In my last blog, My Accidental Big Year, I recounted my fun birding adventures with some of Houston’s top birders in my quest to “accidentally” break my Big Year record of 336 ABA species. Even as I posted that blog, I harbored serious doubts if I could do it. However, after this week’s—dare I call them shocking?—events, I am more optimistic. It all started when I got a great email from Will Sebern, who had read my last blog and asked if I had gotten an Anna’s Hummingbird for the year and, if not, would I like to come over and see the one visiting his feeder. The answer: No and a resounding Yes! Less than 24 hours later, I was pleasantly chatting with Will on his porch admiring a gorgeous beauty sipping at his feeder. Ka-ching! My year count rose to 328—only nine short of my goal! Thank you, Will! (Note, I picked up number 327—Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay— during a daddy-daughter trip to Salt Lake City last week!)
Anna’s Hummingbirds sweep through western Montana every year, but Braden nor I had ever seen one—until my surprise invitation from Will Sebern!
That said, nine new Year Birds in Montana—in winter—was not a small number. For one thing, I was not willing to race everywhere across the state to chase birds. Burning up gasoline to see birds, birds that are directly harmed by carbon dioxide emissions, has become more and more of a concern for me and other birders. I was willing, though, to travel an hour or two, especially if I could carpool with others. “Maybe,” I thought, “I might be able to run into two or three rarities fairly close to Missoula,” and began eyeing eBird rare bird alerts. During my trip to Texas, I missed quite a few opportunities, but then, a few days ago, Montana eBirder Sharon Dewart-Hansen posted a picture of a Long-tailed Duck at Brown’s Lake only an hour from Missoula! I couldn’t go that day or the next, but called Braden and asked, “Do you think it will still be there tomorrow?” He answered, “Well, ducks often stick around for a while. I’ll bet it will.”
One of the delights of our day was the first sightings of so many of Montana’s western winter birds—including this immature Northern Shrike!
I fired off a text to several local birders to see if they wanted to join me—and no one could make it. “That’s okay,” I thought. “I’ll take the dog and we’ll have a good time whether or not we see anything.” The next morning, though, Steve Flood texted that he could make it after all. We rendezvoused at the truck stop in Bonner and merrily headed up Highway 200.
Arriving at Brown’s Lake, a surprise flock of Common Redpolls greeted us, but though we saw some cool grebes and ducks, THE duck was nowhere in sight at our first stop. We kept circling the lake, though, and spotted a suspicious critter near the campground. I hit the brakes. “Is that it?” Steve answered, “I think it is!” Sure enough, the Long-tailed Duck paddled only fifty feet offshore. The duck, however, was just the beginning. At the campground, Steve found three distant Pacific Loons while I spotted two gulls that turned out to be Bonaparte’s Gulls. A pair of American Tree Swallows—the first of winter—put an accent on our finds.
Seeing only my second Long-tailed Duck ever will long lodge itself in my memory banks. Never did I suspect it would be the first of three Big Year birds Steve Flood and I would see that day!
Elated with our finds, we headed out along the backroads behind Brown’s Lake, which I had never birded, but Steve knew well. More surprises greeted us including a bevy of other new winter arrivals including my first Rough-legged Hawks, Bohemian Waxwings, and Northern Shrikes of the season! Since we were on a roll, I asked, “Hey Steve, you want to take a quick run up to Seeley Lake on our way home?” Steve was game. We turned right at Clearwater Junction and twenty minutes later pulled into the River Point picnic area on the lake’s west side. I had few expectations, but we saw Common Loons, Western Grebes, Hooded Mergansers, and another surprise flock of Common Redpolls. Then, looking through his scope, Steve said, “I have a present for you.” I peered into the eyepiece and saw . . . A beautiful Pacific Loon! Er, check that . . .
Birding with top-notch birder Steve Flood proved not only a way to learn a lot and help reduce our carbon footprints, it was a great way to make a new friend!
It was the same Red-throated Loon Steve had discovered a couple of weeks before! Neither of us had any idea it would still be around, and it capped a remarkable day, one that not only netted me three new Big Year birds, but almost every winter bird that Braden and I work hard to find every year. Well, okay, except for Snowy Owls, Great Gray Owls, Lapland Longspurs, and Snow Buntings. You’ve got to save something for later, right? Even better, I felt like I’d made a new friend in Steve, who is not only an excellent birder, but a pretty darned good guy! Once again, it brings up the adage, “In birding, you just never know—but you won’t unless you keep getting out there!”
My dad and I were hungry. Not for food; we’d already eaten at a fabulous breakfast place in Bar Harbor following the cancellation of our whale-watching trip (which we weren’t all that disappointed by). No, my dad and I wanted warblers.
