Category Archives: Listing

Birding Festivals of the West 2026!

As April proceeds apace, it’s time to greet our spring birds with the word “Tadaima!”—Japanese for “Welcome Home!” However, it’s also an excellent time to finally do something you may have contemplated for years: attend a birding festival!

Never fear, it’s not too late. Particularly as recent geopolitical events make you rethink vacationing in Paris or visiting the Egyptian pyramids, birders have the chance to seize opportunities on our very doorstep. During the past few years, Braden and I have participated in a number of birding festivals and they have always been huge fun. They have allowed us to explore places and see birds that we never imagined, and connect with great birders from all around the world. Pick up a copy of BWD or Birding and you’ll see that there are literally dozens of birding festivals to choose from throughout the year. Today, I’d like to focus on three in the West that I’ll be participating in—and that you may want to consider for yourselves.

The Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival, Cortez, Colorado, May 6-10

In just three weeks, I’ll be traveling to the Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival in Cortez, Colorado, which runs from May 6 to May 10. Fun story: I was invited to this year’s festival because of a blog post I wrote last summer called In Search of the Green-tailed Towhee. The UMMV organizing committee happened to have chosen that bird as this year’s “mascot” and when they read the blog, Voila!, they invited me to give the keynote!

**The charismatic Green-tailed Towhee is this year’s featured bird at the Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival—but is only one of the cool specialties participants are likely to see!**

Now I’ll admit that I’d never considered birding southwest Colorado, but as I delved into the various field trips, I grew more and more excited. The variety of birds and habitats in this part of the country is fabulous and includes many species that can be a challenge to see elsewhere. 180 species have been observed at the festival including waterfowl, shorebirds, raptors, and songbirds. Most exciting to me are the Southwestern birds I rarely get a chance to see including Black-throated and Sagebrush Sparrows, Gray Flycatcher, Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay, Scaled Quail, Sage Thrasher, Virginia’s Warbler, Juniper Titmouse, and at top of my list, Gray Vireo.

**The Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival not only offers up great birds, but a chance to explore some of our nation’s most iconic scenery and cultural sites, including Mesa Verde National Park.**

What really sets this festival apart is the chance to bird while exploring some of the most breathtaking scenery in America. Think dramatic canyon country like Mesa Verde National Park (see photo above) and Ute Mountain Tribal Park. This Four Corners region is loaded with archaeological sites and a unique culture found nowhere else in the world, and just begs to be explored. In fact, my wife and I are going down a couple of days early to do just that. To get there, we’re flying into Durango and renting a car. If this intrigues you as much as it intrigues us, do check it out! https://utemountainmesaverdebirdingfestival.com/

Wings Across the Big Sky, Kalispell, Montana, June 12-14

This will be Braden’s and my fourth time participating in our home state birding festival, and we couldn’t be more excited. One of the things that makes this festival special is that it travels to different parts of the state each year, allowing birders to explore Montana’s extensive variety of habitats and birds. Braden and I are leading two field trips, including one to the CSKT Bison Range, but all of the trips offer a surprising wealth of bird life. Montana is especially known for its raptors and grassland birds, but most people don’t realize that it’s a great place to see waterfowl and songbirds, too.

Just one of dozens of field trips at the 2024 Wings Across the Big Sky festival, including trip leaders, field biologist Hilary Turner (far left) and Andrew Guttenberg (third from left). And yes, that’s Braden towering over Hilary on the left!

If you’ve never visited Montana before, I highly recommend the field trips to Glacier National Park. At least ten kinds of warblers can be found in the park, along with four kinds of chickadees (think Boreal Chickadee), and three kinds of grouse, including Spruce Grouse. The park is especially known for breeding Black Swifts, Harlequin Ducks, Common Loons, and American Dippers. Again, you might just want to come a few days early to explore on your own!

**Glacier National Park may be the best place in the Lower 48 to score breeding Harlequin Ducks! Braden and I saw this one, our lifer, on our very first Wings Across the Big Sky festival!**

Glacier, though, is not the only draw to this part of Montana. Flathead Lake is the largest natural freshwater lake in the West and hosts a great variety of birds along its shores. The Mission Mountains are truly one of the most spectacular and little-known mountain ranges in the Lower 48, and several field trips will explore the grasslands and wetlands of the Mission Valley. Passionate local trip leaders and Montana hospitality will ensure that you make this festival a regular part of your birding calendar.

