Category Archives: Raptors

Peregrine Possibilities: Birding Therapy Day Two

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Ever wanted to visit the Amazon—the rainforest, not the store? Check out Sneed’s new travel article at Perceptive Travel online magazine!

So after getting home from my Blue Mountain hike on Monday, I began planning Tuesday’s birding therapy outing to the Missoula Cemetery, a place I have monitored since the pandemic began last year. Almost immediately, however, I received a message from a friend of a friend (FOAF) about a putative Peregrine Falcon pair a few miles from our house. Peregrines are not uncommon in Montana with well over a hundred nesting pairs—a remarkable resurgence considering the DDT disaster that devastated dozens of bird species through the 1960s and 70s. However this possible nest site was one that neither Braden nor I had heard of, so instead of hitting the cemetery Tuesday morning, I convinced Braden to skip first period and go check it out by bike.

Braden and I never tire of seeing Red-naped Sapsuckers, especially in a new location!

It was a perfect morning for a bike ride and we spotted or heard Black-capped and Mountain Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches, and an assortment of other birds—Braden more than I thanks to his Bionic Ears of Youth! We were especially excited to find a nice boggy area with a couple of Red-naped Sapsuckers drumming on snags. Finally, we reached the area the FOAF had described and almost immediately thought that we heard the peregrines calling. We set up “camp” and watched, hoping to catch sight of them. No luck. Even worse, Braden had to leave to get back to school. “Well crap,” I thought. I didn’t want to see them without him, but also knew I might not head back to the spot anytime soon so decided to stay longer.

One of the benefits of hauling a camera with you is to “slow down” birds that are too fast and too far away to easily observe. Peregrine Falcons are a case in point!

I pulled out my phone to play a peregrine recording—not to attract them but to make sure what they sounded like. WHAM! Almost instantaneously a loud answering call hit me from above and I looked up to see the unmistakable shape of a falcon flying against the gray skies. That turned out to be just the opening salvo in an amazing twenty-minute aerial exhibition that the peregrine and his mate put on for me. I watched them chase off another raptor, skim forest treetops, and in a grand finale, copulate on the branch of a tree! Granted, the birds were far away, but I can’t recall a more exciting raptor experience—well, at least since seeing the Gyrfalcon with Braden earlier this year.

I got in touch with the Montana Peregrine Institute to see if they knew about this particular nest and it turns out that the pair was first discovered in 2020 and had apparently successfully fledged three young! My FOAF went even further and single-handedly convinced the Forest Service to delay a controlled burn that was supposed to happen this last week—right in the peregrines’ territory! Hopefully, the burn will go ahead in the fall—and give the birds a wonderful larder of new prey to raise their next batch of chicks.

Even though the birds were far away, it was thrilling to watch them mate—something that will hopefully ensure a new crop of peregrines this year!

Pocatello or Bust

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In our last post, I gave the background story of my newest book, Waiting for a Warbler. The irony is that even as I posted it, Braden and I, like many of you, were impatiently waiting for warblers and other spring migrants to show up—so much so that we jumped the gun and leaped into our intrepid minivan for a 1,000-mile road trip. The trip’s main impetus was to hear Boreal Owls after dusk at Lost Trail Pass on the Montana/Idaho border, and things started well as we picked up an uncommon Eurasian Wigeon near Lee Metcalf NWR on the way down. Alas, despite spending two hours hitting the ski area parking lot and various locations along highway 43, we heard not a single bird—this, despite our friend Nick hearing FIVE Boreal Owls several years ago. Disappointed, but not shocked, we proceeded to Wisdom to spend the night at the comfortable Pioneer Mountain Lodge.

Totally unexpected, this was perhaps our closest look ever at one of our favorite winter birds, American Tree Sparrows, right alongside the road in Wisdom, MT.

Before heading south the next morning, we decided to do a quick tour of Wisdom and were fortunate to spot American Tree Sparrows and a Northern Shrike. Along the highway, our luck continued with great raptor looks, including a ginormous Great Horned Owl sitting on a mile marker next to the road! At the ghost town of Bannack, however, we struck out on Sagebrush Sparrows and Sage Thrashers (still too early) and, after “dipping” on Chukars in Dillon as well, decided to head to Idaho for our first interstate birding in months.

We were especially excited to visit Camas National Wildlife Refuge, but when we arrived, instead of ponds overflowing with waterfowl, we found depressing drying mud with a few determined Canada Geese and Mallards wondering what the heck was going on. We wondered, too, and a little research pointed both to a dry year and, more crucially, a lowered water table caused by over-pumping of groundwater by agricultural interests. This is a situation faced by more and more places in the West and national wildlife refuges seem to be particularly at risk as their budgets for new wells, staff, and infrastructure haven’t nearly kept up with their needs (see the Audubon article “Overwhelmed and Understaffed, Our National Wildlife Refuges Need Help”).

