Category Archives: Grosbeaks

Arenal for Antbirds: Birding Costa Rica, Part 2

Like all FSB posts, this one is written by REAL PEOPLE. Feel free to share it and support real writers and artists everywhere by shunning artificial intelligence. Despite the hype, AI is not “just a tool.” Its primary utility these days is to increase profits by putting people out of work. Don’t make it easy for the giant corporations that control it and are participating in the greatest theft of intellectual and artistic property the world has ever known.

After our surprising morning birding near San Jose’s Juan Santamaría International Airport (see our previous post), Braden and I wasted no time heading into the heart of the region where we would spend the next nine days—the northern Caribbean slope of Costa Rica. Our first destination? The flanks of Arenal Volcano.

Despite having spent more than two months in Costa Rica back in 1994 (when I was writing my books The Forest in the Clouds and Monteverde: Science and Scientists in a Costa Rican Cloud Forest), I had never before explored this region. During his semester abroad here, however, Braden had thoroughly scoured the country for birds and had put together an itinerary that would give us the most bang for our birding buck. The Arenal area—near the bustling tourist town of La Fortuna—held many avian riches, but Braden and I had one group of birds we especially wanted to see: antbirds.

**The area around Arenal Volcano was the first major destination of our nine-day itinerary. Unfortunately, heavy rains greeted us during this supposed dry season!**

If you’re unfamiliar with them, antbirds are a group of birds that shadow army ant swarms—not to eat them, but to snag the many other invertebrates that the swarms dislodge during their ravenous raiding parties. I had seen many ant swarms during my time in Costa Rica, but again (and tragically), that was before I became a birder and if any antbirds were around, I had cluelessly overlooked them. Braden had, of course, been more alert and seen several kinds of antbirds—but never in the classic “insect-palooza” situation one reads about in scientific narratives.

**Braden and I looked forward to finding an antbird flock as much as any other birds on our trip. Note the army ants below the leaf upon which this Bicolored Antbird stands.**

We got our first shot at antbirds on our second morning in the country when we birded the internationally famous Arenal Observatory Lodge & Trails, a rather pricey destination with a fabulous sweep of nature to offer visitors. Fortunately, you don’t have to book a room to bird the place, but can simply pay a fee to spend the day. Unfortunately, waves of heavy rain greeted Braden and me when we arrived. Don’t get me wrong. We still had an incredible day here, including bird lists totaling more than 100 species and a fantastic sighting of a northern tamandua, a small, incredibly shy species of anteater—a first for both of us. Alas, we got only a brief glimpse of a single antbird—a Spotted Antbird—and encountered no army ant swarms where more antbirds might be plying their trade.

**On our first day of antbird searching, we saw only a single Spotted Antbird that didn’t happen to be following any army ants. Still, a gorgeous creature, verdad?** **(Note: the featured image at the beginning of this post shows a female Spotted Antbird!)**

Still hopeful, the next morning we headed to another nearby spot, a combo nature area and zip-lining destination called Sky Adventures. And guess what? It was again pouring down rain! After spending the previous day pretty much soaked, neither of us looked forward to another day of damp garments and soggy boots. A ray of hope was that one of the Sky Adventures guides told us that he had seen antbirds only the day before and even told us where to look.

**Braden wondered if he would see any life birds on this Costa Rican adventures, but quickly spotted this Black-headed Tody-flycatcher, the first of FOUR lifers he would collect this day!**

In this kind of weather, we had the trails pretty much to ourselves, and we realized that there was no shortage of birds around us. I should backtrack a bit and explain that while more than a third of the Costa Rican birds I was seeing were lifers, Braden had already seen so many birds in the country that he wondered if he’d get any lifers on our entire trip. That question got answered pretty quickly as we began crossing a spectacular hanging bridge over a lush ravine. Almost immediately, Braden said, “Black-headed Tody-Flycatcher!” Sure enough, on a branch hanging over the bridge, we spotted one of the cutest birds in the tropics—and a lifer for both of us! In fact, a huge variety of amazing birds seemed to be hanging out around the bridge, and before long a yellow and black bird landed just below us. Braden got even more excited by this one. “Black-thighed Grosbeak!” he exclaimed. Ka-ching! His second lifer in ten minutes!

Braden’s second life bird of the day, a Black-thighed Grosbeak, put in a leisurely appearance just below the hanging bridge. Look closely and you can even see the black thighs—though this is still one of the worst bird names ever!