For complete information, click here: Wings Across the Big Sky

Southeast Arizona Birding Festival, August 12-16, Tucson, Arizona

The Southeast Arizona Birding Festival has built a reputation as one of the nation’s premier birding festivals, and so when I was invited to speak and co-lead field trips at this year’s festival, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. Of course, the first thing you’re probably asking yourself is “Arizona? In August???” I did, but believe it or not, this is one of the best times to bird the Grand Canyon State.

**Braden contemplating a glorious sunset near the mouth of Madera Canyon—one of the field trips I’ll be co-leading during the SE Arizona Birding Festival.**

Braden and I have been lucky to bird Arizona several times. See our posts “Portal Dreaming” and “Trogons and Border Walls.” One thing that always amazes us is the variety of habitats that can be found there, including wetlands, saguaro forests, and incredible canyons. Of special note are the region’s sky islands. These are mountains and mountain ranges that rise steeply out of the desert to altitudes of over ten thousand feet. Climbing up them, you quickly transition from desert through a variety of habitats, culminating with conifer forests at the top.

**While many people travel to Arizona specifically to see the Coppery-tailed (formerly Elegant) Trogon, Arizona offers an unparalleled diversity of other specialties to US birders.**

Sky islands not only provide welcome relief from Arizona’s summer valley heat, they offer an astounding variety of birds, many of which cannot be found anywhere else in the US. On our 2022 trip to Arizona, Braden and I nabbed life bird after life bird including Coppery-tailed (formerly Elegant) Trogon, Red-faced Warbler, Olive Warbler, Scott’s Oriole, Five-striped Sparrow, Mexican Whip-poor-will, and many more.

**Yellow-eyed Juncos are just one of the many specialty birds that can be found in Arizona during the upcoming birding festival.**

In addition to speaking at this year’s festival, I will be co-leading field trips to both Madera and Ramsey Canyons—two of my favorite places I have ever birded. But my buddy Roger and I are flying down a few days early to bird on our own. Registration for the festival begins on April 28, and if you’re interested, I wouldn’t hesitate to get on the website that day to reserve your preferred trips. The festival headquarters hotel, the Tucson Doubletree, is having some reservation issues, so you may want to call them directly as soon as possible to book a room.

SE Arizona Festival Link: https://tucsonbirds.org/festival/

So that’s it for this Festivals of the West post. We hope it has inspired you to give a birding festival a try. If the above festivals are out of reach, look into a local festival near you. For a list of festivals nationwide, check out Cornell’s All About Birds website. We can almost guarantee you’ll be glad you did! And if you spot me at one of the above festivals, please come and say Howdy!

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Bluebird Day at Browns Lake!

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With all of our recent posts about Costa Rica, you’re probably wondering if we ever bird in Montana anymore! Never fear, we do—a lot! Today we report on an adventure that delivered some remarkable early migration surprises. If you’d like to support our work at FSB, please consider purchasing some of Sneed’s books shown to the right—and support a group such as Birdlife International or Audubon that is working hard to protect birds against climate change and many other perils. Remember: all of our posts are written and photographed by REAL PEOPLE!

I don’t know if it’s because of our recent trip to Costa Rica, my subsequent trip to California, or just the usual spring excitement, but I’ve felt especially eager to get out birding in Montana this spring. At least part of it has to with wanting to learn more about the timing of migration, especially in a year in which Montana hardly experienced winter. How would this impact the birds? I wondered. Would we see things showing up especially early? Fortunately, our friend Susan Snetsinger has felt just as eager to explore, so the past couple of weeks Susan and I have taken all-day adventures to some of our favorite western Montana birding locations. Two weeks ago, we visited Warm Springs and the impressively “remodeled” Lexington Street Pond and wetlands in downtown Butte. We were rewarded with a great variety of waterfowl, including Snow Geese at both locations. The highlight of the day was undoubtedly a great look at a Golden Eagle on the dirt road between Racetrack Pond and Warm Springs.

