Category Archives: Grassland Birds

Chihuahuan Raven: Bird #12 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown, April 10th, 2026

In the past few months, Braden has been on a roll finding his last couple of dozen Lower 48 ABA life birds. Today, he takes a deep dive into a bird few of us know much about and even fewer of us encounter. Remember, FatherSonBirding is written and photographed by REAL PEOPLE. If you want to support our work, please consider buying some of Sneed’s books by clicking on images to the right. Better yet, invite one or both of us to headline your next birding festival! While you’re at it, be sure to check out Sneed’s new-and-improved website at www.sneedbcollardiii.com. Thanks!

It had been years since I’d watched a pair of ravens for so long. I’d just finished birding Hanover Road, a dusty track through a habitat I’d never seen before; dry grasslands covered in large cholla cacti. Hanover Road hosted a few strange migrants, including Rock Wrens and Sage Thrashers, but I hadn’t seen either of my main targets for the area, Cassin’s Sparrow or Chihuahuan Raven. Then, just before I was about to pull onto the main highway heading back west towards Colorado Springs, I spotted them: two large, black corvids investigating a smushed prairie dog on the road. I parked my car, got my camera out, and started snapping pictures.

**The “raven neighborhood” on my recent trip through Colorado.**

This certainly wasn’t the first time I’d attempted to see Chihuahuan Ravens. On every birding trip I’d taken to Arizona I had spent increasingly more and more time looking for the large, dark birds out in the desert. Most recently, in August of 2025, I’d pulled over to look at every raven in the vicinity of the Chiricahua Mountains, coming up short over and over as I realized each and every one was a Common. Finding Chihuahuan Ravens in Texas is far easier, for no Commons occur there, but on my dad’s and my one trip to South Texas we hadn’t seen a single corvid.

**On recent trips through the Southwest, I had been frustrated several times in my search for Chihuahuan Ravens.**

The bird hadn’t even been particularly on my radar for this road trip home. After bidding the Gunnison Sage-grouse goodbye (click here) earlier that morning, I’d routed east, over the continental divide and out into the open prairie. I knew that southeastern Colorado had desert habitat, or at least desert-adjacent habitat, and had several species that I wanted to find. So, upon my arrival in the Colorado Springs area, I started driving roads through neighborhoods where my target birds had been reported. Curve-billed Thrasher and Canyon Towhee I found with ease. Finding Scaled Quail took significantly more effort, but eventually I lucked into one perched in someone’s driveway, calling loudly and attempting to jump onto a nearby truck. None of these birds were lifers but I’d never seen them in this context before, and the towhee and thrasher were new subspecies and did look notably different from the ones I’d seen in Arizona.

**While I searched for CHRAs with few expectations, I was fortunate to stumble upon a Scaled Quail.**

After texting a few friends about my finds, it dawned on me: here were species native to the Chihuahuan Desert, species I’d seen in southeast Arizona. So, if Scaled Quail, Curve-billed Thrasher and Canyon Towhee lived here, what about Chihuahuan Raven? I jumped on eBird and quickly learned the answer—this marked the northern edge of the ravens’ range, and a few individuals had been reported in the area recently. So, I kept my eyes peeled as I drove further out into the cholla-covered grassland. Sure enough, an hour later, here I was, staring down two ravens.

**Cholla cactuses were part of the interesting ecology of this unusual southern Colorado landscape—but would ravens be here?**

In all my time hunting down this species, I’d learned a lot about the identification of ravens. For one, Chihuahuan Ravens generally had longer nasal bristles, meaning that feathers covered more than half of the upper bill. The birds poking the dead prairie dog definitely had long nasal bristles compared to a Common Raven. Unfortunately, this field mark can be quite variable, so I had to look harder. Another feature of Chihuahuans is the flat head with its peak near the crown, unlike that of a Common which has a peak near the front. Again, these birds were looking more like Chihuahuans in this regard, but this field mark also could be quite variable, especially in the wind. And the wind was definitely blowing!