Still, we hadn’t forgotten the antbirds and pressed across the bridge and up a winding trail. And at a sharp left, suddenly, there they were. Antbirds!

I confess that it took both of us a few minutes to embrace exactly what we were looking at. Columns of army ants marched along both sides of the trail, and the antbirds skittered and skaddled all about us.

**Braden, looking happily in shock at finding his best antbird mixed-flock ever!**

According to Vallely’s and Dyer’s Birds of Central America, Costa Rica hosts nine species of antbirds and we recognized four working the ant columns around us. These included Bicolored, Spotted, and Zelodon’s. It also included the one we both most wanted to see. “I’ve got an Ocellated!” Braden shouted with glee—his third lifer of the day.

**One of our top targets of our entire trip, Ocellated Antbirds gave us extensive, if very quick, looks for our full ant swarm visit.**

Why were we so excited about this bird? All antbirds are subtly beautiful, but Ocellated has the most distinct patterns of any Costa Rican species. It sports gorgeous blue, black, and rufous colors around the face and eye, and a remarkable scalloped pattern of feathers down its back and chest. As thrilled as we were to find it, we were even more thrilled to watch what the antbirds were doing.

**Only a single female Zeladon’s Antbird joined the ant swarm, and apparently these do not usually follow mixed flocks, and are not obligate ant swarm feeders. Males are black instead of brown.**

Back and forth they darted snagging insects, spiders, and other arthropods that were startled by or fleeing from the army ants. Braden and I paced back and forth, mesmerized by this performance. At least fifteen or twenty antbirds surrounded us, the most abundant being the Bicolored, who were also the least shy. WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW!

Antbirds, though, aren’t the only birds that join in on following army ant columns. As we watched, we also saw Wedge-billed Woodcreepers, Northern Barred-Woodcreepers, and Fawn-throated Foliage Gleaners. As a bonus, the rain had let up by now, letting us fully enjoy what might be for me a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. In fact, we spent at least half an hour with these remarkable birds, trying to grasp exactly what they were doing and just appreciating that things like this could still happen in the world. Finally, as the trail’s foot traffic increased, we moved on.

**Woodcreepers can be intimidating birds to identify, so I relished spending time with several species at the ant swarm, including this Northern Barred-Woodcreeper.**

We, of course, saw many more species on this outing—including Braden’s fourth lifer of the day, a White-throated Shrike-Tanager—but it was the antbirds that would stay with us as we headed to our next, equally spectacular destination, Caño Negro wetlands.

Our Sky Adventures checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S303092147

Redstart Rendezvous at Sears Island, Maine (Maine to Montana, Part 3)

2 Replies

Today, we are pleased to offer the third in Braden’s series about his adventures driving across the country from Maine to Montana. Already, it’s been an incredible birding journey—and he’s not even out of Maine! Sneed is also pleased to announce that two of his books, Birding for Boomers and Like No Other, have been named finalists for the High Plains International Book Awards. We hope some of you Montana residents will join Sneed for the celebration and to crown the winners at the awards ceremony in Billings on October 4th!

I had never seen so many American Redstarts. The birches and maples standing on the northern tip of Sears Island, at times, had more warblers on their branches than leaves. According to Wesley Hutchins, this was the norm for Sears Island during spring, and part of the reason why he’d been wanting to bring me here since we’d become friends four years ago.

I’d met Wes a month or two after arriving at the University of Maine, and thanks to the hours and days we’d spent together exploring the forests and coasts of the state, I now considered him one of my closest friends. Wes and I kept in close contact during the summers when we worked out-of-state (California and Pennsylvania for me, New York for him), keeping each other updated on all of the awesome birds we were seeing around the country. He’d graduated a year before me, but still visited UMaine every week to spend time with me and his other friends there. I had never visited his hometown of Belfast, however, despite it being only an hour away from the campus where I’d gone to college. This week, I was bent on changing that, and now here I was birding the spots that he’d fallen in love with over the last few years.

**Selfie of me and Wes at one of his favorite birding spots, Sears Island, Maine.**

“It’s really weird seeing you here—in the good way!” Wes admitted, and I nodded. I’m sure I would feel the same way once I finally convinced him to visit me in Montana.

