was so knowledgeable, yet humble and kind, and I was honored to be a part of the first annual “Camp Montana”, even if it was only for a day.
However, seeing the ptarmigan was also a bit sad—who knew how long these alpine birds would be here? With temperatures already breaking record highs within the park, the birds living at the tops of mountains barely had anywhere to go, and snow was disappearing fast. I am very fortunate that I got to experience the birds while they are still here, and hope that somehow, they can adapt to whatever climate change throws at them.
Ptarmigan are a poster bird for how climate change is negatively impacting our planet. As permanent snow fields disappear, habitat for these birds is rapidly shrinking—a call to action to drastically and rapidly reduce the CO2 emissions we as humans produce.
Another problem was posed by seeing the ptarmigan: What will my 300th Montana bird be? Now that I’d nabbed #299, I had no choice but to get to 300, but my options were few and far between, and my days in the state are running out…stay tuned to see what it will be! (I don’t have it yet).
My dad walked back to the car, frowning. “Well, unfortunately it looks like we’re gonna have to go birding somewhere else today.”
I sighed, frustrated. We’d been trying to bird Swiftcurrent, in east Glacier National Park, for years, and we’d still never gotten a normal birding session there. Most years it had been closed, like it was today, because of COVID-19 or construction. The year we had gotten to bird, it had been pouring down rain, and while we scored an incredible experience with a pair of Harlequin Ducks in Lake Swiftcurrent, those were basically the only birds was saw. Now, not birding Swiftcurrent drastically decreased our chances at Boreal Chickadee, a bird we’d been wanting to find for as long as I could remember.
Reviewing our options, we could just immediately head south and hope to bird Two Medicine, and possibly arrive in West Glacier earlier than expected to look for Black Swift and Harlequin Duck. I wanted to go somewhere new, however, so we headed north towards the closed Canadian border crossing. Hopefully we could find some cool habitat, possibly with Boreal Chickadees, though that species had rarely been reported from that area of the park. Along with it being a cool bird, the main reason my dad and I wanted the chickadee so badly is because in terms of Montana lifers we’d been completely skunked during the rest of our trip, missing American Golden-Plover, Broad-winged Hawk, Magnolia Warbler and more. We’d gotten cool birds, like Sprague’s Pipit, but none of them had been new species for us.
As we learned in Glacier National Park this summer, birding the road less traveled almost always leads to great surprises.
After taking a short loop through the most desolate plains we’d seen yet in Montana, we turned towards Glacier’s mountains again. As we drove, the habitat shifted, first to stunted aspen forest and then tall, dense spruce-fir forest. It was a habitat I’d never seen in the state, if at all: the southernmost reaches of the vast boreal forest that stretched across Canada. As we crossed back into the national park, my dad spotted what was probably a robin, but we pulled over anyway—I was excited to see what birds were singing from this new habitat.
A Northern Waterthrush echoed from the side of the car as we got out, and several Brown-headed Cowbirds whistled from the tops of trees. Every single bird was a surprise to us, since we really had no idea what to expect. And despite the fact that we hadn’t truly entered the mountains yet, my dad’s altitude app told us that we were at more than 5000 feet!
Suddenly my dad turned around. “I just heard a chickadee.” I spotted something flit to the top of a tall spruce about fifty feet away, and raised my binoculars. While it was still too far to tell what kind, I was definitely staring at a chickadee, so I grabbed my camera from the car and hurried over to where there appeared to be a pair of them. Once we drew closer, I raised my binoculars, registering salmon flanks and a brown cap.
Finding not one, but half a dozen Boreal Chickadees in a place we never expected not only checked off a long-held goal, but laid the crucial foundation for the QUACH!
It was one of if not the first time I’d ever said the F-word in front of my dad! It was like my brain had exploded, I’m not sure whether from the fact that the birds were Boreal Chickadees or from the fact that we’d managed to find a new Montana species at last on this trip. The chickadees bounced around the spruces for a while, then disappeared.
After recovering from the shock, my dad and I hugged and got back in the car, intent on seeing what else we could find along this paved-yet-empty road. Starting at the closed Canadian border crossing, we drove south doing five-minute point counts along the road like we’d done searching for Sprague’s Pipit the day before.
Seeing a White-crowned Sparrow on its alpine breeding grounds gave us new appreciation for this relatively common species.
The most common sparrows were White-crowned Sparrows belting confusing songs from every level of the trees, and while Yellow and Yellow-rumped Warblers were present, they were at least equalled in number by Wilson’s Warblers and Northern Waterthrushes, neither of which were common in Missoula. Amazingly, we picked up Boreal Chickadee at two more points, getting much better looks and photos of three more pairs. They were one of the more common species here, too, and were by far the most common chickadee, though we also picked up a lone Mountain and a possible Black-capped, the latter from a lower altitude aspen area. Canada Jay was the most common corvid, though we also saw a single Steller’s. Another treat were two boisterous Olive-sided Flycatchers, well-known boreal forest breeders, calling and posing for us.