However, that was great news for me, because the wind gave me access to the largest, most reliable field mark—the raven’s neck feathers. Common Ravens have a gray color at the base of their neck feathers. Chihuahuans, meanwhile, have white. Thanks to the gusts rocketing over the desert landscape, the neck feathers on each bird were exposed every thirty seconds or so. After snapping some pictures and zooming in, I could clearly see that the birds in front of me had white neck feathers!

**Thanks to the gusty wind, I was able to see the most reliable ID features of the Chihuahuan Ravens—the white base of the neck feathers (the “star” shape on the bird in the above photo).**

Besides being a life bird, my experience with the pair of Chihuahuan Ravens in Colorado taught me something. These days, sometimes it feels like birding is focused on maximizing species and numbers. Birders across the US submit thousands of eBird checklists per day, and the competitiveness can be overwhelming—everyone is always trying to see just one species to add to their list. So seldom, it seems, are birders focused on just watching the birds. My quest to identify those two ravens turned into just that: I got to watch these two animals for half an hour. They flew from telephone pole to telephone pole; they hopped around on the ground; they called, foraged, shifted their weight and interacted with the world around them. Slowing down to be with these two creatures was an important reminder that birds are not numbers on lists, but real, wild animals with personalities and habits. We should all slow down and watch ravens more often.

**My time with the Chihuahuan Ravens offered an important reminder to slow down and really pay attention to the wonderful world and creatures around us.**

For more information on corvids, or the crow family of birds, check out Sneed’s recent Montana Outdoors cover story, “Corvids to Crow Over.”

How Flowers Made Our World (FSB Book Review)

Gunnison Sage-grouse: Bird #13 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown, April 10th, 2026

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Today, Braden shares the latest installment of his series counting down the remaining ABA Life Birds he has been attempting to see. It’s just like listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 Countdown—but better, because it’s about BIRDS! To catch up on his other recent life bird adventures, click on these previous posts:

Black-chinned Sparrow: Bird #14 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown

Fulvous Whistling-Duck: Bird #15 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown

Lower 48 Life List Countdown: Crissal Thrasher (Bird #16)

The sun still hadn’t woken up when I pulled over behind the half dozen or so other cars parked along the side of the road. I rolled down my window as a local game biologist approached.

“Are you here for the grouse?”

“Yes,” I answered quietly as a Horned Lark began singing somewhere in the darkness.

“And where are you from?”

“Montana, though I’m en route from California.”

She marked a few things off on her clipboard, then returned to her car. Through the gray pre-dawn darkness, I could make out a huge field of sagebrush, the foreground for Ponderosa-covered hills rising in the distance. In other words, my car was parked on a dirt road surrounded by a typical landscape of the American West. Even the birds were similar to those found in Montana: a winnowing Wilson’s Snipe, calling Red-winged Blackbirds, the husky chirps of a singing Mountain Bluebird. And yet, in Gunnison County, Colorado, there lives a bird that has never lived in Montana. Me and the other birders, silhouetted through their car windows, had driven from various corners of the country to see it: The Gunnison Sage-grouse.

**The Gunnison Sage-grouse birder “lek” watching the actual Gunnison Sage-grouse lek in the distance at sunrise.**

Superficially, Gunnison Sage-grouse and Greater Sage-grouse aren’t all that different. Both species require expansive sagebrush habitats like the plain that stretched out before me in the rising light. The Greater is larger (hence the name), and, during the breeding season, Gunnisons have much longer filoplumes adorning the males’ heads. While Greater Sage-grouse are found across much of the West, Gunnisons occupy only a small area in Colorado and western Utah. The ranges of the two birds do not overlap.