**Snow Geese are always something to celebrate in Montana—including this group at Butte’s fabulously restored Lexington Street wetlands area.**

A few days ago, though, Susan and I had a different ambition: to post the season’s first eBird checklist for Browns Lake. This is one of Braden’s and my favorite birding locations, and I don’t think it has ever failed to disappoint. Not only is it a go-to place for breeding Red-necked Grebes and Black Terns, we have found a lot of uncommon species there including Long-tailed Ducks, Pacific Loons, and Ross’s Geese. Notably, this is where Braden made the astounding discovery of a Bay-breasted Warbler two years ago—one of just a handful of sightings ever recorded from western Montana.

**Although Browns (sic) Lake is frozen for a good part of the year, it has never disappointed us as a birding destination and we were eager to see what it held so early in the spring.**

One challenge with Browns Lake is that it stays frozen until relatively late in the season and I noticed on eBird that no one had yet birded it this year. I wasn’t sure if it had begun to thaw, but I asked Susan if she was game to check it out. She was—and even brought along yummy fried egg and cheese bagels to fuel our adventures.

On the drive up Highway 200, we were rewarded by two pairs of Sandhill Cranes and a glimpse of a Mountain Bluebird—perhaps a preview of things to come? We hoped so, and upon arriving at Browns Lake, were not disappointed. Right near where Braden had discovered the Bay-breasted Warbler, we got out of the car to find a delightful “finchy” mixed flock containing Red Crossbills, Pine Siskins, Evening Grosbeaks, and Cassin’s Finches.

We’re not sure why (though fish and/or animal carcasses probably have something to do with it), but Browns Lake often boasts vigorous Bald Eagle activity—and our early spring visit was no exception. Here, two youngsters contemplate the meaning of ice on this brisk sunny day.

As the lake came into view, we were relieved to see at least a third of it offered open water—and that the waterfowl were not shy about taking advantage! Within twenty minutes, we recorded fifteen species of ducks and geese, including the year’s first Montana Northern Pintails and a lone FOY Cinnamon Teal. A flock of 18-20 Snow Geese erupted out of the fields on the far side of the lake and settled in beneath a huge irrigation line. Even though a brisk wind dropped the wind chill into the teens, we looked hard through our scope for any Ross’s Geese, but came up empty.

**Elk anyone? Even though they are mere mammals, this herd against the dramatic background induced us to pull over for an admiring look.**

As has become my new routine, I directed Susan out the far side of the lake toward the Ovando-Helmville dirt road, and we were rewarded by two Northern Shrikes (Susan is certain they were separate birds), and a couple more Mountain Bluebirds. After turning left toward Helmville, we hadn’t gone a mile when we saw a sizeable flock of birds badly backlit by the sun.

“Are they some kind of blackbirds?” Susan wondered, and they did look black because of the sun, but I didn’t know. Then, she said, “There are more bluebirds over here.” “There’s a couple over here, too,” I added, still thinking they had nothing to do with the flock we’d just seen.

The bottom line? The flock we had just observed consisted entirely of Mountain Bluebirds!

**At first, we weren’t sure what these flocking birds might be, backlit against the sun, but this photo reveals the truth.**

This blew both Susan and I away. Neither of us had ever seen more than three or four Mountain Bluebirds at a time, and had no inkling that they ever formed large flocks. Yet here was the evidence in front of us, and we spent a good fifteen minutes watching them forage and swirl around us. Once, a group of at least sixty took to the sky together, only to settle back into the grass a few moments later. Meanwhile, others kept crossing the road in front and back of us, occasionally landing on the fence next to our car.

**The Mountain Bluebirds were so active around us that I dared not hope to get a photo of one—until this guy perched 15 feet away from the car window!**

We finally pulled ourselves away, wondering if local ranchers observed this kind of grouping every year. I later read up on MOBLs and found one or two mentions of them forming flocks in winter, but it didn’t seem like a well-known phenomenon. Susan and I both agreed that these cavity-nesting birds must be migrating. From here would they spread out into the surrounding mountains? Or did they still have a long way to go before trying to find their own breeding territories? As biologist Dick Hutto had taught me, Mountain Bluebirds especially love recent burn areas where woodpeckers carve out plenty of “condos” in the dead trees (see my book Fire Birds: Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests). I wondered if, as a flock, they might be better at finding recent burn areas—or did flocking impart other benefits such as greater predator or food detection?