We’d spent the previous evening walking around Belfast Harbor, a pleasant little cove tucked away into the side of Maine’s midcoast region and another one of Wes’s favorite birding spots. This morning, however, he’d taken me to Sears Island, Waldo County’s best birding hotspot and a prime location to see migrating warblers. Upon setting foot on the island, I began to notice warblers—redstarts, a Chestnut-sided, a Northern Waterthrush—but nothing out of the ordinary. I’d been seeing warblers like this all week. We wandered a bit, down into the forested center of the island, but things stayed eerily quiet. After about twenty minutes, Wes turned to me and said, “We should go back to the northern point. That’s usually where all the action is.”

**Unlike the other warblers, Sears Island’s Ovenbirds were keeping pretty quiet on the day Wes and I visited.**

I felt skeptical. I much prefer walking around to staying in one spot to bird, but Wes had the local knowledge so I followed his lead. We walked back and we immediately began to see birds we hadn’t seen just twenty minutes ago—a Blackburnian Warbler and a couple of Magnolias. Then, I looked up.

In the sky above us floated dozens of warblers, all seeping and chipping as they struggled to combat the winds rushing over the island. Many of the birds faced north, while others zoomed in from the north, landing in the trees directly to our right and left. We stationed ourselves directly in front of a flowering apple tree that seemed to be overflowing the warblers and began calling things out.

“I’ve got two Magnolias on the same branch.”

“Is that a Tenness—no, it’s just a REVI.”

“Here’s our third Wilson’s of the day, a nice male!”

“Six redstarts in this one tree alone. Scratch that, seven.”

**One of approximately one hundred American Redstarts we counted at Sears Island.**

What we were experiencing was a river of warblers. Every three minutes or so, the birds we’d been staring at would vacate and be replaced by new birds dropping in from above, all slowly making their way toward the causeway that connected Sears Island to the mainland. One in every three warblers was an American Redstart, and there were easily hundreds of warblers. Mixed in with the warblers were small numbers of other species: vireos, flycatchers, a couple Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. It was exactly the experience I’d hoped to have when I’d signed up to go to school on the east coast. The West doesn’t do songbird migration like the East does, especially when it comes to warblers. Montana has fourteen regularly-occurring species of warblers. On Sears Island, we’d seen fourteen species in a matter of minutes.

**Rose-breasted Grosbeaks added further spice to an incredible wave of warblers migrating in!**

My focus had been warblers the whole week, in fact, with the notable exception of the Acadia Puffin Cruise (see our recent post, Puffin Party). Just a day or two earlier, I’d spent two nights in Portland, Maine, with my good friend Hayden Page. We’d birded hard, visiting many of Maine’s famous birding hotspots like Scarborough Marsh, Laudholm Farm and Portland’s urban Capisic Park. The morning we’d hit Laudholm Farm had been incredible, with 81 species at the preserve including seventeen warbler species and a White-eyed Vireo, a rarity this far north. At an airport in Brunswick, Main, we’d also chased a Blue-winged Warbler—another southerner not supposed to be here. In the coming decades it wasn’t hard to imagine both the vireo and the warbler showing up more and more frequently in Maine thanks to warming temperatures and changes in habitat.

**A Blue-winged Warbler—an unusual migrant that may become much more common in Maine as global temperatures warm.**

The week had also exposed me to the diversity of Maine’s habitats. Living in Bangor during the colder months, my impressions of the state had mostly been of woods. And it is true that Maine has woods—it’s the most forested state in the country. But southern Maine, especially, holds its fair share of unique ecosystems. Kennebunk Plains Preserve, which I’d visited twice this spring, is a patch of grassland with Vesper and Grasshopper Sparrows and Eastern Meadowlarks. It is regularly burned to keep shrubs and trees from encroaching on it. Grassland used to be far more common in the state, following the intensive logging of the 1800 and 1900s, but now that the forest had grown back Kennebunk Plains was one of the only spots for certain species to be found.

Scarborough Marsh, which my dad and I had visited when we’d come out to Maine in fall of 2021 (see this post), held the largest chunk of salt marsh in the state. This habitat, which looks like a savannah floating on the edge of the sea, is also threatened, both in the state and worldwide, thanks to rising sea levels. The birds that live here include Willets and Saltmarsh Sparrows, the latter of which was the focus of my Honors Thesis Project and is one of North America’s most endangered birds.