In the wetter areas we found Fox and Lincoln’s Sparrows, Tree Swallows and Warbling Vireos. Red-breasted Nuthatches, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Pine Siskins and Chipping Sparrows greeted us at most stops. We also got a Varied Thrush, which was a surprise as we were probably about two miles from the easternmost limit of its breeding range.
What? A Mountain Chickadee near a Boreal Chickadee? What was this songbird madness???
I’d recently read a book about the lack of birds in the boreal forest, and while there definitely was lower diversity than say, the wet second-growth of West Glacier, it was not as if there weren’t any birds. At most stops we picked up at least three or four species singing or calling.
After drinking our fill of the boreal forest and saying goodbye to the chickadees, we headed south along the eastern edge of Glacier National Park. We stopped at a good-looking, alder-filled riparian area for lunch, picking up new species for the day like Black-headed Grosbeak, Lazuli Bunting and our first-of-year MacGillivray’s Warbler, then got onto Highway 2 again, back in familiar territory.
When we reached West Glacier, though, we discovered something tragic—you had to have a permit to enter the park, a new rule they’d employed to counter the insane surges of tourists they’d had the past few years! Thankfully, we could enter without a permit after 5 p.m., but still it was sad that the days of entering Glacier easily may be over.
Since we know them mostly from burn areas, this Olive-sided Flycatcher at a roadside pullout proved a special delight!
We parked by the old park entrance to wait until five o’ clock, and while my dad took a nap I wandered around the healthy mountain-riparian forest along the milk-blue Middle Fork of the Flathead River. As I hiked, I suddenly heard more chickadees calling, and in a dense patch of Lodgepole Pine I found them: Chestnut-backed Chickadees!
Earlier in the day, after seeing the Boreal Chickadees, I’d mentioned to my dad: “Just you wait. We’ll somehow manage to see three of the four chickadee species and have trouble finding a Black-capped.” Black-capped, of course, is well-known for being not only the most common chickadee in Montana but also one of the most common birds here, period.
Suddenly, my fear had come true: I’d seen the three most difficult chickadees in one day, but had not yet seen a Black-capped (while again, we’d possibly heard one up by the Canadian border, it had not been a positive identification so we hadn’t counted it). I rushed back to the car to wake my dad.
“Let’s go find some cottonwoods. I need to see a Black-capped Chickadee.”
As we drove around West Glacier (the town; the park hadn’t opened yet), I rolled down my windows, straining to hear any piece of a chickadee call. We pulled into a fishing access parking lot surrounded by cottonwoods and began walking, though the birds were fairly quiet. Four in the afternoon was about as bad a time as you could go birding, yet here we were, trying to find one that we saw in our backyard every single day. I promised to myself that if we found a Black-capped, I would memorize its scientific name, Poecile Atricapillus.
After admiring a gorgeous male Rufous Hummingbird that posed for us, I heard a chickadee call from behind me. Then, a sharp-looking Black-capped flew towards us, landing mere inches from us on a branch! I’d done it! I restrained myself from hugging the chickadee and instead gave my dad a high-five in celebration of the Quad-Chickadee Day I’d had—or, as my dad officially christened it, “the Quach.”
Note: “Quach” is a registered trademark of FatherSonBirding, legally protected throughout the solar system. Anyone using it will be subject to massive fines and stern looks. Not really.But you heard it here first!
Who would have thunk a common Black-capped Chickadee would prove the key to Braden’s epic QUACH? Only the wily chickadee, of course!
As always, we encourage you to share this post in the hopes that it might keep education rolling during these difficult, unprecedented times.Thank you!
In our last post, I explained how close Braden and I had come to reaching our goal of 250 Montana species for the year. Braden, in fact, had reached 245 birds while I pulled up the rear with 239. Now, as some of your comments pointed out, 250 species would seem like a slam dunk with six months to go in 2020, but not so. Not only had we exhausted our supply of “easy birds”, but another large birding safari seemed unlikely—until, that is, Braden and his birding buddy Nick Ramsey came up with the idea for a Big Day. The plan? To get up before dawn and drive 500 miles, birding Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge, the Swan River Valley, Glacier National Park, all the way to Malta, home of Bowdoin NWR. Insane? Yes. Would we do it? Definitely!
None of us knew how many species we might see in a day. Our record for a day in Montana was only in the 80 or so species range, but we’d never attempted anything like this and hoped we might get as many as 150. Alas, the weather gods frowned on us the morning of June 30, with steady drizzling rain. Undaunted, we set off, missing a number of target species here in Missoula and near the National Bison Range. At Ninepipe NWR, however, we hit Short-eared Owl City! Braden and Nick both still needed SEOWs for their Year Lists, but neither of us had ever seen one at Ninepipe until I spotted one about a month ago. This morning, driving Duck Road in the rain, we hadn’t gone a mile before Braden shouted, “There’s an owl!” In the next three miles, we saw NINE MORE! Maybe they should call the refuge Nineowls?
Our first Big Success of our first Big Day was to hit the Short-eared Owl Jackpot at Ninepipe NWR.
