Category Archives: Montana

Fall Surprises

Fall birding can be tough—at least in Montana.

I just completed a five-day return trip from Missoula to Billings, mainly to promote my new book Warblers & Woodpeckers, and I have only question: Where were the birds? Sure, I found some, but with much lower abundance and diversity than I expected. Even at places I’d seen a lot of fall species before, my best lists barely cracked a dozen. I would have notched more if I’d been better at identifying LBBs—Little Brown Birds. For instance, I took photos of a sparrow at Shiloh Conservation Area in Billings and glimpsed another intriguing group at Two Moons Park, but couldn’t ID any of them.

Lousy, no-good rotten sparrows.

Our first-ever Montana Surf Scoter—to be followed by a second one (a female) a few days later.

I shouldn’t really complain since Braden and I have seen some wonderful birds the past few weeks. About two weeks ago, we saw our very first Montana Surf Scoter at one of our favorite birding spots, the gravel quarry. The bird was a stunning black male and just what such an ocean-loving bird was doing in Montana is a matter for debate. Since we started birding five years ago, however, scoters seem to be rare but reliable visitors.

A few days later, I was giving Braden a driving lesson in the parking lot of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. After practicing parking thirty or forty times, I said, “C’mon. Let’s grab our gear and go see if any birds are around.” Not five minutes later, Braden spotted not one, but two White-throated Sparrows. Normally Eastern birds, these are real finds for Missoula and can only be spotted with diligent effort—and a lot of luck—during fall migration.

This was only our second location seeing White-throated Sparrows in Montana. A delightful surprise!

Alas, we’ve seen fewer warblers and other fall migrants than last fall, and that was reinforced on my trip across the state. I saw a smattering of good ducks (Redheads, Barrow’s Goldeneyes, and Ruddy Ducks) at Warm Springs, Three Forks ponds, and Lake Elmo State Park. I also spotted a Common Loon at Three Forks, and a nice variety of Western, Horned, Eared, and Pied-billed Grebes in most places I looked. But songbirds? They seemed to totally shun me on the trip.

When I returned home, I shared my photos with Braden. As we flipped through them, he nodded and politely murmured, “Nice. Uh-huh. Good one.”

Until I came to that mystery sparrow from Shiloh.

“Whoa. Wait a minute!” he exclaimed, opening Sibley’s. “Now I’m excited.”

“Why? What do you think it is?” I asked.

There are only about fifty records of Swamp Sparrows in Montana. Lucky me, this one decided to say hello!

“What do you think it is?” he countered.

“I couldn’t decide,” I said. “It looks kind of like a Song Sparrow, but doesn’t have the stripes. I thought maybe Lincoln’s, but it doesn’t have the orange colorings.”

Braden handed me Sibley’s. “I’m pretty sure it’s a Swamp Sparrow. They’re like, Code 4 for Montana.”

Now, my adrenaline was pumping too. “Really?”

We pored through the descriptions and compared it with my photos. Not only did the bird look identical to its description and illustration, I had found it in just the kind of habitat that Swamp Sparrows love.

Maybe fall birding in Montana isn’t so bad after all!

The Backyard Jungle

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Braden is currently in Iceland, where he is birding with mom and grandparents—and will undoubtedly write some great upcoming posts about that—so I thought this would be a great time to talk about backyard bird habitat.

When we moved into our neighborhood in 2006, we faced a daunting task: transforming our property from a biological desert that had been scraped clean by bulldozers into something that not only looked nice, but provided habitat for native animals and plants. It hasn’t been easy. Aside from the usual tasks of battling weeds and keeping plants alive, we’ve faced a ravenous army of deer that consistently ignore signs that read “Deer-Resistant Plants.” Finally, after twelve years, however, we are enjoying a yard that truly resembles the habitat we set out to create.

A pair of Red-breasted Nuthatches took immediate advantage of this new bird condo in our messy yard this year. Audubon, I will expect my product placement check soon. (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

Food has certainly been a key to our success. Through luck and persistence, we’ve managed to establish a wide variety of plants that provide berries, nectar, seeds, and insects to multiple bird species. Oh yeah, and a backyard sunflower seed feeder doesn’t hurt!

One thing I underestimated when we began is the importance of structure. Sure, we planted trees, some of which have reached twenty feet or more, but we also have an array of buffalo berry, maple sumac, ocean spray, golden currant, and mountain mahogany that have proved extremely “bird popular” for their cover as much as for their food. We’ve also been helped by a row of lilacs along the back fence that were already here when we moved in and serve as a vital launch pad for birds wanting a turn at the feeder.

Female to Male Tree Swallow at our front birdhouse: “Hm, honey, I like the neighborhood, but the front door is a little small.” (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

One final thing we did just this year is put in two chickadee houses. Within days, one had been staked out by Black-capped Chickadees and the other by Red-breasted Nuthatches. For further fun, Violet-green Swallows nest under our eaves while a surprise robin pair has raised a family in a bordering fir tree. We believe that a Song Sparrow pair has also successfully raised chicks, but we’re not sure where!