The kind of depressing scenes we found at Camas National Wildlife Refuge are playing out all over the West as human demand for water robs wildlife of essential habitat and resources.

Determined to redeem our day, we pushed on to Pocatello, where we had a delightful hike through juniper forest and saw our Lifer Juniper Titmice. In fact, these wonderful little birds may have ended up being the highlight of our trip as we got to watch them sing, bicker at each other, feed on berries, and generally make the most of life.

Both Braden and I fell in love with Juniper Titmice, described by eBird as “Possibly the plainest bird in North America.”

The next morning we decided to heed Supertramp’s advice and take the long way home through Craters of the Moon National Monument (closed) and Sun Valley. We had a special interest in Sun Valley because another Lifer, Black Rosy-Finch, had been reported there, and as we drove up a long canyon road we wondered if we would again be disappointed as this was the year’s fourth attempt to find this elusive bird. We arrived and . . . no birds. We hung out for several minutes, though, and suddenly heard finchy chirps above us. The rosy-finches! And not just Black, but Gray-crowned, too. It was particularly gratifying to find these gorgeous little passerines both because we’d looked for them many times and because this might well be Braden’s last chance to see them before he heads east for college this summer. The rosy-finches and titmice made the scenic drive home through the Sawtooths especially enjoyable—and a surprise find of a Ruffed Grouse along the highway extra sweet.

Hard to find at best, Black Rosy-Finches are some of North America’s most beautiful passerines. They nest at high altitudes and, not surprisingly, are some of America’s least-studied birds.

Payin’ Raptor Dues, Reapin’ Raptor Rewards

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Gamblers and fishermen are famous for being superstitious. Birders aren’t much better. Sure, we feed ourselves platitudes such as, “The more you get out, the more you’ll see,” but deep down, we know that the birding gods control our fates, and that our success depends on whether we’re deemed worthy. In our last post, I recounted how Braden and I spent six hours and two days looking for a Gyrfalcon near White Sulpher Springs, only to endure the gods’ wrath. Yesterday morning, when we set out on a quest for a Snowy Owl, we wondered if the gods would continue to scorn us, or whether we had proven ourselves humble and dedicated enough to curry their birdly favor.

Northern Harriers and other raptors were abundant wherever we looked. They, unfortunately, were not the birds we set out to see!

We left the house at 6:30 a.m. and by 7:30 were at Ninepipe National Widlife Refuge, where we hoped to score an elusive Year Bird, Short-eared Owl. We drove the dirt roads for more than an hour and saw more than a dozen Red-tailed Hawks, Rough-leggeds, Bald Eagles, Harriers—even a Merlin. No Short-eared Owl. “Ah, well,” I told Braden. “We’ll get ‘em next time.” Inside, though, I was thinking, “Oh, man. Is it going to be that kind of day? Again?”

Well, apparently, it was. Reaching the Snowy Owl neighborhood near Kalispell, we again drove for more than an hour without so much of a glimpse of a white owl. By now, I realized that the BGs must be really pissed at us. We decided to chase some other birds and come back later, however, and did score our first Gray-crowned Rosy-finches in three years at the Kalispell dump—while getting bawled out by the “dump lady” for our efforts. We also found a White-winged Crossbill among a flock of Red Crossbills feeding on some nearby spruce trees. Nice, but not a Snowy Owl.

Mallards are no doubt the most underrated duck, but this flock of five thousand birds made a big impression on Braden and me!

After a lunch at Panera Bread (hey, more chicken in my Napa Almond Chicken Salad Sandwich, please!), including our favorite kitchen sink cookies, we hit an amazing field full of about 5,000 Mallards. Stunning! Then, we returned to the Snowy Owl site, where we encountered several other birders. None of them had had any success, either, but while we were commiserating, a photographer named Dick Walker introduced himself and asked, “Are you the father-son birding team?” We’d never been called that, but I answered “Yes,” and he started talking about the Mallard spot we’d just left. He showed us photos of Lapland Longspurs and, most exciting, a Gyrfalcon he had seen only thirty minutes before!

We tore back to the place, forever hopeful. No longspurs. No falcon. After fifteen minutes, though, a massive group of a thousand Mallards lifted off and seconds later, a sleek, jet-fighter shape zoomed across our field of vision. “It’s the Gyr!” Braden shouted.

Our first Gyr was a darker bird and left no doubt it was master of the skies. We’ll never forget it!