Earlier that week we’d gotten a taste of the eastern warblers we’d heard so much about, nabbing Common Yellowthroat, Yellow, and a nice Black-and-White Warbler in Massachusetts. The day before today we’d gone to Taylor Bait Farm, a well-known hotspot in Orono, Maine, where the University of Maine (my new home for the next few years) was located. The farm was fairly productive, nabbing us a few cool county birds like Solitary Sandpiper and some Great Egrets. The best part about Taylor Bait Farm, however, was the warblers—specifically, a bright, nonbreeding male Chestnut-sided Warbler that posed for us below eye level for thirty seconds before diving back into the bushes! It was a first lifer warbler in several years, and probably the best-looking one in terms of nonbreeding plumage. During our whole outing at Taylor Bait Farm, we saw a few more Chestnut-sided Warblers and Northern Parulas, and got a really poor look at a Palm Warbler, another lifer, in a tree above us.
Chestnut-sided Warbler proved our Bird of the Day when my dad and I visited the Taylor Bait Farm in Orono.
But it wasn’t enough. Furthermore, we had ended up at Acadia National Park, which was known for its beautiful views and seabirds, not its warblers. My dad and I started driving around the main park loop, stopping at parking lots to try to pick up some of the eastern seabirds that we needed. After a few stops with nothing but eiders and Great Black-backed Gulls, we finally got our dose of Atlantic birds with a few Black Guillemots floating offshore and a distant Northern Gannet flying through the sea fog, both lifers for my dad. Unfortunately, it looked like that very fog was going to limit our chances of seeing things like shearwaters and storm-petrels from shore.
At the third parking lot, as we piled out to scope the beach, I happened to look up at a tree just beginning to turn yellow and I spotted a small yellow bird foraging in it. I brought my binoculars to my eyes and yelled, “Daddy! There’s a Blackburnian Warbler above you!” As he looked up, I started to see that the Blackburnian Warbler, a species we hadn’t seen since 2016, was not the only bird above us. There were passerines flying between and feeding in trees all around us.
We started calling out names as we followed the mixed flock.
“Red-eyed Vireo! Black-and-White Warbler! American Redstart!”
One of our favorite songbirds, Black-and-White Warblers have become almost commonplace for me since moving East.
As the flock moved into a group of conifers I glimpsed one of our target species for the trip feeding on the left side of a spruce. “Magnolia Warbler, get your eyes on it!”
We left the parking lot (and the people wondering what we were gawking at) and walked into the woods, continuing to see if we could pull more warblers out of the already insane mixed flock. I spotted several “Baypoll” warblers at one point, a group that includes Blackpoll and Bay-breasted Warblers that look notoriously similar in fall. Finally, I watched one long enough to see a hint of a bay-colored side, identifying it as a Bay-breasted. The mixed flock, in total, had 14 species including 8 species of warblers—more than we’d ever seen in any flock in Montana!
Unfortunately my dad had to fly home a few days later, but the warblers weren’t done with me yet. September, the best birding month in much of the east, had just begun, and the University of Maine campus happened to be located next to some perfect habitat for warblers during fall migration. I began birding a trail near my dorm, called the Cornfield Loop, several times a week to search for my other eastern target species: Canada Warbler, Cape May Warbler and Philadelphia Vireo.
The hits came fast. After about a week of scoping the area out, I started seeing large mixed flocks of migrating warblers coming through and in one spot had both of my first two targets within a few trees of one another! My reaction for both of them was the same: I can’t believe this bird actually exists! Warblers became the norm, and I got used to listening for chickadees in order to tell me if there might be something else nearby. Red-eyed and Blue-headed Vireos, Northern Parulas, American Redstarts and Common Yellowthroats popped out of every piece of plant life available, and one marsh yielded huge flocks of sparrows every time I walked through it. Seeing familiar warblers was also a treat: I found both Nashville and Wilson’s during my walks, the latter of which isn’t the easiest to find in the east. Here is one of my lists:
It is odd seeing warblers, such as this Wilson’s Warbler that my dad and I see fairly frequently in Montana, back here in Maine—especially since they are more difficult to see here.
It wasn’t just the Cornfield Loop that had warblers; campus was covered in them. Several mornings I left my dorm for breakfast to be greeted by Black-throated Green Warblers foraging in my face. One night as I walked back from a movie with friends, I began to wonder what all of the high-pitched chips I was hearing were. Could they be sleeping chickadees? No, that doesn’t sound right…and then it hit me. The east was known for its nocturnal migration, and the University of Maine sat right in the middle of the Atlantic Flyway. This meant that the chips I was hearing were the nocturnal flight calls of hundreds, maybe thousands of birds passing over in the dark on their way south to Texas, Florida and beyond! I stared up at the stars, hoping to catch a glimpse of a silhouette as one of these migrating champions flew over.
I got my Philadelphia Vireo by mid-September, pointed out to me by a non-birder friend.
“Hey,” he asked, “What kind of warbler’s that?”