**A Willet, one of our most common large shorebirds, at Scarborough Marsh.**

Southern Maine is also a prime location for sandy beaches, and both the birds and the tourists know it. Maine’s coastal towns go from sleepy and affordable in winter to bustling and expensive during the summer, when Americans from all over flock to them to enjoy the summer. This has created problems with the wildlife that depend on sandy beaches as their homes, namely the Piping Plover and Least Tern, two species who spend their days hunting for invertebrates along the coastline and breed in the grassy dunes just upland of the beach. Thankfully, the state of Maine has put in a lot of work to close off these dunes to tourists and their destructive dogs, allowing the birds to nest in a fragile security. At Pine Point, just five minutes from Scarborough Marsh, Hayden and I got to watch a trio of Piping Plovers chasing each other around the beach at close range. It was also at Pine Point that I got to see my lifer Roseate Terns, along with the more common Least and Commons.

**Keeping Piping Plover populations going requires careful monitoring and protection from the swarms of people and dogs crowding East Coast beaches each summer.**

Though I’d always joked about the cold weather, lack of mountains, and isolation of Maine, I was certainly going to miss the state I’d spent four years getting to know. The places AND the people. This was especially present in my mind after giving Wes a hug goodbye and driving away from Belfast, from the University, and from some of the best friends I’d ever made. I would make sure to see them again, though it would never quite be the same. Thankfully, I had one more night to spend in Maine before leaving, though it wouldn’t be in the comfort of a friend’s air mattress. No, I was headed for the last county I’d never visited in the state: Franklin County, the land of wind, mountains and moose.

To learn more about Sears Island and the ongoing fight over developing it, click here: https://friendsofsearsisland.org/wind-port-fact-sheet/

**Sears Island provided just the kind of warbler experience I’d been hoping for my past four years in Maine.**

Wedding Birding in Washington State, Part II

6 Replies

Braden and I write FatherSonBirding in the hopes of sharing the wonders of birds and birding, and the urgency to protect them. We do not accept advertising or donations, but if you’d like to support our work, please consider buying *NEW* copies of some of Sneed’s books—First-Time Japan, for instance, or my forthcoming picture book for younger readers, Like No Other: Earth’s Coolest One-of-a-Kind Creatures, available for pre-order now. We appreciate your interest and hope you will keep reading!

In case you missed Wedding Birding Part I, click here!

Saturday was the long-anticipated wedding day of our friends, Jazz and Brad, but the Big Event wasn’t kicking off until 3:30 p.m. True to my recent trend, I awoke at 3:30 a.m. with ample time to hit the birding spot that I most looked forward to on the trip: March Point. Why? Because I thought it might offer my best opportunity to find both seabirds and shorebirds. Looking at a map, in fact, March Point looked like a wonderful, natural area and I was already envisioning pristine beaches and offshore waters loaded with birds. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at 6:00 a.m. to find that March Point is actually the site of a gigantic Marathon Petroleum refinery!

**March Point was not *quite* the undisturbed natural area I was expecting!**

It was a cold, blustery morning, but undeterred, I pulled over and scanned the offshore waters. I spotted several groups of presumed Pelagic Cormorants, but precious little else on the waters or the shore. With some persistence, I did locate another Pigeon Guillemot out near the ginormous pier jutting out into Puget Sound, but it was slim pickins.

**What do you suppose this Pelagic Cormorant is about to eat? I’m guessing an eel-like fish called a wrasse!**

I kept driving, pulling over now and then to scan the shore—no doubt closely monitored by the refinery’s security team. Finally, at one pull-out, I spotted a bird near the top of my trip wish list: a Black Oystercatcher. I watched this magnificent bird from my car for several minutes before it flew off, leaving a smile on my face.

**This Black Oystercatcher at March Point definitely strolled into contention for “Trip Bird” honors for our Wedding Day weekend.**

Turning around, I made my way back around immense oil storage tanks and stopped to study some Glaucous-winged X Western hybrid gulls. It took some research and a discussion with Braden to figure out exactly what these gulls were. Glaucous-winged Gulls are known for beautiful soft gray wings and wing tips, but all of the gulls I was seeing looked too dark—yet not dark enough to be Western Gulls. According to Braden, though, this part of Washington State was dead center in the transition zone between the two species, and accordingly, most of the birds were hybrids.

**This Glaucous-winged X Western hybrid gull is typical of the gulls I saw during our entire trip to Washington: too dark for Glaucous-winged, too light for Western. Very educational!**

On my way back to the hotel, I stopped at Padilla Bay at the base of March Point for a nice visit with some warblers and swallows. There, I heard my year’s first Black-headed Grosbeak giving off its frenetic robin-like song. Then, it was back to Burlington to prepare for the wedding.