**Many of the birds I saw while driving through Colorado reminded me of my home in Montana—complete with meadowlarks on signs!**

Sage-grouse breeding displays are some of North America’s most famous avian experiences. Males and females gather in breeding groups in early spring. Both the breeding groups and their display grounds are commonly referred to as leks. While lekking, the males, decked out in the most ridiculous plumage of any North American bird, pump their chests to the viewing amusement of nearby females. Although I’d seen Greater Sage-grouse a few times in my life, I’d never been able to experience one of these leks. And while there are several sites across the country where one might watch a Greater Sage-grouse lek, there is only a single public Gunnison Sage-grouse lek, a spot about fifteen miles east of Waunita Watchable Wildlife Area. Because of their small population and increasing threats to the habitats they’re found in, the grouse are endangered, and so the public lek is open for viewing only during certain weeks of the year. I had arrived on April 10th, the last day the lek would be open for another two weeks.

About half an hour before dawn, another birder’s car alarm went off. I could see everyone in their cars wince—Gunnison Sage-grouse are quite sensitive to disturbance, and this could have been enough to send them scampering away. Thankfully, the birds (which were about ¾ of a mile away from the road), didn’t seem bothered, and about ten minutes later, I began to hear the popping sounds of their displays. I eventually located them, distant black dots, even through my binoculars. Fifteen minutes later, with the permission of the biologist, we started getting out of our cars to set up spotting scopes.

Though our “birder lek” stood too far away from the Gunnison Sage-grouse to get photos, their behavior is very similar to lekking Sharp-tailed Grouse, captured here by my dad at Benton Lake NWR a couple of years ago (see post “The Best Prairie Day Ever: Benton Lake NWR.”)

Through the scope my viewing experience was marginally better. I could make out the males, with their furry white chests and black heads, pumping their shoulders at each other. Occasionally, a female would scamper through my view. Though far away, lekking sage-grouse had been on my bucket list for years and taking them in as the sun peeked above the horizon could only be described as a magical experience. Fog escaped my lips every time I took a breath, and a few nearby Sage Thrashers began singing across the road from us. Soon my fellow birders were beginning to whisper to each other, and I learned just how far people had come to see these birds. The man in the car whose alarm had gone off had driven through the night from Oregon en route to a bird point-count job in Oklahoma, stopping here just for this species. Another man had come here from a few hours away.

**As my dad pointed out in his recent post “Colorado’s Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival,” numbers of Spotted Towhees in Colorado are CRAZY!**

“My kid loves it, birding,” he said to me. “The last year especially, he’s really gotten into it. He wanted to see these grouse, so here we are.” I couldn’t help but see the similarities between that father and son and my birding experiences with my own dad.

After about four minutes of the grouse lekking, a group of birders stormed out of the blind that was set up beside the cars. I’d run into this group last night and learned they were doing a “chicken run.” Colorado is known for having almost every grouse species in the US and tour groups often target all of them during weeks in March and April. One of the birders asked if I knew any nearby spots for White-tailed Ptarmigan before the four of them noisily piled into their car and drove away. So much for staying quiet while the grouse were displaying! Either way, the birds didn’t seem to mind.

**I was especially excited to see Pinyon Jays in Colorado, since they can be a challenge to find back home.**

Beyond seeing these endangered birds, I had been enjoying seeing more and more landscapes that reminded me of home as I neared the middle of my road trip back to Montana. On my drives through Arizona and Colorado I watched the desert transition into mountainous valleys, complete with juniper and sagebrush-covered canyons, rushing streams with permanent water, and the snowcapped peaks of the San Juans and other mountain ranges. Of course, my trip was nowhere near over. I’d be visiting several more new habitats before that happened. In fact, one of those habitats would be later in the day, where I might just manage to see another life bird! Stay tuned to see what comes next . . .

Bustin’ Out for Birdathon

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The Wings Across the Big Sky Festival is less than two weeks away and Braden I look forward to seeing some of you there. It’s not too late to sign up. Just click here for what promises to be a terrific weekend of birding Montana’s stunning northwest corner. Braden and I will be leading two field trips, one to Tally Lake and the other to the CSKT Bison Range. Even if you’re not on those trips, please say hello! Meanwhile, we are happy to share another recent big birding event—an exhilarating day of Birdathon to raise money for our local Audubon chapter!