Before I even had my binoculars up I could see the yellow breast, dark eyeline and cute demeanor of a species I’d been dreaming about finding in Montana ever since my friend Nick first alerted me to it. “Philadelphia Vireo, nice find!”
Philadelphia Vireo has definitely been one of my favorite new eastern birds, and I’ve seen them multiple times right on the Cornfield Loop right across from my dorm!
On one walk about a week ago, I was running through the options in my head as to what warblers I still needed for Maine. I had not yet found a Tennessee or Blackpoll Warbler, which was kind of funny considering those were two species my dad and I have found the last few springs in eastern Montana. I was also somehow missing Black-throated Blue, a supposedly common bird that I still needed for my life list.
Suddenly, I spotted a skulky, heavyset passerine fly into a bush near me, making heavy calls. It was acting a lot like a Common Yellowthroat, by far the most common warbler on campus, but I continued to watch it just in case it was one of the rarer species. Sure enough, it briefly popped into view before flying over the trail and out of sight. It flashed me a very dark chest spot contrasting with a complete gray hood as it flew, what I would have called a MacGillivray’s out west. That meant that I’d just scored a Mourning Warbler—MacGillivray’s eastern counterpart and a supposedly much more difficult bird to find. No way!! While Mourning had been on my radar, I hadn’t expected to get it or any of the rarer warblers given that I’d just gotten to Maine less than a month before and was still very content with the common birds.
Though not as flashy as many other species, Palm Warbler surprised me and my dad, and was a welcome addition to our Life Lists.
This past week I’ve gotten both Blackpoll and Tennessee Warbler on the Cornfield Loop, bringing the total number of warbler species of seen in Maine to 20, all of which I’d seen in a month compared to the sixteen species of warblers I’d seen in Montana across seven years of birding. I still don’t have Black-throated Blue (though it is definitely still possible), but unfortunately warbler migration is beginning to die down here. Just yesterday eBird marked my report of American Redstart as rare, meaning that a few species are beginning to leave for good. The warblers are now moving through much of the southern United States, including Texas, which you may get to hear about soon from my dad!
If it’s one thing we at FatherSonBirding hammer over and over again, it is the 3 Ps: Planning, Persistence, and Preparation.
Okay, actually, we have never talked much about this, but it’s a catchy concept, isn’t it? The 3 Ps, in fact, came very much into play recently when, after our rather disappointing birding in Boston, Braden and I headed up the coast to a place Braden had carefully researched (P Number 1) ahead of time: the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.
One of the gems of the New England coast, Parker River NWR turned out to be our favorite birding spot of our week-long sojourn.
I had actually never heard of Parker River before, but Braden learned about it from some online birding buddies and checked it out to see if it was “visit-worthy”. His verdict? Definitely. Not only might we collect a handful of Life Birds there, the refuge protected one of his top ABA target birds: Saltmarsh Sparrow.
Now, I have to say that when we visit a National Wildlife Refuge, I generally expect a pretty low-key, rarely visited location. Imagine my surprise when we encountered a mini traffic jam waiting to get in. In fact, it became evident that the refuge served not only to protect wildlife, but as a critical outdoor outlet for congested coastal Massachusetts. Our visit started auspiciously with a stop at Lot 1, where we got a quick fly-over of a Baltimore Oriole—the only one we would see on our trip. Crossing the highway, we encountered an even cooler surprise: the closest looks we’d ever had of Semipalmated and Least Sandpipers! This was especially useful after the ID struggles we’d had with birds in eastern Washington only weeks before, and it really helped us examine the unique properties of each.
Having both Semipalmated (left) and Least Sandpipers right in front of us really helped Braden and me visually imprint these hard-to-ID species in our brains. Note especially the darker, browner overall appearance of the Least. Its yellow legs are a giveaway, too—but only when they aren’t covered in mud!
As we moved on, though, Braden felt pessimistic about seeing Saltmarsh Sparrows. He had Planned. He had Prepared himself with knowledge. But Boston had put an “unlucky” vibe in his head. As we made our second stop along the refuge’s main road, however, he suddenly shouted, “I see them!” Indeed, not thirty feet from us, at least four or five fairly nondescript little birds bumbled about in some tall marsh grass, seemingly not knowing what they were doing. “They seem like juveniles,” Braden surmised, and having studied this species quite a bit, he would know.
Saltmarsh Sparrows used to be lumped with Nelson’s Sparrows as one species, the Sharp-tailed Sparrow. As its own species, however, the Saltmarsh Sparrow occupies a narrow range of saltmarsh habitat along the East Coast and, in fact, requires this habitat for nesting. Because of this, it is at extreme risk from higher sea levels caused by climate change, and its population has been steadily declining. This makes protecting places like Parker River NWR even more important—and made us feel especially privileged to have such a close experience with them.