The end result is that this year has seen an explosion of birds around our house—more than forty species to date, shattering our previous record. The most common residents have been the nesting birds, Evening Grosbeaks, Cassin’s Finches, Song Sparrows, Cedar Waxwings, Pygmy Nuthatches, Flickers, and yes, those pesky House Finches and House Sparrows. We’ve also made sightings of Pileated and Hairy Woodpeckers (thanks to the ponderosa pines behind the house), Common Nighthawks, American Goldfinches, Western Wood Pewees, and Rufous Hummingbirds.

One of this year’s delights has been the daily appearance of our first, apparently resident, Song Sparrows. (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

Sadly, few of our neighbors have followed our example in creating habitat, most sticking with pointless lawns and non-native shrubbery that is virtually useless to native animals. I like to hope, though, that our “messy” yard of diverse and unruly plants inspires at least the occasional passerby to boldly go where traditional landscape companies fear to tread. After all, those of us lucky enough to own a home with a yard have a responsibility to give back to the plants and animals that our extravagant human “nests” have displaced.

Listers Anonymous Mid-Year Crisis Meeting

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Minutes from Listers Anonymous Meeting 7/1/18

Us: Hello.

Group: Hello!

Us: Our names are Sneed and Braden and we are Listers. It’s been exactly four hours and twelve minutes since we last posted on eBird.

Group: Amen!

Biologist Dick Hutto leads Listers Anonymous meeting with birders from Helena in the Rice Ridge Burn. (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

Us: I mean, we’re not just Listers. We love to watch birds and photograph them and write about them, but…

Moderator: Go on. We’re all friends here.

Us: Thanks. Yeah, but we’re also Listers. We like to keep track of how many birds we’ve seen in a given year, month, day—not to mention how many in every county and state and, well, you get the idea.

Woman with binocular strap scars on her shoulders: Oh, I know. Been there, Honey.

Us: The thing is, we’re really having a crisis right now.

Moderator: Go on.

Lister’s Dilemma: Great species, such as this Spotted Sandpiper, still abound, but NEW species are getting hard to find. (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

Us: Well, you see, last year we did a Montana Big Year. I recorded 207 species while Braden got 213. This year, I’m up to 196 while Braden has 204.

Man wearing birding vest, shaking his head: Have mercy. You are in trouble.

Us: We knew you’d understand. I mean most people, they don’t get it. They say, “200 species! Why that’s great! The year’s only half done and you’ve almost beat your old record already!”

Group: Lord, forgive them!

Us: Yeah, right? What they don’t realize is that the prime birding months are GONE! Sure, we need only ten or so species to break last year’s record, but seriously, it’s July! It’ll be a miracle if we can find that many in Montana the rest of the year.

Group: By the name of Sibley and Audubon, we feel your pain!

Us: What’s even worse, we aren’t even going to make it out to Far Eastern Montana this summer. No Upland Sandpipers. No Greater Sage Grouse. No Long-billed Curlews.

Woman with an arm tattoo “Big Year or Bust”: Children, you are in a fix!

Us: We know, but what can we do?

Moderator, polishing the lenses of his binoculars: Sneed and Braden, it’s one of the heaviest burdens for a Lister to bear. But you’ve got to fight it.

Group: Amen.

Moderator: You just can’t take “No” for an answer.

Group: Amen!

Moderator: You’ve got to keep getting out there, even when there’s less hope of finding a Year Bird than of getting a Democrat elected to Congress!

Group: AMEN, BROTHERS AND SISTERS!

For us, it seems like a record year for Lewis’s Woodpecker sightings, but would it be too much to ask to see a Black-backed? (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

Moderator: You can’t give up. Every day and every night, you’ve got to sling your optics around your necks and follow every lead, examine every perch. And even in your darkest days, when not a new sparrow is spotted within a hundred miles of you, remember, we’re all in this together. Take strength from that, brothers.

Us: We will. Thank you. Uh, by the way, is anyone up for some birding?

(Sounds of trampling feet as the Listers stampede out of the building.)

Fire In The Hole!

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Braden here.

At 6:30 on Sunday, June 17^th, retired UM Professor Dick Hutto picked up my dad and me to go birding. In the passenger seat of Dick’s car was Dick’s former graduate student Hugh Powell, who was in Missoula to write an article for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Our mission was simple: see a Black-backed Woodpecker.

Townsend’s Warbler. (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

We were headed to an area known as the Rice Ridge Fire (after a quick coffee stop), to the northeast of Missoula. The first time we had heard about this trip was at Montana Audubon’s Wings Across the Big Sky Bird Festival. A birder from Helena told us that Dick (who had an abundance of bird knowledge, specifically about birds that liked fire) was leading a field trip up to the burn and mentioned we might want to come along. My dad, who knew Dick well, jumped at the chance and asked Dick if we could get a ride up with him. Well, here we were.

At Seeley Lake, a large tourist area as well as great birding stop, we met the rest of the group, all birders of different experience levels from Helena. Knowing that this area was good for American Redstarts and Northern Waterthrushes, my dad and I persuaded the group to look around Seeley before hitting the burn. We quickly saw and heard 15 species, including the uncommon Willow Flycatcher, identified by its characteristic call, Fitz-bew.