Indeed it was. We quickly lost it in the distance and decided to race over to another road closer to where it disappeared. We got there and jumped out of the car just as the amazing raptor reappeared, obviously enjoying terrifying the thousands of ducks and geese swirling around it. While Braden set up our scope, I tracked the bird with my binoculars. It seemed to toy with a large group of ducks, but its madness had some method as more and more Mallards peeled off until only two remained. As I watched, breathless, the Gyr hit one of them and took it to the ground. “It got a duck!” I shouted.

I was astounded how quickly this Baldie swooped in to steal the Gyr’s kill. It made me wonder how many ducks the falcon has to kill before it actually gets to eat one!

Its victory was temporary. Within thirty seconds, a much larger brown shape swooped in—an immature Bald Eagle. It effortlessly drove the Gyr from its kill, eliciting shouts of outrage from yours truly. We continued watching the amazing creature for another fifteen minutes before it vanished again. Then, after another unsuccessful Snowy Owl circuit, we began the long drive home. As we headed south along Flathead Lake, I thought about BB King, who often talked about paying his dues, and asked myself why we’d seen a Gyrfalcon here, in the last place we’d ever expected. “Maybe our efforts in White Sulphur Springs satisfied the birding gods after all,” I speculated. “Or maybe we just had to pay our birding dues to see the Gyr.” Either way, it had been one of the best birding days Braden and I had ever experienced—even without the Snowy Owl.

2020 Wraps, 2021 Underway!

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Our loyal followers have undoubtedly noticed that our posts have slowed in the past year. While we have been birding as much as ever, Braden has less time to write as college looms, and I too am busy plotting what I want to do when I grow up. Nonetheless, we want to wrap up 2020 for you and give you a taste of 2021 so far.

Sneed’s Bird of 2020, the Northern Hawk Owl, a Lifer we found on Braden’s seventeenth birthday. May his 18th bring him as much birding luck!

2020, in fact, was an epic year for Team Collard. It kicked off with our amazing trip to Israel and Jordan, and once back home we embarked on a mission of seeing 250 species in Montana. For perspective, my previous Montana record was 222 species in a year and Braden’s was 225, so we knew that we had our work cut out for us. Astoundingly, we surpassed 250 by last August, leaving the question, how high could we go? For me, the answer turned out to be 267, and for Braden, 274! With Braden probably heading out of state for college next fall, it seems unrealistic we could equal that number for 2021, so we’ve invented some new goals for ourselves.

Goal #1: to end the year with an eBird checklist in every Montana county. (Braden still has nine counties to bird in and I have ten.)

2021 has already brought us amazing owl sightings including this Northern Pygmy-Owl near Bozeman and this studious Great Horned Owl in Meagher County, a new birding county for us.

Goal #2: to see birds we’ve never seen in Montana before.

Goal #3: to reach a Montana Life list of 300 species (currently Braden is at 293 while I am just behind at 289).

How are we doing so far? Even though it is still January, we are making progress on all fronts. Last weekend, we embarked on a thousand-mile, three-day birding safari to the center of the state. We added Meagher County to our eBird list, and added two Montana Lifers: White-winged Crossbills in Bozeman’s Sunset Hills Cemetery and Pine Warbler—a bird that shouldn’t have been within 1000 miles of Montana—at a feeder in Red Lodge. We had hoped to add at least two other species, but the birding gods were against us. The White-winged Dove in Bozeman that has lit up the Montana birding boards got eaten by a Sharp-shinned Hawk about half an hour before we saw it! Or more accurately, we saw the bird being devoured! We had also hoped to see our first Gyrfalcon, but despite searching the White Sulphur Springs area for more than six hours, the majestic predator was a no-show. Sigh.

Thanks to the generosity of Susan Hovde, who not only discovered but has been feeding him, we were able to spend a glorious winter morning with this out-of-range Pine Warbler—a Lifer for Braden and Montana Lifer for me!

Nonetheless, we found a lot of other great birds and met some terrific other birders. In the process, we set a January species record with still a couple of weeks to go. We do not know what the rest of 2021 has in store for us, but we will keep you updated as we are able. In the meantime, we wish you peace and health, and offer our hopes that this year will see some meaningful progress not only in saving birds, but in protecting this incredible planet we all share.

Though not much to look at from a distance, we were thrilled to see our first-ever White-winged Crossbills in Bozeman’s Sunset Hills Cemetery!