After the Browns Lake area, we headed toward Helena, hoping to find a recently reported Lesser Black-backed Gull. Though I’d seen this species in Israel and again in Oregon, this would be a Montana lifer for me and an outright lifer for Susan.

It was not to be.

At the Helena Regulating Reservoir, we saw plenty of gulls, but many were too far away for our scope, and the ones we did see did not have the dark wings we were looking for. The trip wasn’t a waste, however, as we observed more than sixty Common Mergansers and at least ten Red-breasted Mergansers, also clearly in migration. In fact, the window to see RBMEs is quite tight in Montana, so it was nice to pick them up for 2026.

**Though we missed the Lesser Black-backed Gull, the Helena Regulating Reservoir was hosting a “regulating” merganser-pa-looza!**

Speaking of 2026, both Braden and I have excellent chances to accidentally break our world Big Year records. My record, set last year, is 552, and only a quarter of the way into this year, I’m at 422. This is not as much of a gimme as it sounds since many of the birds I’ve seen in Costa Rica and California are birds I would normally check off in Montana, but with a little luck and persistence, I feel I will get there. Braden’s record, meanwhile, is 867 and he is already at 546, with hopes to bird abroad at least one more time this year. We no longer put a lot of stock into numbers like these, but they’re a fun thing to keep an eye on.

After saying goodbye to the Helena Regulating Reservoir, Susan and I did a little more birding and then got lunch in downtown Helena. I only mention it because we ate at an excellent little crepe place called—what else?—The Creperie. It featured outstanding food and reasonable prices. It’s open until 3 p.m. most days and is located right next to the lower entrance of the walking part of Last Chance Gulch. If you’ve got the post-birding munchies, check it out!

Our first-of-the-year Browns Lake checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S313329879

Lower 48 Life List Countdown: Crissal Thrasher

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Today, we take a break in posting about our recent Costa Rica adventure to share one of Braden’s most memorable domestic birding experiences of 2026. His mission: to see a bird with very specific habitat requirements—and one that had frustrated him several times before. If you’re in Vegas for March Madness you will definitely want to read this post!

In 2025, I saw a lot of birds. Besides international trips to Oaxaca and Costa Rica, I birded across the United States and Canada in places I’d never been before—a road trip from Maine to Montana and another from Montana to southern California, with a side detour through southeastern Arizona. Not surprisingly, I racked up tons of life birds, including Whooping Crane, Roseate Tern, Kirtland’s Warbler, Buff-breasted Flycatcher and California Gnatcatcher. As 2025 came to a close, though, I started to wonder: how many regularly-occurring US species were left out there that I haven’t seen?

In considering the question, I didn’t count Hawaiian or Alaskan birds; those are species that will take extra, dedicated trips to see. I also cut out seabirds that require pelagic boat trips, a style of birding that is exclusive, expensive, and not particularly appealing to a landlubber such as myself. My list omitted rarities—birds that do not regularly occur in the United States—because I much prefer finding a species in its proper habitat as opposed to chasing a single individual bird in the wrong place found by another birder. Finally, I did not include three species that only breed in the Florida Keys—Mangrove Cuckoo, Antillean Nighthawk and Black-whiskered Vireo—because they only occur there in summer, a decidedly miserable time to visit the Sunshine State. I also believed that I’d encounter these species elsewhere when I eventually visited the Caribbean some day.

**Before Braden’s return to Las Vegas, Least Bittern is one of just sixteen “regular” birds he needed to complete his Lower 48 life list.**

So, by my very specific standards, I came up with the following list of regularly-occurring US birds that I had yet to see as of January 1st, 2026:

Least Bittern
Chihuahuan Raven
King Rail
Swainson’s Warbler
Black-chinned Sparrow
Fulvous Whistling-Duck
Connecticut Warbler
Golden-cheeked Warbler
Black-capped Vireo
Island Scrub-Jay
Smith’s Longspur
Colima Warbler
Boreal Owl
Lesser Prairie-chicken
Gunnison Sage-grouse
Crissal Thrasher

16 birds. 16 birds left in the US that I care about seeing that I’ve never seen before. Some of them I have pursued many times (looking at you, Least Bittern and Boreal Owl). Others, I’ve never even tried for once, because I’ve never been within their ranges.