We slowly made our way up Rice Ridge Road, stopping regularly to look for our goal, the Black-backed. The burn area had not been logged, thankfully, and every time we stopped Dick emphasized that it should not be logged, either—why not just cut trees near town instead? Burn areas have some of the highest levels of biodiversity in the country! (For more information on this, check out my dad’s book, Fire Birds: Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests.)

Lincoln’s Sparrows are known for nesting in higher altitude wet areas. (Photo by Braden Collard)

No Black-backeds showed, but the birds did not disappoint—MacGillavry’s Warblers and Lincoln’s Sparrows skulked in the low brush, Bluebirds danced across the black trunks, and woodpeckers of many species drummed and called. On that one stretch of road we observed four species—Northern Flicker, Hairy Woodpecker, Williamson’s Sapsucker, and (new for the year) at least three American Three-toed Woodpeckers, the Black-backed’s slightly less burn-dependent cousin.

In one spot, sort of a mix of burn and old-growth with a creek running through it, we were amazed with the number of species. A dipper, nesting under the bridge. Great looks at a Townsend’s Warbler. Large numbers of Western Tanagers and robins, both burn-preferring species. Sharon Dewart-Hansen, a Helena woman who was first in the state for the year, pointed out a new call for us—the Whip Three Beers of the Olive-sided Flycatcher.

Dick was slightly disappointed at the low number of woodpeckers, saying they would reach their peak two or three years from now, but everyone else was ecstatic. It had been a great trip, Black-backed or not.

The number of American Three-toed Woodpeckers that are in burns is double that of those not in burns. (Photo by Sneed B. Collard III)

The Big Weekend, Version 3.0, Part One

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Townsend’s Warbler, Glacier National Park.

Braden present.

Ever since 2016, the year we did our Big Year, my dad and I have had a tradition of going all out on Memorial Day weekend. That year, with our friend Nick Ramsey guiding us, we raced from Lee Metcalf Widlife Refuge south of Missoula to the Seeley-Swan Valley close to Glacier National Park, picking up a variety of great birds: Black-backed Woodpecker, Ruffed Grouse, American Redstart (not as common for us as for you Easterners), and one of my favorite birds: Common Yellowthroat. The following year, we again focused on our area and racked up 56 species in 3 hours, including a stunning pair of Red-naped Sapsuckers.

This year, when I first heard that I had to go up to go to a Boy Scout camp called Grizzly Base on Memorial Day weekend, I was disappointed. As we grew closer to the date, though, I began realizing two things: Grizzly Base itself could be good birding, and we were only there for a day and a half, leaving almost three more days to bird. For the latter idea, I was thinking we could get up to Glacier National Park; it was pretty close and convenient to where we would be staying. Fortunately, we did even better than that.

The camp was really fun. I learned a lot of things, and got to know the people and place I would be working with this summer. Grizzly Base’s birds were nothing to look down upon either as we spotted more than twenty species including a Bufflehead nest, Townsend’s Solitaires, a Pileated Woodpecker, a Western Tanager and a pair of Wood Ducks.

Early Saturday afternoon, though, my dad and I packed up and set out to bird in earnest.

We followed Highway 2 around the southern border of Glacier National Park. We stopped at a spot for my dad to take a nap, and I was surprised to see and hear several Townsend’s Warblers, along with lots of Yellow-rumpeds and a pair of Rufous Hummingbirds. As we crossed the continental divide, things got drier. First, it was just drier forest; soon we were on the dry northern part of Montana known as the High Line, prairie pothole country. We stopped to photograph a Ferruginous Hawk nest right off the road, and spotted American Avocets, Wilson’s Phalaropes and dozens of ducks in the small ponds we passed.

Ferruginous Hawks are a generally a rare sighting–so finding a nest was amazing!

We also made a list of goal year birds. The three we had just seen were on there, along with as many small birds as possible: Lark Sparrow, Lark Bunting, Clay-colored Sparrow, Brewer’s Sparrow, Chestnut-collared Longspur, Grasshopper Sparrow, Baird’s Sparrow, Sprague’s Pipit. Baltimore Oriole topped our list, as it was on my Top Ten ABA Life needs list, and several had been reported around Malta the last couple days.

As we reached Havre, a large-ish city about halfway through Montana, the long drive was starting to get to us. Not helping was the fact that the road signs kept displaying Malta as at least 80 miles away, and we weren’t sure if we could make it. My dad kept driving, determined as ever.

As we headed east from Havre, the ranches that had been lining the road transformed into crop farms instead; particularly irrigated fields. Red-winged Blackbirds lined the fences and gates, and I casually glanced at every one to verify its identity. Once, as we passed another one, the bird turned away from highway. The back of its head was a large patch of cream, and its back was a brilliant pattern of white.

“Bobolink!! Turn around!!” I shouted as we screamed by.

“What?! Do we have to?”

“Yes!” So we did. That Bobolink, a rare sighting for us, got us to Malta, where our intensive birding would begin.

As more prairie has been converted to farmland, Bobolinks have switched their habitat from tallgrass prairie to irrigated fields.