Banding, Bad Weather, and Old Friends

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The sun was still asleep as the Collard minivan circled the roundabout, turning off on the road leading to MPG Ranch. Thirteen months ago, we had had our first banding experience with the University of Montana Bird Ecology Lab on Upper Miller Creek road, and now we were back for more—Erick Greene, a UM professor working with my dad on an article, had invited us to join the Ranch team. We pulled up to the gate, and soon enough the banders arrived. We followed them through the gate and onto MPG Ranch, a place neither my dad nor I had been in at least two years. A brand new sign pointed directions to familiar places, and we followed the truck towards the Orchard House, where Nick Ramsey and I had spent many days watching the feeder birds. We passed the Duck Mahal, a seasonally-flooded building, located adjacent to a slough that provided habitat for the first Bullock’s Orioles, Gray Catbirds, Wood Ducks and Red-naped Sapsucker I had ever seen. 

While we hoped that the wind would die down, UMBEL’s Mike Krzywicki gave us a tour of their MPG banding site. Just the week before, they’d caught a rare Gray Flycatcher here.
The research carried out at MPG Ranch grows more and more important as climate change worsens and we grapple with how to protect and restore fragile Western ecosystems.

The vehicles parked in a lot north of the Duck Mahal, and from there we followed Mike, the lead bander, down into a shrubby riparian area. The rising sun brought with it constant gusts of wind, and the gray sky threatened us with rain.

“Well,” said Mike, “It looks like we won’t be banding for a while, so why not go birding?”

As we walked around the floodplain, we learned about what projects UMBEL and each of the individual banders and students were working on. The birds, for the most part, were completely hunkered down, and most of the songbirds we recorded as flyovers. One group of birds was out in full force, however; it was peak raptor migration. 

Pairs of Red-tailed Hawks performed acrobatics in the sky as the wind sprinkled rain around us. A golden-bellied female Northern Harrier passed right in front of us as we scanned the brush for warblers, and several accipiters made close passes (including one that sat on a bare log that we puzzled over for several minutes).

It is definitely raptor migration season as we are seeing large numbers of birds riding mountain ridges and, when we’re lucky, coming close to the ground. (Red-tailed Hawk)

The weather did not lighten, and so, for the safety of the birds, the banding session closed before it opened. My dad and I, still thirsty for species, said our thanks and drove back across MPG’s windswept plain towards another old friend: Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge.

What we discovered upon arriving at the main ponds by the Refuge visitor center is that the season of brown, unidentifiable ducks was wrapping up, and the open water produced great looks at breeding-plumaged American Wigeon, Northern Pintail and Gadwall alongside prehistoric white pelicans. We hadn’t seen this much waterfowl in a long time, yet, again, our eyes turned to the sky. Raptors continued to stream over the Bitterroot Valley, and we studied each Red-tailed carefully, hoping to spot a Broad-winged Hawk, a rare but regular migrant this time of year. No Broad-wingeds appeared, but rafts of Turkey Vultures did. On our way out of the refuge, we spotted yet another raptor, one we had just begun to get familiar with: a crisply-patterned Peregrine devouring a blackbird on a fencepost.

Most people still think of the Bitterroot Valley as relatively untrammeled. As this photo shows, the valley is filling up fast, and we need careful planning to protect the wildlife that all Montanans cherish. (American White Pelicans at Lee Metcalf NWR)

Next, my dad and I headed to Kootenai Creek Road—not the road leading to the trailhead, but the one I’d accidentally driven earlier this summer. Why? California Quail, an introduced resident of the Bitterroot Valley, had been abundant the last time I’d been here, and this was the first time my dad had gotten his butt down here to add them to his year list. Nabbing quail was a necessity. Thankfully, we spied a lone male on our way back down the road, adding another year bird to at least one of our lists after a two-week drought.

Okay, we admit it. A lone California Quail isn’t likely to make the cover of “Hollywood Birds Tonight”, but when it’s a Year Bird? Heck ya, we’ll take it!

Finally, we hit the Fort Missoula Gravel Quarry, a birding classic, before heading home. Upon entry, we were hit with a large flock of robins feeding on berries, and soon began pulling other species from the flock. Butterbutts (Yellow-rumped Warblers) flycaught above leaf-gleaning Orange-crowned Warblers, and we spotted a pair of Cassin’s Vireos, adorned in yellow vests and white eyeglasses. As we made our way towards the water, I heard a high, metallic “chip” coming from a bush behind us. After about a half hour of pishing, using playback and circling the bush multiple times, an adult “tan-striped” White-throated Sparrow popped into view for a second, adding another species to my dad’s year list (I’d found one at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation a few weeks prior). Like at MPG and Lee Metcalf, raptor silhouettes lined the horizon, and we continued scouring the sky for Broad-wingeds. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any, but there would be other days.

On the way home we hit another old favorite: Taco Bell. It had been a day of new experiences and old memories. We had no choice but to feel fulfilled.