The wedding was a smash hit, full of love and music and joy. And never fear, dear readers, I did amass an eBird list of six species at the wedding venue, including the year’s first look at a Black-headed Grosbeak, singing in celebration of Jazz and Brad’s big day. Oh, and they (Jazz and Brad, not the grosbeaks) served Thai food at the wedding. How good is that???

Alas, the next day, we were due to return to Seattle for our flight home. Fortunately, we didn’t need to be at the airport until noon or one o’clock, leaving time for one last morning birding adventure. I really wasn’t sure where I should go. I wasn’t having much luck along the coast, and felt I’d seen most of the forest birds that interested me. But there were two more species I wanted to take a shot at: Black-throated Gray Warbler and Red-breasted Sapsucker.

**Ted Reep Park offered the trip’s last birding opportunity—and my best shot at seeing both Red-breasted Sapsuckers and Black-throated Gray Warblers.** **A bit of bush-whacking required!**

It had been years since I’d seen either one of these birds and, well, I was missing them. Lucky me, eBird showed a spot only a mile from our hotel which had recorded both birds in the past month. I wasn’t sure what my chances of finding them might be, but after a quick bowl of oatmeal, I made my way over to Ted Reep Park. I parked in the deserted YMCA lot, despite warning signs threatening that I would be towed. After all, I was a member of the Missoula YMCA!

From the time I pulled up, the spot looked—or rather, sounded—promising. Merlin’s Sound ID immediately picked up White-crowned Sparrow, Black-headed Grosbeak, Warbling Vireo, Song Sparrow, Yellow Warbler, and more, and I soon started seeing some of these birds.

**You just gotta love Song Sparrows. Not only are they incredibly handsome critters, they often pose for close-up photographs!**

This was thick riparian habitat, however, where visuals were hard to come by and most birding was by ear—not ideal for someone like myself with hearing disabilities and a brain that had trouble remembering bird vocalizations. My new hearing aids were a vast improvement over my old ones, though, and with the help of Sound ID I began teasing out most of the species around me. Then, I heard something that got me really excited: a stuttering drumming sound, like a car having trouble starting up! A sapsucker! But which one?

A quick look at my Sibley app told me that Red-breasted was the only sapsucker remotely likely to be in this area, so I plunged into the woods, following the trail toward the stutter-step drumming. Predictably, the trail grew more and more sketchy, and I soon found myself crawling under and over logs that had fallen across the path. Nevertheless, after five minutes, I found myself standing directly beneath the sapsucker drumming.

There were at least two sapsuckers—but probably three or four—and it became evident that they were dueling, perhaps over territories or mates. But darn it, try as I might, I could not spot any of them against the backlit tree trunks and branches! Just as frustrating, the birds kept moving around, so like a Keystone Cop I chased the birds up and down the trail. Finally, I despaired of getting a look at any of them, but by now I at least was confident that these were indeed Red-breasted Sapsuckers. And wouldn’t you know, as soon as I decided that, two of the birds chased each other right by me, their red heads clearly visible even in the dark forest!

Happy, I bushwhacked through raspberry vines and a swath of chest-high grass until I ran into another trail that led me back toward my car. I still hadn’t seen a Black-throated Gray Warbler, and didn’t find one on the hike back, but I was delighted to have discovered such a wonderful birding spot. It again reaffirmed how important it is to protect natural habitats for animals and people. Bravo Washington for protecting places like Ted Reep Park!

Washington Wedding Trip Report!

I failed to capture any photos of the Red-breasted Sapsuckers, but just love this White-crowned Sparrow’s pose out at March Point. I think he’s singing “Once we all wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, we can turn this place back into the natural habitat it is meant to be!” At least that’s what Google Translate came up with.

Birding Japan: Kanazawa

4 Replies

Since we published them, our birding posts about Japan have been read in more than a dozen countries. If you are planning your own trip to Japan, you’re in luck! Sneed’s new book, FIRST-TIME JAPAN: A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE FOR THE INDEPENDENT TRAVELER, tells you everything you need to know about how to plan your trip to this remarkable, yet sometimes intimidating, country. Order now by clicking here.