On Friday, May 15^th, I woke at 4 a.m., excited to be devoting a full day—and I mean FULL—to birding. Unlike most days of birding, however, I and my team of Braden, Susan Snetsinger, and her son Eli would be dedicating our day to raising money for a good cause under the auspices of Birdathon.

Birdathon is an annual event put on by many different bird-related conservation groups, and it works much like those death marches you probably got suckered into as a youngster in which you would commit to walking twenty miles and sign up sponsors to pay you for each mile walked. Birdathon, though, is MUCH more fun than those blister-packing marathons of yesteryear because birding teams get to raise money by BIRDING!

**I find it impossible not to photograph Black-necked Stilts when I see them and, indeed, the birds showed up aplenty for Birdathon.**

In the spirit of healthy, fund-raising competition, we dubbed our team Bird Domination, but none of us had ever actually participated in a Birdathon. Undaunted, we coerced an assortment of family members and friends to donate money for each bird that we might find, deceitfully telling them that we probably would see about 100 birds during the day—even though we harbored much higher aspirations. Our donations would go to support the wonderful conservation and education work of our local birding chapter, Five Valleys Audubon, and Braden and I diligently crafted a route that would net us the most birds in a single day.

**Team Domination: (L to R) Sneed, Braden, Eli, and Susan.**

Braden and I decided to start at dawn with a quick trip up Rattlesnake Creek in our own neighborhood to pick up a few birds we might not see anywhere else. Arriving at the trailhead at 5:30 sharp, the birds did not disappoint. In the parking lot, we immediately heard Nashville Warbler and Hammond’s Flycatcher, and walking up the main trail, an American Dipper popped out onto the trail. Turning up a side creek called Spring Gulch, we heard our last two targets for here: Townsend’s Warbler and the boom boom boom of a Ruffed Grouse! Then we hurried back to the car to collect the rest of our teammates so that our proper Birdathon could launch.

It would take way too many words—and probably bore the heck out of you—to give you a blow by blow of the entire day, but to give you the scope of our endeavor, here are the basics and highlights.

**Three distant American Bitterns (!) above Sčilíp (formerly Dixon) Marsh.** **Unimpressed, two Osprey watch from a nest.**

Our route took us from Missoula to Sčilíp (formerly Dixon) Marsh and past the CSKT Bison Range to Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge. From there, we drove to Bigfork, down the Seeley Swan Valley and then over to Browns Lake. Our last big push carried us across the Continental Divide to Great Falls and our final destination—Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge—before making the long return trip to Missoula.

Total time elapsed: 17-1/2 hours.

Total miles driven: 552.

**Swainson’s Hawk perched high on our list of desired raptors and we saw four at Benton Lake NWR.**

Before getting to our actual bird highlights, I must say a few words about how much gasoline we consumed. As I’ve continued birding, I’ve been more and more reluctant to drive a lot, even to chase birds since burning gas contributes to climate change and directly impacts the creatures we love. Birdathon, however, coincided with birding destinations Braden and I had planned to visit this spring anyway. I especially wanted to make sure I got over the divide at least once to see some of Montana’s eastern species. So in addition to raising money, Birdathon allowed us to “double dip” on a lot of things we were going to do anyway—and it was a bonus to “carpool” with Susan and Eli, making it a relatively energy-efficient trip overall.

**Sandhill Cranes have a habit of nesting right under our noses and, indeed, we discovered one nesting only a few yards away at one of our stops near Browns Lake.**

Speaking of energy, I also have to add that while Braden and I drove and planned the event, Susan and Eli kept us energized with homemade egg sandwiches, 18-inch torpedo sandwiches, caffeinated beverages, and an unlimited variety of snacks. In other words, Team Bird Domination set out perfectly prepared to have an epic day. And with that, here are but a few of the day’s incredible highlights:

**A fun shorebird assortment at Benton Lake NWR. Can you name them all?** (Answer at the bottom)

Watching three American Bitterns flying over Sčilíp (formerly Dixon) Marsh. For context, we had never even heard an American Bittern here—and seen and heard only three or four in the entire state. At first, in fact, we thought the three birds might be Great Blue Herons, but Braden’s astute eyes picked out the brown color and dark ends of the wings. WOW!
A surprise Short-eared Owl at Ninepipe. Usually, these critters “bed down” a couple of hours after sunrise, but overcast skies probably helped this one keep hunting until we arrived. THANK YOU, OWL.
A Long-billed Curlew at Ninepipe—a curlew that turned out to be a WHIMBREL, again, thanks to Braden’s keen ID skills. Only a handful of whimbrels end up in Montana each year, and almost never west of the divide. This was the first one recorded at Ninepipe in six years—a truly rare find that helped render the entire day a spectacular hit, even though it wasn’t half over.
A clean sweep of large prairie-dwelling shorebirds at Benton Lake NWR, including Upland Sandpiper, Long-billed Curlew (that didn’t turn into a whimbrel), Willets, and Marbled Godwits.

**Grabbing Bird of the Day honors, we caught this rare-for-Montana Hudsonian Whimbrel hanging out with some distant Canada Geese!**

Speaking of Benton Lake, this was the first time we’d birded there in mid-May and it was interesting to note who was home. Usually, for instance, there are thousands of breeding Franklin’s Gulls, but we saw only a couple of dozen. Ditto for Eared Grebes which can dot the lake in the many hundreds. We counted fewer than one hundred, though couldn’t accurately assess the far sides of the upper lake where they mostly hang out. On the other hand, we saw more White-faced Ibises than we’d ever seen—about seventy. It’s hard to make any generalizations from this since the bar charts show that all of these birds should be there in strong numbers now, but we did feel that some of the birds are arriving a bit late this year.

**A great bonus to birding this time of the year was witnessing several species courting and mating, including these Western Grebes.**

Other great birds we saw or heard included Yellow-breasted Chat, a lagging Snow Goose, a Horned Grebe, Cassin’s Vireo, Chestnut-collared and Thick-billed Longspurs, Wilson’s Phalarope, Swainson’s Hawk, and the marsh trifecta of Sora, Virginia Rail, and Wilson’s Snipe. We definitely had a few misses, such as Common Loon, Golden Eagle, Black Tern, and Black-crowned Night Heron but we all agreed that the birds really came through for us, perhaps having heard that our efforts were going to help birds!

Our final tally came in at a mind-blowing 135 species—enough to bankrupt our sponsors and ensure that we will participate in Birdathons far into the future!

**Photography did not rank high on our list of priorities during Birdathon, but this Dark-eye Junco with prey did pose for my best ever DEJU shot.**

Bird ID Answers: Long-billed Curlew (1), American Avocets (2), Marbled Godwits (5).

Books for the Happy Holiday Birder (FSB Shopping Guide, Part 2)

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If you’re like me, you never read quite as many books as you’d like. This year, though, I was very fortunate to read and review some outstanding bird-related titles that you’re going to want to consider for your holiday buying. Most—but not all—of these were published in 2025 or late 2024. I’ve also included a few books that aren’t solely about birds—but give great insights into how to protect them. Of course, you will want to begin your shopping with eight or ten copies of my book Birding for Boomers—And Everyone Else Brave Enough to Embrace the World’s Most Rewarding and Frustrating Activity. This popular gift book has received half a dozen awards and even made a couple of bestseller’s lists. Once you’ve placed that order, however, you’ll want to check out the titles below. Please note: we receive no compensation for any of these recommendations (other than a free review copy or two), so the thoughts are all our own. Enjoy!

Purely Enjoyable Bird Storytelling

Let’s start with the “most fun” category of reading—great storytelling that just happens to be about birds. In the past, I’ve recommended such titles as Christopher Skaife’s The Ravenmaster, Joshua Hammer’s The Falcon Thief, and Tim Gallagher’s classic, Imperial Dreams. My favorite title from this year’s reading is Tim Birkhead’s The Great Auk: Its Extraordinary Life, Hideous Death and Mysterious Afterlife. This wonderful, often whimsical tale focuses on an extinct species most of us have heard of, but know little about. Birkhead gets totally into Bird Nerd mode by both explaining the biology and history of the Great Auk, and tracing some of the antics of egg collectors who were totally obsessed with obtaining Great Auk eggs. You’ll love this! See our full review here.