When I realized that I would be driving back to California after spending Christmas in Montana, however, and saw that the shortest route took me through Las Vegas, I knew that I needed to take another stab at Crissal Thrasher. This is the last US mimid (member of the family Mimidae) that I’d never seen before—and one that had frustrated me before.

Like all other US thrashers except Sage Thrasher, this Long-billed Thrasher (and the Sage Thrasher featured at the beginning of this post) belong to the bird family Mimidae. As this family name suggests, thrashers and other mimids have a remarkable ability to mimic other birds. No wonder they are some of our favorite birds here at FSB!

My dad and I had looked for Crissal Thrashers when we visited Arizona in May of 2022, in Yuma, Arizona. They were also on my target list when I visited the Chiricahuas in August of 2025, and while I did find my lifer Cassin’s Sparrow and Scaled Quail out in the desert near Portal, there were no Crissal Thrashers to be found. However, my most recent—and heartbreaking—near-miss had happened just a few weeks previously, at the beginning of December, 2025.

During one of our last weekends of work, three friends and I decided, almost on a whim, to drive four hours and camp near Death Valley National Park. On Saturday morning, my friend Sam and I snuck out of our tents early, staying quiet so as not to wake the others, and drove an hour west to a spot known for having Crissal Thrashers. The habitat featured tall, brushy vegetation growing along a desert wash. I’d later learn that Crissal Thrashers preferred this riparian desert habitat, and were much more common in this environment than out in the middle of the desert, away from water.

The place Sam and I visited that morning in December was called Shoshone Village, nothing more than a trail looping through the desert. We started to hike and immediately spotted some of the more common Mojave Desert birds—Phainopeplas and Gambel’s Quail. As we rounded a bend and entered some more dense vegetation, Sam pulled out his phone and ran the Merlin app.

**Phainopeplas greeted Sam and me on our previous search for Crissal Thrasher—a search that ended in muddy disappointment!**

“Crissal Thrasher,” he said, looking at me. Suddenly, I heard what the app had been hearing—the squeaky, repeating song of a thrasher coming from around the corner. I felt disappointed that I hadn’t picked up on it—the bird was singing quite loudly—but figured that it wouldn’t matter that an app had identified the bird if we got eyes on it. Unfortunately, a large mud puddle sat in the trail between us and the thrasher.

I carefully made my way around the edge of the slippery puddle, moving thorny branches out of the way and stooping underneath thick tree limbs. After about a minute of careful effort, I reached the other side, turning around to help guide Sam around it. Sam followed in my footsteps until halfway around the puddle he suddenly slipped into the mud puddle with a splash! Not only was Sam soaked and muddy (including the large seagull onesie he was wearing), but the commotion of us trying to avoid the puddle caused the thrasher to stop singing.

We never saw the bird.

Flash forward to the Clark County Wetlands, only two months later. Clark County Wetlands sits on the eastern edge of Sin City, just upriver from Lake Mead, the giant, now-shrinking reservoir created when President Herbert Hoover decided to dam the Colorado River, and it just so happens to be one of the best places in Nevada to find a Crissal Thrasher. The presence of year-round water (a rare commodity in these parts) in the Las Vegas Wash allows for the existence of perfect thrasher habitat, complete with more extensive, green vegetation than can be found elsewhere in the Mojave.

**It was a decidedly odd experience searching for on of my last Lower 48 bird species within sight of perhaps the most “unnatural” city in North America, Las Vegas!**

As I stepped out into the landscape of mesquite, palo verde, and barrel cacti, I immediately regretted wearing shorts and a tee-shirt. In contrast to the 100-plus temperatures during my last visit here, this morning I shivered in cool 45-degree air. Nonetheless, birds were far more vocal than they had been back in December. Mockingbirds called from atop the trees. Black-tailed Gnatcatchers and Verdins were in nearly every little scrap of brush. Again, there were Phainopeplas and Gambel’s Quail, as well as lots of wintering birds—Yellow-rumped Warblers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Northern Flickers.

Then, as I rounded a corner, I heard the song again—the same song I’d heard from the leeward side of that mud puddle in Shoshone Village. This time I was ready, with no puddle standing between me and my bounty. I bushwhacked off the trail, into the desert scrub, and soon spotted it, a long-tailed bird with a long, curving beak silhouetted against the early morning sky!

I didn’t manage any still photos of my lifer Crissal Thrasher, but this video captures the moment even better!

