Category Archives: Nemesis Birds

Bustin’ Out for Birdathon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Total time elapsed: 17-1/2 hours.

Total miles driven: 552.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Costa Rica’s La Angostura Florencia Wetlands: Turning Disappointment into Delight

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Today, we wrap up our 2026 Costa Rican adventure with a post from Braden. Our nine-day trip was filled with incredible birds—and a share of setbacks caused by unexpected weather and road closures. In fact, circumstances prevented us from visiting our major final destination, El Copal (see Braden’s 2024 post). That disappointment, however, turned into great good fortune. Why? Because it redirected us to what would become one of our favorite birding locations of the trip.

My dad and I woke to the sound of a Barred Antshrike singing outside our Airbnb. After packing our stuff and stepping outside into the bright, clear morning, we realized that there were two antshrikes, one singing from each side of us. It took little prompting for both the male and the female to come in, giving us the best looks at the species so far on our trip and knocking off another target from my dad’s list. The antshrikes, along with several cooperative White-eared Ground-sparrows on the lawn of the property and the steady flyovers of parrots and oropendolas, started our day off strong.

Great looks at White-eared Ground-Sparrows and both male and female Barred Antshrikes helped kickstart our fabulous final day of Costa Rican birding.

We’d been so successful with our target birds on the trip that our plans for this morning were simple: bird somewhere not too far out of the way back to San Jose, and spend one last morning enjoying Costa Rica’s birds. The night before, we’d decided on a nearby wetland called La Angostura Florencia, where the wide open habitat would render the birds easier to see than in the dense, rainforests we’d spent the last few days.

Disruption of our plans helped us discover several great new CR birding locations, including Tranki Garden near Turrialba. Here, the proprietor David has been creating a great new birding hotspot where we got our lifer Ochre-bellied Flycatcher!

So far, during the trip, we’d had pretty bad luck with just looking at eBird hotspots and trying to bird them. Some hotspots were closed, and we had caught David, the manager of Tranki Garden, off guard by showing up without calling ahead of time. One place we’d gone to was just completely private property (which we hadn’t known ahead of time), and the owner asked us to leave. La Angostura Florencia wetlands, however, was great—no locked gates, no private property signs, just a public, protected wetland nestled into the foothills of the Talamancas. As soon as we pulled onto the dirt road leading towards the water, we started spotting things.

**As La Angostura Florencia rolled into view, we immediately became excited by its birding potential—potential that would be fully realized!**

The first sighting of the day was our most unexpected. We stopped to scan a little creek, and my dad spotted a Black-crowned Night-Heron lurking on a rock. As I stepped out of the car to look, movement caught my eye—a large, brown mammal trotting through the forest on the other side of the road. As it grew closer to us, I realized this wasn’t a coati (which is a fairly common mammal across most parts of Costa Rica) but a tayra! Tayras are large members of the mustelid group (the group of mammals that includes weasels, otters and martens) and I’d never seen one before, despite all the time I’d spent in Costa Rica. We turned our attention towards the tayra as it scaled a tree and disappeared into the foliage above. Despite the mosquitos moving in on us from all sides, the day was off to a great start!

Though we’d seen a Green Ibis earlier on the trip, this pair at La Angostura Florencia gave us our first close, leisurely looks. Unlike other ibises, the Green Ibis prefers swampy or flooded forests to wide-open wetlands.

We kept driving slowly, rounding a corner and flushing a bird up from the road. “Sunbittern!” my dad yelled as it escaped into the trees. We got out again in an attempt to relocate it, but couldn’t get eyes on it again. Fortunately, there were tons of other birds around, calling, singing and foraging in the trees above and around us. We slowly made our way down the road, identifying warblers and other neotropical migrants above our heads as a variety of species gave us great, eye-level views. The dawn chorus consisted mostly of flycatchers, but we did hear a Thicket Antpitta singing from the shrubby, overgrown edge of the road!

As the wetlands came into view, we again got out and walked towards them, sidestepping a massive mud puddle in front of us. Two Green Ibises croaked from a Cecropia tree a dozen meters away, and we stopped to watch a Gray-headed Kite, our second of the trip, hunting and soaring over us. The heads of waders and waterfowl kept popping up from the grassy marsh in front of us, and we identified them one at a time.

**We got wonderful views of this Gray-headed Kite both perched and in flight—one of our best raptor experiences of the trip.**

“Snowy Egret!”

“Black-bellied Whistling-Duck!”