The Great Auk by Tim Birkhead (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Also on the short list for this category is Bruce M. Beehler’s Flight of the Godwit, a must-read for anyone interested in the remarkable lives of shorebirds—and who isn’t? Through the tales of his own peregrinations, Beehler follows the migrations of many of North America’s most charismatic shorebirds, telling us all kinds of cool things that I certainly never knew before. See our full review here.

Birding Memoirs

My top pick for this category is Christian Cooper’s 2023 book, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World. I admit that I put off reading this book for a couple of years after it came out. It’s sheer popularity made me insanely jealous as an author, but once I picked it up, I was captivated. Cooper’s down-to-earth honesty about his life and passion for birds sucked me right in, both with its engaging storytelling and how it broadened my perspective on birding in our culture.

My second pick for this category is Richard L. Hutto’s new book, A Beautifully Burned Forest: Learning to Celebrate Severe Forest Fire. This book is half memoir and half science book and I enjoyed both parts equally. Perhaps as a fellow Southern Californian, I especially related to Hutto’s boyhood experiences exploring the chaparral ecosystem, but I also appreciated Hutto’s impassioned plea to bring common sense to fire management, especially when it comes to protecting burned forests from the ravages of so-called “salvage” logging. See our full review here.

Oh, and if you’re wanting to learn all about Braden’s and my early years of birding, don’t miss my classic first adult book, Warblers and Woodpeckers: A Father-Son Big Year of Birding!

In-Depth Group Guides

Advanced Bird Nerds will definitely want to add Amar Ayyash’s The Gull Guide: North America to their holiday shopping lists this year. Like most birders, I have been—and remain—incredibly intimidated by gulls. Sure, I recognize the adult plumages of many species, but when you start getting into hybrid gulls and first-, second-, and third-year plumage variations, my brain and confidence begin to melt. The Gull Guide does not solve this problem, but it does accomplish two important things. First, it gives great insight into gulls for the casual birder. Second, it offers myriad minute details for those who are bound and determined to become experts on everything gull. Both of these things are accomplished with an extensive, remarkable collection of photos that serve to educate and guide. See our full review here.

A less technical book that may be more to the taste of the casual birder is The Shorebirds of North America: A Natural History and Photographic Celebration by Pete Dunne and Kevin T. Karlson. This beautiful book strikes a nice balance between detail and readability. A lot, but not all, of the information is fairly general, but the photos are wonderful and if you’re a shorb fan, you will enjoy it. See our full review here.

Three More for the Planet

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention three more titles that made a big impact on me this year. The first is Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie by Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty. I thought I knew all about the tragic history of the destruction of America’s grasslands. I did not. This highly readable book provides astonishing insights into how we lost most of our grasslands—and why that destruction continues today. Grassland birds are our most imperiled group of birds, losing at least forty percent of their collective populations in just the last fifty years. If you care about these animals and want to know what we can do to slow their precipitous demise, please read this one!

Similarly, Jordan Thomas’s When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World, gives us an inside look at the often counterproductive politics and decision-making behind today’s “fire fighting industrial complex.” With riveting storytelling and astonishing revelations, this is a perfect companion to Hutto’s A Beautifully Burned Forest.

And if you’re wrestling with how to keep from being overwhelmed in today’s world, where we are confronted by one environmental threat after another, I highly recommend the late Thich Nhat Hanh’s Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet. I read a few pages of this every morning and I gotta say that it helps keep me sane in our complicated, highly imperiled world. Not only does it raise serious questions about how we all live, it provides approaches and encouragement for how each of us can truly make a difference.

Don’t miss our holiday guides to birding equipment and, in our next post, charitable giving!