Me and that thrasher spent a good fifteen minutes together, with bare desert mountains looming on one horizon and the Las Vegas Strip looming on the other. Eventually, the thrasher flitted away, only to take up another perch a dozen meters away. After spending more minutes admiring it, I walked back to the trail, happy and at peace.

To be honest, that thrasher wasn’t even the coolest bird experience I had that day. As I continued along the trail, I got to watch an adult male Costa’s Hummingbird performing its flight display above my head. I found two rarities, a long-continuing Northern Parula and a Golden-crowned Kinglet that no one had reported. And from the deck of the Clark County Wetlands Visitor Center, a beautifully-designed educational building, I got to watch three Greater Roadrunners chase each other, constantly clacking their bills. The last time I’d been to Las Vegas had been a hot, emotionally turbulent week, but this morning that I spent at Clark County Wetlands was so enjoyable that it is now what I recall when I think of that gambler’s haven in the desert.

**Watching a trio of Greater Roadrunners from the visitor’s center added a great bonus to seeing a bird that had frustrated me multiple times before.**

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Birding 2025: It’s a Wrap

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As always, we encourage you to share and link to this post. We absolutely do not give permission to use it to train AI models or for other purposes without permission. Happy New Year, Everyone!

As 2025 rapidly winds up, Braden and I want to thank you for your continuing interest in FatherSonBirding and all that you do for birds. We can’t believe that it’s been almost EIGHT YEARS since we published our very first post, A Quest for Snowy Owls! We certainly wouldn’t have kept at it without your interest and support.

We’re thrilled to report that 2025 has been FSB’s biggest year yet. We published a record 49 posts this year, including our 250^th post, “Binoculars and Scopes for the Happy Holiday Birder”. Speaking of that, we also launched FSB equipment reviews—articles we do NOT get paid for, but which have attracted a ton of viewer interest.

FSB received a record 20,000 views in 2025, greatly helped by our equipment and travel reviews!

And speaking of viewers, our site attracted 20,000 views this year, shattering last year’s record of 14,000—with the caveat that about a thousand of those views were likely from AI bots stealing our content without permission (Grrrr…). Still, the vast majority of those extra visitors were legitimate—and from an astounding variety of places. More than 15,000 viewers from 104 countries visited our site this year! Huge gracias, arigatos, mercis, and many more thank yous to our international visitors!

By now, we can hear you pleading, “But please, Sneed and Braden, tell us your Top 5 most popular posts!” Astoundingly, four of our five top posts were equipment review posts:

1) Vortex Triumph 10X42 Binoculars: Entry Level Excellence with 1,425 views. (View post here!)

2) Nikon Monarch HG Binoculars: FSB’s First Equipment Review with 950 views (View post here!)

3) Vortex Razor HD 13-39X56 spotting scope with Mountain Pass tripod: A Perfect Travel Combo? With 580 views (View post here!)

4) Birding Barcelona, Part 1: The Urban Core with 510 views (View post here!)

5) Vortex Viper HD Binoculars (Equipment Review, and/or Texas 2025 Part 2-½) with 480 views (View post here!)

Our 2024 blog about birding downtown Barcelona snuck into the Top 5 for 2025—with several of our Japan and Costa Rica posts close behind!

The numbers reveal some clear trends: with rare exceptions, our most popular posts have been our equipment reviews and reports from travel destinations. Our posts from Japan, Spain, Colombia, Mexico, and Costa Rica have been especially popular—as have posts about very birdy domestic locales such as Texas and San Diego. Our book reviews also have done well, but a decline in America’s literacy rate is clearly evident, as our statistics reveal that many more viewers are interested in buying gear than in reading books.

On a personal level, Braden and I are grateful for the many wonderful birding experiences we got to share, both together and separately. Braden was fortunate to visit both Mexico and Costa Rica in 2025 as well as take an epic cross-continent trip from Maine to Montana following his graduation from the University of Maine. He also birded the heck out of Arizona while on his way to his current job in California, where he’s racking up all kinds of new birding experiences.

As for Sneed, I kicked off the year with a trip to Victoria, Canada, thanks to my wife, Amy—and, honestly, the year never seemed to slow down. As soon as we returned, my buddy Roger Kohn invited me on an epic last-minute trip to Colombia. There followed journeys to Texas, Maine, eastern Montana, California (twice!), and most recently, Georgia and Oregon. Most of the latter were not planned as birding trips, but you won’t be surprised to learn that we saw a ton ‘o birds along the way.