“Purple Gallinule!”

“Ooh, that one’s a Limpkin!”

While many of the wetland birds were the same as the birds we’d seen at Caño Negro, seeing them in a new location felt satisfying. Costa Rica isn’t known for its extensive wetlands, but the presence of these birds at La Angostura Florencia meant that at least several populations of these species could be found in abundance in the country. We spotted some fun songbirds in the shrubs on the border of the wetland, too. Both Olive-crowned and Gray-crowned Yellowthroats sang from the grass, and a Slaty Spinetail rattled off from a bush near the road.

Near the center of the wetland, the grass gave way to a large river. On a sandbar in the river stood a Wood Stork alongside a couple of egrets, and a Muscovy Duck floated by with a horde of babies in tow. From one overlook, my dad and I got both Ringed and Amazon Kingfishers while White-throated Crakes sounded off in the tall grass.

As we reached the end of the road, a flash of movement and tail feathers caught our eye. A small, gray raptor had launched out of trees, just missing what we assumed to be a Squirrel Cuckoo as it dove for the cover of the grass. The raptor landed on a low bough in front of us, and as I raised my binoculars, I realized that it was not the Gray Hawk I’d assumed it to be. No, this was an accipiter, slate gray, with a dark cap, yellow eyes and rufous legs.

“That’s a Bicolored Hawk!” I yelled, probably too loudly, though the bird seemed unperturbed.

**One of our best raptors of the trip, Bicolored Hawk was a bird I had longed to see since first coming to Costa Rica two years earlier.**

Literally two days ago, after seeing a Black Hawk-Eagle, I had been texting my friend Drew about the raptors I had yet to see in Costa Rica. Raptors are some of the coolest, and most difficult, birds in the neotropics. They’re hard to target and show up seemingly at random. Over the months I’ve spent birding in Central America, I’d slowly accumulated most of the uncommon raptors in the region—White Hawk, Ornate and Black Hawk-Eagle, Barred Hawk, various kites and falcons. But the few that I’d never seen before are not only elusive but quite rare, and the two I wanted most were some of the rarest: Bicolored and Tiny Hawks. Both of these species are widespread across Latin America but very infrequently reported, and while I’d been looking for spots to search for both (especially Bicolored) as my dad and I had journeyed across the country, I’d just had to admit to myself that nowhere were these species reliable. By this last day of the trip, in fact, I’d given up on seeing them.

**“You lookin’ at me? I’m lookin’ at you, Braden!”**

But suddenly, there was an adult Bicolored, taking in the sunlight, fifty feet away. My brain went into shock as my dad and I stared at it and snapped pictures. It felt like seeing a ghost. After about five minutes, the ghost flew away, leaving its vivid image seared into my memory forever.

My dad and I high-fived, then turned around, not quite believing our luck. And our luck continued.

On the way back down the road, we ran into a trio of birders—two from Great Britain and their guide—who had just spotted a Great Potoo a couple hundred meters away. They wanted to scope the wetlands for Snail Kites first, but said they would walk back to show us where the potoo was afterwards. We forged on ahead, hoping to find the roosting nocturnal bird by ourselves. As we passed a gap in the trees, I spotted exactly what the other birders had been looking for—a single Snail Kite soaring over the marsh. This location was known for the species, and it was only my second sighting of one ever, after the ones I’d gotten to see with Nick in Florida in 2022. (See THIS POST.)

**As much as we’d been looking forward to seeing one, we had to admit that our first ever “potoo lump” er, huh, lacked in excitement.**

We kept walking, my dad taking the lead, when a small, yellow and white flash caught my eye. I snapped my fingers, alerting my dad to walk back towards me. There, in the shade on the side of the road, perched a White-collared Manakin. My dad had been trying to get good looks at manakins during the whole trip, but they had been incredibly uncooperative. I’d spotted a White-ruffed while he was in the restaurant at Arenal, and we’d spent hours trying to get good looks at Long-tailed a few days before. And now, here was my favorite of the bunch, a spectacular male White-collared, sitting and posing right in front of us. Between the manakin, the Bicolored Hawk and the antshrike this morning, it felt as if the trip had come completely full circle.

**This great look at a White-collared Manakin finally ended a string of frustrating close calls my dad had experienced trying to get a good look at one.**

To make things even better, the British birders returned and showed us where the Great Potoo was! It was a little underwhelming, given that the bird was far away and completely still, but a lifer’s a lifer! We finished the morning with around 95 species, far exceeding my expectations for the wetland and wrapping up our phenomenal Costa Rica expedition.