Welcome to our Japan birding posts. In this edition, Sneed explores the “less visited” city of Kanazawa, a place that would turn out to be perhaps one of their favorite stops on trip—and with some surprising birds. If you are just tuning in to Japan, be sure to check in on our last post from Kyoto!

Leaving Kyoto, our (non-bullet) train took us through my favorite scenery yet in Japan. Just north of Kyoto, the train hugged the shoreline of Lake Biwa for more than half an hour. Seeing the lake on a map, I envisioned a forested wilderness, marked perhaps by some resorts or getaways, but the entire lakeshore was surprisingly built up with cities, towns, and farmland. Alas, the train was too far away from the lake to identify any birds except Black Kites and crows, though I did see an enticing shorebird flying across a field. Passing through a tunnel, we then entered picturesque mountain areas where I looked in vain for a Brown Dipper in the roaring streams we crossed. No luck. Emerging back onto a large plain, we more or less re-entered civilization until we arrived at our next destination, Kanazawa.

**Both Tessa and I were taken with Kanazawa Castle and its grounds from the moment we approached the main entry gate.**

I had booked us a hotel right next to Kanazawa’s major tourist feature, a large castle set in a park-like setting, and as soon as we dropped our bags at the hotel, we grabbed a “set lunch” at a local café and headed straight to the castle. Tessa hadn’t seemed too impressed with other castles on the trip, but this one wowed us both—perhaps because of its dramatic approach and the glorious sakura flowers blooming at the gates. After going inside the castle, we took a wonderful walk on paths above it, where Tessa declared this was her favorite place so far on the trip. The birds also liked it well enough, with the omnipresent bulbuls, crows, and kites surrounding us. Descending back toward the castle, though, I spotted a trio of Oriental Greenfinches, and then a bird that stopped me in my tracks. “Oh my god,” I said out loud, and hurried forward hoping the bird wouldn’t move. It didn’t, and I got my first look at another bird at the top of my “To See” list: Daurian Redstart!

**This male Daurian Redstart just made my day—and, of course, my life list. I love the blooming sakura flowers behind it.**

As delighted as I was with the redstart, I saved my real birding enthusiasm for the next morning when I left Tessa to hang out and grabbed a cab out to Kenmin Seaside Park, perhaps the only place left on the trip where I might see shorebirds or pelagic species. As soon as I arrived I glimpsed a departing tit of some kind and saw multiple Dusky Thrushes and White-eared Starlings feeding in a field. I hurried past them until I reached my primary destination, the beach. Alas, this was no natural beach. Giant cement breakwaters were piled up offshore and it was clear the area had been heavily worked over by dredging and industry. I saw a few flying birds too distant to identify and a flock of cormorants that took off long before I got close enough to attempt an ID, but that was it. No shorebirds. No waders. Just trash littering an evidently sterile expanse of sand.

**Trash has become a scourge on beaches throughout the planet. I was hoping Japan’s dedication to cleanliness might make this Kanazawa beach an exception, but no dice.**

I nonetheless started trudging my way north, planning to round the tip of the small peninsula and make my way back to the park to try some forest birding. Suddenly, my eyes caught movement. There among the trash, I saw one tiny shorebird, then another. I guessed right away they might be plovers and as I moved closer, the yellow rings around their eyes cinched it: Little Ringed Plovers—another life bird and perhaps my most rewarding Japanese species yet. I wish I could tell you that this find unleashed a flood of shorebird sightings, but no. They were it—two hardy survivors on a desolate beach.

**Definitely some of my favorite birds of the entire trip, this pair of Little Ringed Plovers were the sole shorebirds on the vast desert of beach next to Kenmin Seaside Park.**

Fortunately, the birding got significantly better as I made my way back toward the main park. I picked up two more lifers in quick succession: Meadow Bunting and Asian House-Martin. Back in the forest, I encountered my best mixed flock of the trip, containing Japanese and Varied Tits, two Japanese Pygmy Woodpeckers, a Warbling White-eye, and a Japanese Bush Warbler.

I had to text Braden a photo of this one to know what it was. I had studied Meadow Buntings a number of times, but for some reason the real thing didn’t register.

My time to meet my cab was, unfortunately, running out quickly, but as I hurried along a trail, I noticed three birds foraging under some trees. The first was a Dusky Thrush and I automatically assumed that the others were, too. I was wrong. They were Hawfinches! Braden and I had really hoped to see these odd chubby birds in Amsterdam or Israel in 2019, but to no avail. Now, on the other end of the Asian continent, I was staring at two of them cocking their heads at me in between going about their business. It was a great way to end the morning, and fixed Kanazawa as one of my favorite birding spots in Japan.