Thanks in great part to trips to California with my friend Scott and . . .

You also won’t be surprised to learn that, quite unintentionally, Braden and I shattered most of our own birding records. Braden finished out his birding year with a remarkable 867 species while I smashed my own previous record with 551 species!

One of the low points for the year was having to say goodbye to our wonderful “birding dog” Lola. She left us far too soon and we still miss her terribly. (See this post.)

**Besides finding birds, Lola proved adept at finding marine mammals such as this whale. We miss you Lola!**

Moving forward, we hope to continue to publish a wide variety of posts for your reading pleasure, including those about everyday birding experiences that are at the heart of a birder’s joy and wonder. Just a few adventures that we have lined up for 2026 include trips to Costa Rica and Germany, along with visits to birding festivals in Colorado, Arizona, and Montana. Meanwhile, it is our sincerest wish that the next year brings you all good things, including many incredible birding experiences and a brighter outlook for birders, birds, and the planet we all share.

For some ideas about how to help birds this coming year, please visit our last post, Giving Back to Birds—with Great Breaking News! As always, if you would like to help support FatherSonBirding, consider buying new copies of some of Sneed’s books by clicking on the book jackets to the right.

World Series Birds in the Golden State

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A happy by-product of our second child going to school in California is that Amy and I have the perfect excuse to go visit the Golden State. Not that I would ever do any birding during a family trip, but you know, it’s hard not to see some great birds when you just happen to stop at a wildlife refuge or stumble into a local park that happens to be a bright red eBird hotspot!

I was especially excited to head to California a couple of weeks ago because, as previously reported, I was perilously close to breaking my all-time single year species record of 527 birds. In fact, when Amy and I landed in Sacramento and headed up to Chico, I needed only one bird to hit 528 species for the year. What would my “go ahead bird” be? (And yes, that is an homage to the upcoming World Series, which happens to feature a team named after birds!)

**Visiting our youngest in California has given me a great opportunity to see friends and get in some bonus birding!**

When we arrived, I quickly finagled a couple of birding opportunities, but saw only species I had seen on our last trip to California in August: California Scrub-Jays, Acorn Woodpeckers, Yellow-rumped Warblers and the like. My biggest discovery was a White-winged Dove at the Panera’s near the hotel! It was a rare bird so far north in California’s Central Valley, but not unheard of. Still, I felt proud to have spotted the distinct white stripe across each wing as it flew—undoubtedly hoping to score one of Panera’s kitchen sink cookies!

The next morning, I headed out to the home of a close childhood friend who just happens to live outside of Chico in an agricultural area. I had almost reached her place, when I noticed birds feeding on a coyote carcass on the side of the road. I saw Turkey Vultures and ravens. Then, I saw something that got my heart racing: magpies!

**My All-Time Best Year Record Breaker: Yellow-Billed Magpie! Whoo-Hoo!** **(Photo from earlier trip.)**

Not just any magpies. I knew that the Black-billed Magpies we had back home in Montana were unlikely in this part of California. No, these were Yellow-billed Magpies—a bird I had failed to see on our last trip in August! Ka-ching! My record shattered like falling glass! And with a California endemic species no less! Personally, I couldn’t have been happier. YBMAs are some of my favorite birds, and hold an interesting history, too:

“This species was named by John James Audubon in 1837 (as Corvus nutallii, corrected the following year to nuttalli) in honor of the ornithologist Thomas Nuttall, who collected the first specimen near Santa Barbara, California. Nuttall was a prodigious botanical collector and ornithologist who authored a Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada.” —Birds of the World database by Cornell Lab of Ornithology (accessed Oct. 19, 2025)

Later that day, I picked up an “insurance bird” at the Llano Seco refuge just southwest of Chico, where Amy and I delighted in Sandhill Cranes, Black-necked Stilts, and my 529^th bird of the year, Greater White-fronted Goose.

Greater White-fronted Goose was a great “insurance bird” for my record-breaking year—just in case the Birding Powers That Be decided to lump a couple of species together or I found a mistake in my earlier checklists!

But my fall California birding adventures had just begun!