Link to our Costa Rica eBird Trip Report: https://ebird.org/tripreport/482094

If you enjoyed this post, here are links to the previous Costa Rica posts in this Series:

Birding Costa Rica—Beginning at the Airport

Arenal for Antbirds

Caño Negro: Costa Rica’s Epic Wetland

**A final selfie on what turned out to be one our best birding outings of the trip.**

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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In Search of the Green-tailed Towhee

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Please support our efforts at FatherSonBirding by buying a *New* copy of Birding for Boomers or one of Sneed’s other books shown to the right—and by donating to Montana Bird Advocacy, a wonderful grassroots scientific organization doing novel and unique research on Montana birds.

Confession: Despite the title of this blog, the the main purpose of last weekend was not to find Green-tailed Towhees; it was to learn about a wonderful study of Gray Flycatchers with biologists Jeff Marks and Nate Kohler. However, as I set out Saturday morning, defiant of the grim weather forecast for the next day, I did have a secondary mission in mind—to find and visit with some of the birds in the arid southwest corner of the state. Over the years, these sagebrush areas, from Bear Canyon (see Bear Canyon—Montana’s “Tropical Birding” Paradise) all the way west to Beaverhead County, had become some of my favorite parts of Montana. I credit that partly to my own childhood living in the dry chaparral country of southern California, but I also just love the ecosystems and birds in this part of Montana. I’d have trouble calling myself a real birder if I didn’t get down there at least once each year.

Since you’re pressing me on the issue, I also had a third objective for this trip—to move closer to breaking my all-time one-year species record. The record belonged to 2017, when our family traveled to Ecuador and Peru and I recorded a total of 527 species for the year. This year, thanks to last-minute invitations to Colombia (see THIS POST) and Texas (see THAT POST) I unexpectedly found myself at 498 species—perilously close to setting a new record. That task loomed more difficult than it might appear since once spring migration has passed and breeding season gets underway, it becomes much more difficult to find new species. Still, a trip to the southwest part of Montana promised to nudge me closer to this new goal, and my first target was one of the state’s coolest birds: Green-tailed Towhee.

**On Braden’s advice, my first real birding stops of the trip were along the Jefferson River before Lewis & Clark Caverns.**

Green-tailed Towhees winter in the American Southwest and Mexico, but generally breed in the the Great Basin region of the West, including southern Montana. Though the birds are not strictly rare, I could count the number of times I had ever seen one, and I felt eager for another GTTO encounter. To find this bizarre, poorly understood beauty, I hit I-90 at dawn and steered toward Lewis and Clark Caverns, two-and-a-half hours to the east. To entertain me along the way, I had checked out an audio version of Eat, Pray, Love, a book that invites all kinds of snarky comments but, I found, actually proved moderately amusing. On Braden’s advice, I pulled over alongside the road leading to the caverns and was rewarded with a wonderful assortment of river and cliff birds including Rock Wren, Lazuli Buntings, and White-throated Swifts. Once inside Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park itself, I focused on finding Green-tailed Towhees.

While Lewis & Clark Caverns did not give up its Green-tailed Towhees, I did get nice looks at a Rock Wren and Lark Sparrow.

I struck out. I spent a good hour and a half checking along the road, up around the main parking area, and in the campground. Merlin’s Sound ID picked up a putative GTTO song at one point, but I neither heard nor saw a trace of the bird.

I have to admit that this made me feel like a total failure. I mean, here was my first target bird of the trip, and one that shouldn’t be that hard to find, and I totally “whiffed” on it, as Braden might say. I didn’t plunge into despair exactly, but it definitely put a damper on my mood as I began questioning just what I thought I was doing out here pretending to be a birder! Well, I thought, maybe I’ll have better luck at my next destination.

Which happened to be Birch Creek Road north of Dillon in Beaverhead County. Several years before, Braden and I had found our lifer Thick-billed (formerly McCown’s) Longspur on this road, and once again, the road delivered. I’d driven only a mile before I saw a suspicious dark shape on a fence. I actually didn’t think it was a Thick-billed, but my binoculars revealed otherwise. “Yay!” I exclaimed, feeling the weight of my earlier “whiff” lifting slightly. A few minutes later, I was examining another TBLO when I noticed a large shape sitting in a field about one hundred yards away. “Clearly a hawk,” I thought, “but what kind?” The answer: the best kind, at least for my goals for the trip—a ferruginous hawk. This was another bird I needed for the year and one that isn’t always easy to find in the state.