After missing LeConte’s Sparrow at Swan Valley (but seeing lots of Lincoln’s Sparrows), we headed to Glacier, where my top priority of the trip just might be located: Harlequin Duck. With the coronavirus raging, we didn’t know what kind of traffic we might expect, but the poor weather ended up a blessing as we cruised right into the park and made record time to Avalanche Creek. Still, none of us really expected to see a Harlequin Duck as the males had fled and breeding was probably winding down. We walked out onto the beach on the river, though, and sixty seconds later, we all saw a duck flying downstream. It was a female Harlequin! Even better, it landed fifty feet from us! None of us could believe it. After admiring the beautiful creature, we walked around a bit, picking up the eerie calls of Varied Thrushes, but failing to get our pie-in-the-sky target, Black Swifts. Still, our stop a success, we headed back out to West Glacier and began the six-hour drive to Bowdoin, picking up new birds all along the way and ending up with a day’s total of 119 species—a personal Montana record and not bad given the weather.
One of my favorite all-time birds, this Harlequin Duck was just waiting for us as we zoomed into Glacier National Park during our (first) Big Day!
Of course, the problem with doing a Big Day that finishes up in a place like Malta, Montana, is that you have to get back home again! Not surprisingly, we spent two days finding our way home—and not without some adventures that included Braden almost stepping on a rattlesnake, almost getting our minivan permanently mired in mud far from civilization, and getting a rear tire blowout—fortunately, just at an exit in Butte.
On Day 2 of our, ahem, Big Day, we had some of our best experiences with nesting shorebirds—including the spectacular American Avocet at Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge!
“So did you make your 250 birds?” you may be asking yourselves. Well . . . YES! Braden finished the trip with 255 species for the year while I slipped in there with 251. Which begs another question, “What now?” Well, fortunately birding is fun, interesting, and educational even without keeping track of lists. Every day, in fact, we see cool birds and learn more about them. Will we object if our species counts climb higher in the next six months? No way, but do we need them to? Naw. Birds are great any time and in any season—even if we’ve seen them before.
Welcome to all of our new subscribers—and thank you for your interest! Please note that Braden and I are about to embark on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Middle East, so won’t be posting for a few weeks. When we do, we should have some amazing stories to share!
Season’s Greetings Fellow Birders! Between school exams,
swim meets, book deadlines, and the general craziness of life, Braden and I
haven’t been out birding a lot in the last few months, but we wanted to wish
all of you Happy Holidays and a dawning new year of birding. With your
patience, we’d also like to reflect a bit on the past year, the future, and
what we can all do to help the animals that we love.
Getting to know Montana birds better—including this fabulous Harlequin Duck on McDonald Creek in Glacier National Park—has been one of the major 2019 achievements for Braden and me.
It was another amazing year of birding for Team Collard.
Without intending to, we smashed our Montana Big Year records by at least a
dozen birds each, with Sneed logging 222 species in the state (15 more species
than in 2017) and Braden recording 225 species—12 more than in 2017. We also
broke our combined Big Year record, though we’re too lazy to figure out the
total (about 340 species together). This year, Braden tallied 44 new Life Birds
while I added 21.
But while statistics are fun and motivating, for us they really aren’t what birding is about. Birding brings so many benefits to our lives, it’s hard to list them all, but top of the list are a chance to get outside, explore new places, see new species, learn about our remarkable planet, educate others about birding, and most of all, spend time together. This year, our favorite experiences included:
Perhaps our most rewarding 2020 activity? Leading birding trips for a new generation of young—and “almost young”—birders!
3) Leading birding trips for school groups and others
That last one brings up an important point. Those of us who
love birds owe it to the planet to do as much as we can to protect them. That
includes educating other people about the importance of birds and what’s
happening to them worldwide. Don’t short-sell yourself. If you’ve ever been
birding at all, you have important knowledge to share. Most people know almost
nothing about birds, so even teaching a friend how to identify a House Sparrow or
an American Goldfinch could be the beginning of a long and rewarding journey.
We were thrilled this fall to observe and help participate in long-term studies of bird migrations through western Montana using banding and flight call studies. Here, a Townsend’s Warbler (I think) gets unceremoniously dunked head-first into a weighing canister. This does nothing to harm the bird, but gives scientists at MPG Ranch and the University of Montana’s Bird Ecology Lab important data for monitoring and protecting songbirds.
We especially want to encourage everyone to give as much money—yes, cold hard CASH—as you can to organizations that are helping birds. Because of this year’s higher standard tax deduction, charitable donations have plummeted, and that has hurt a lot of nonprofit groups—especially in an era when they need support more than ever. Keep in mind, too, that if you donate to National Audubon, that doesn’t necessarily do much to support your state and local Audubon chapters. You have to give to all three. Here are some of Braden’s and my favorite groups that we give to:
Please check out these groups and GIVE UNTIL IT HURTS. We thank you, and appreciate all you do to share your love of birds and, even more, to make sure that the next generation enjoys a bird-rich planet.
This Western Screech Owl says: “Instead of buying friends and family more junk this holiday season, why not give them a LASTING gift with a donation to the Owl Research Institute and other bird conservation organizations?”