After a few wonderful days with our child, Amy flew home from Sacramento, and my high school buddy Scott (see Scott’s Guest Post about the Morro Bay Bird Festival), picked me up for an additional four days of exploration. As I’ve mentioned, my emphasis lately has not been so much chasing target species, but exploring places I’ve never before birded, and Scott indulged me to the hilt. After he collected me in Sacramento we explored the Sacramento River delta, hitting Cosumnes River Preserve, where we got a little shorebird action—and a LOT more Sandhill Cranes and Greater White-fronted Geese. On the following days, we hit a huge variety of habitats as we hiked through oak woodlands, explored the large abandoned—and very birdy—grounds of the Sonoma Developmental Center, and scoured rocky shores and intertidal areas in American Canyon, Golden Gate National Recreational Area, Bolinas, and Bodega Bay. I loved every location and, not surprisingly, my “insurance bird” list grew.

Scott and I enjoyed a wet hike through Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in Sonoma County and fortunately, the rain did not dissuade the birds as we sighted a host of classic oak woodland species including Oak Titmouse, Golden-crowned Sparrow, and Nuttall’s Woodpecker.

I picked up Mute Swan in American Canyon as Scott and I gleefully observed thousands of shorebirds including Western and Least Sandpipers, Long-billed Dowitchers, Marbled Godwits, and Black-bellied Plovers. That afternoon, we saw my FOY (First Of Year) White-tailed Kites at a place called Buchli Station Road.

Our adventures gave us plenty of time to learn more about peeps as we picked out the subtle details of Least and these Western Sandpipers. Note the rufous shoulder patch (not always present), black legs, and longer, curving bill that distinguishes these Westerns from Least’s.

Our favorite—and most productive—day happened October 15^th. With a visit to Rodeo Lagoon, we found one of my favorite California birds, Wrentits, along with Western Gulls, which I had somehow managed not to see the entire year! At the nearby Bolinas Lagoon, we also observed hundreds of Elegant Terns and my trip MVB (Most Valuable Bird), a Whimbrel.

**This Whimbrel at Bolinas Lagoon nabbed Bird of the Trip honors as it was the first WHIM I’d seen in more than six years.**

Another bird I had somehow failed to see all year was Red-shouldered Hawk, but as we made our way north toward Point Reyes, Scott suddenly shouted, “Red-shouldered!” We pulled over to look at this handsome creature perched on a power line and even got to see it nab some kind of morsel from roadside weeds. The funny part? We saw four more Red-shouldered Hawks on our drive back to Scott’s house in Glen Ellen! I call that a Grand Slam!

**I don’t know that I’ve ever appreciated Red-shouldered Hawks more than I did this one—especially when it launched after some prey!**

One thing that made the trip so fun was eating lots of great food and kicking back to watch the MLB playoffs with Scott each evening. I hadn’t seriously watched baseball since Amy and I were still childless more than twenty years before, and it was wonderful to lean back, relax, and watch grown adults try to hit balls with sticks. Goooo Ohtani!

For our final day of birding, Scott drove me to Bodega Bay, one of my favorite places in California. While studying at Cal I had taken an ichthyology course here one summer, and now that I was a birder, the place held even more charm. On the rocks below Bodega Head, Scott and I were astonished to see a group of sixteen Surfbirds—far more than I had ever seen in one place! We also got great looks at both Brandt’s and Pelagic Cormorants, and spotted a Pigeon Guillemot in the far distance.

Since Braden and I saw our first Surfbird from a distance during our first pelagic cruise in Monterey in 2016, these birds have held a special place in our hearts. Never, though, have I seen so many in one place! (Can you also find the lone Black Turnstone in this photo?)

After a lunch of fish tacos, we headed up to the beaches north of Bodega Bay and were treated to a second Whimbrel sighting and more than 120 Surf Scoters casually ducking the breakers offshore. It was a wonderful way to wrap up the trip, and I am grateful to Scott both for being such a great host and for his patience when I was experiencing a blood sugar meltdown at Bodega Head. Of course, you may be wondering where my year list stands now, and I’m happy to report that I am now at 537 species. Will there be any more? I don’t know, but 550 seems awfully tempting, so stay tuned!

Update: Just before posting this, I picked up bird #538 for the year, Lapland Longspur, in some fields northwest of Billings!