Sneed’s Kenmin Seaside Park eBird checklist.

An Owl a Day . . .

8 Replies

Our recent post on Montana’s famous Northern Hawk Owl generated an astonishing two million views . . . or was that, er, two hundred? Either way, that’s pretty good for us, but it did put us in a quandary over how to follow up. Our answer? Look for more owls!

But first, I promised you some other winter birds. As revealed in past posts, Braden and I have discovered that one of the best way to make sure we see certain winter birds is to go to Discovery—ski area, that is. This year, on the way back from seeing the Northern Hawk Owl, we detoured through Anaconda to see what we could find. Fate seemed to shine on us as we spotted a Golden Eagle just outside of Anaconda, but when we pulled into the crowded Discovery parking lot, we didn’t see a single bird. “Hm, that’s strange,” Braden murmured. “And we forgot to bring bird seed with us,” I added.

**Though more common than some other winter birds, getting to see Steller’s Jays up close made us realize anew how spectacular these birds are.**

Prepared for disappointment, we climbed out of the minivan, cameras and binoculars slung around our shoulders, and began trekking around the parking lot. After fifty yards, Braden stopped and said, “Hear that? Clark’s Nutcracker.” We followed the harsh calls toward the back of Discovery’s first aid hut, and saw a promising red flash of something flying. Drawing closer, we hit a veritable bonanza of winter birds cashing in on a generous scattering of bird seed behind the hut. Mountain Chickadees flew out to greet us first, but we soon encountered almost every other bird we could imagine: Steller’s Jays, Clark’s Nutcrackers, Evening Grosbeaks, and our favorites, Pine Grosbeaks. Each had a different strategy for attacking the food supply and we stood mesmerized for twenty minutes watching them.

**This male Pine Grosbeak may be one of my favorite bird photos I’ve ever taken. Gotta love the pose, which shows off the bird’s “Ooh” and “Ah” factors to the max.** **Good thing I got it, too, as the bird signed with a major talent agency minutes afterward.**

“The only thing we haven’t seen,” I said, “are Canada Jays.” As we began walking back toward the car, however, Braden spotted a silhouette on top of a distant tree. He raised his binoculars for a moment, then turned to me. “Guess what it is,” he said. “Canada Jay?” I hazarded. “Yeah.” We laughed and moments later had a great photo shoot with two CAJAs that ventured closer. Leaving Discovery, we drove some side roads looking for Great Gray Owls, and the bird Braden most wanted to see before he returned to Maine for spring semester: Northern Pygmy-owl. Unfortunately, this winter the Owl Gods have decreed a limit of one owl per day for us and we saw no other Strigiformes (the bird order of owls) for the day.

Though not exactly rare, sightings of Canada Jays in Montana are unpredictable, so getting good looks at these “ski area” birds is especially appreciated. These birds apparently survive by stashing perishable food under the loose bark of trees for later retrieval. **Climate change may be eroding the conditions the birds need to survive along the southern parts of their range.**

Still, we both really wanted to see a NPOW before Braden left, so a couple days later we headed out to Maclay Flat, where we’d seen our very first NPOW in 2016. They weren’t reported too frequently, but they were being seen, and as soon as we got out of the car, we heard the distinctive periodic advertising call of a Northern Pygmy-owl. We followed the sound toward the river, and then crunched through snow down a side trail—only to discover a photographer set up with a very long camera lens. He silently pointed up into a tree and we worked around until we could see it—a small, fuzzy blob about thirty feet above us.

While owls aren’t guaranteed, Maclay Flat is definitely one the best places in Montana to see owls. We were glad this Northern Pygmy-owl came through for us on Braden’s last birding expedition before returning to college.

Braden and I grinned and gave each other a quiet Hi-Five. After taking some photos, we settled in to watch it. The photographer said he’d heard at least three NPOWs calling back and forth—which seemed odd in broad daylight, and seemingly well before breeding season. Biologists I’ve talked to, though, emphasize how territorial these birds are, so perhaps the vocalizations help maintain their territories all year long. Whatever was going on, we—like most people—can’t get enough of owls and once again felt privileged to enjoy them as part of our world. It helped soften the blow of missing Braden when I took him to the airport a couple mornings later. Just not enough.