A desperate flight photo of the Ferruginous Hawk as it flew away.

Digging out the peanut butter sandwich I’d made earlier, I tooled down I-15 for my next destination, Clark Canyon Reservoir. Braden and I had only ever birded here once before, and as near as I recall, we hadn’t found much, so I kept my expectations low. I stopped at one overlook and was surprised to see a Common Loon on the water below, along with a Double-crested Cormorant and a couple of Ring-billed Gulls. Violet-green swallows swirled around me and, as always, they brought a smile.

Snaking around the reservoir, I approached a sign for Horse Prairie Campground and spontaneously swerved left onto a dirt access road. The reason? Tall, healthy-looking sagebrush! Hm, this just might have one of my other target birds for the day. Almost immediately, I saw a really cool bird that had not been on my target list—a Common Nighthawk peacefully chillin’ on the split-rail fence. The bird barely blinked as I fired away with my camera through the car window from only thirty feet away.

**The first of three Common Nighthawks I spotted chilling on the wooden fence leading down to Horse Prairie Campground.**

Creeping slowly forward, I heard a song I didn’t recognize—which was no great surprise in itself, but I did have a guess of what it was. Sound ID confirmed it: Brewer’s Sparrow! This bird loves healthy sagebrush and makes up for the world’s dullest plumage with a vigorous song that bewitches any birdwatcher who hears it. A few moments later, one even sat still long enough for a decent photo. Check. Another target bird—but not the one I expected to find here!

**One of Montana’s drabbest birds, the Brewer’s Sparrow has an enchanting song.**

I kept driving slowly toward the campground and spotted a medium-sized, slender bird up ahead. Wishfully, I thought it might be a Say’s Phoebe—another bird I happened to need for my year list—but it flew off before I got close. As I pulled into the campground, though, two brownish birds were chasing each other around. I assumed they were robins, but when one landed on a “Day Use Only” sign, I realized with a start that it was exactly the bird I had hoped to find here—a Sage Thrasher!

**Sage Thrashers are so flighty that seeing one on a sign was about the last thing I expected!**

Braden and I have never met a thrasher we didn’t like, but Sage Thrashers hold a special place in our birding hearts. For one, they’re the world’s smallest thrashers—which is why I mistook them for robins or phoebes. For another, they are charismatic songsters and often are the most common bird you see in sage country. As I sat in the car, in fact, I counted three more Sage Thrashers around me. Whoo-Hoo!

**One of our favorite Montana birds, Sage Thrashers seemed to be everywhere I looked this afternoon.**

Later, on the road where I was to meet up with Jeff Marks and Nate Kohler, I encountered seven more Sage Thrashers! It was a veritable thrasher party—by far the best experience I had ever had with these good-looking birds.

Unfortunately, the next morning, heavy rain and spitting snow kept me from seeing Gray Flycatchers with Jeff and Nate. More on that in another post. Almost as bad, I began the drive home without a Green-tailed Towhee under my belt and no expectations of seeing one. But bless Nate Kohler’s heart. He told me about a canyon I should check out on the way home. It was still raining when I got there, but I drove slowly and stopped frequently, listening and watching. Lazuli Buntings chattered everywhere and I saw a good variety of birds—but no towhee. Finally, I put on my raincoat, got out of the car and played a Green-tailed Towhee song. Almost immediately, a small shape darted up out of the sagebrush—the bird I was looking for! Not only that, it held still long enough for a photo—but the story hadn’t quite finished.

**I worked hard for this Green-tailed Towhee—only to find that it wasn’t a year bird after all!**

Once I got home and posted all of my checklists for the trip, I was surprised that eBird hadn’t added GTTO to my year list. What’s going on? I thought, and did a quick search to see if I had somehow seen one down in Texas and forgotten about it. Nope. What I did forget was the rare vagrant GTTO I had seen in Victoria, BC during Amy’s and my January trip (see Birding Victoria, BC)! So this one was not a year bird after all, but still a lot of fun to see. Meanwhile, my year list swelled to 503 species thanks to the Thick-billed Longspur, Ferruginous Hawk, Brewer’s Sparrow, Sage Thrasher, and a Prairie Falcon I had spotted the afternoon before. Not exactly the trip I expected, but one I already cherished.