Our amazing experience with Saltmarsh Sparrows proved once again that persistence just may be the most important attribute of a successful birder.
Leaving the Saltmarsh Sparrows, we continued to hit other places in the refuge and were rewarded with a host of Year Birds, and two more Life Birds: Purple Finch and Great Crested Flycatcher—our number one ABA need to that point. Which all demonstrates the third P of birding: Persistence. Sure, luck plays a role, but just getting out there again and again will eventually take luck out of the equation, something we learned for the thousandth time at Parker River.
Having missed out on Braden’s epic Glacier birding day because of, you won’t believe this, a job, I have struggled for ways to console myself. Fortunately, birding opportunities are dove-tailing nicely with my new temporary career: delivering fire-fighting equipment by truck to various fire camps around Montana and Idaho. As you’ve probably noticed, it is shaping up to be an unprecedented fire season with record, early heat and little rain in sight. Just another reason that we need to make climate change our number one priority as a species (see Saving Birds. It’s Time.).
On the personal front, however, this radical summer has provided me with an interesting, useful part-time job driving for the Forest Service, and I have to say, I’ve been impressed with their entire operation. As I began my job, though, I asked myself, “How many birds could I see just driving around Montana and Idaho through the fire season?” I decided to set a goal of 100 species for myself—a number that seemed optimistic for this time of year, especially since I would have few opportunities to venture off roads into wildlife refuges and other birding hotspots. Below is my interim report, but first I should lay out the ground rules that I have set for myself, and they are simple: every bird can be counted from the moment I leave for work until I get back. I can’t count birds at my house or on my street, but everything else is game. So how goes the quest?
Who knew I’d be drivin’ truck at my age, but as in most of my life, trying new things has led to new birding—and writing—opportunities!
Well, so far I have driven approximately 3,000 miles and seen 59 species of birds, or about one new species every 51 miles—far more than I expected at this point. Let’s start with raptors. These are birds I expected to do well with because, duh, they are big and easy to see, and they sit on telephone poles. Strangely, I have seen only one Bald Eagle since I began and no Goldens, but have been delighted with Red-tailed Hawks, Swainson’s Hawks, Northern Harriers, Osprey, and a Prairie Falcon. My best raptor? A Ferruginous Hawk that I passed three separate times on my way to Ennis before I could positively ID it at 70 mph!
I had to drive by it three separate days before I could ID a Ferruginous Hawk near Ennis (actual bird not shown), but it was a major score in my “birding by truck” goals to find one of these.
Songbirds promised to be the most difficult category because they are almost impossible to ID at high speed—and often at low speed! Still, I’ve lucked out with birds such as American Redstart and Evening Grosbeak around the ranger station in Seeley Lake, and good looks at Western Tanagers, catbirds, and other species along river roads. While my truck was being emptied down at the Goose Fire south of Ennis, I walked over to “pish” (make a fake bird sound, not doing, well, you know) some bushes and was flabbergasted to see a Lincoln’s Sparrow pop up in front of me—maybe my favorite “truck bird” so far.
Without a doubt my favorite sparrow, Lincoln’s Sparrow made my “birding by truck” list in surprising fashion while I was delivering a load to the Goose Fire crew south of Ennis.(Again, actual bird not shown—it’s hard to get bird photos while working another job!)
On my way back from the Dixie Fire camp in Idaho, I found myself at dusk crossing over Lolo Pass and needed a break, so I pulled into the visitor’s center to see if I could hear a Flammulated Owl. No luck, but White-crowned Sparrows and Swainson’s Thrushes called in the twilight, and suddenly I heard a deep sub-woofer sound. “My god,” I thought. “That’s a Ruffed Grouse!” It wasn’t. Later, after consulting with Braden, I realized I’d heard, appropriately for twilight, a Dusky Grouse. I hadn’t even known they made a similar deep-bass call. It pays to have a well-educated son!
Hearing a Dusky Grouse at, well, dusk at Lolo Pass taught me an important new bird call—and made an unlikely addition to my “truck list.”
The question remains: will I make it to 100? It’s going to take some doing, and I especially need to get into some large groups of waterfowl or migrating shorebirds or songbirds, but I remain hopefully optimistic. Stay tuned for the next installment! And yes, I would sacrifice my goal for a good, soaking rain!
(by Braden) By the time our posse of eleven reached Logan Pass at 6 in the morning, the parking lot was already full, though that did not hamper the views. Nick Ramsey and I rushed over to the bathrooms, admiring a view we had not experienced for years (despite having been to the lower-altitude parts of Glacier Park every year since 2017) and nabbing Cassin’s Finch and White-crowned Sparrow, then hopped back into Joshua Wade Covill’s car and headed for the Piegan Pass trailhead.
Nick and I had arrived at Josh’s house in Columbia Falls late the night before after a helping of early-summer shorebirds south of Kalispell and were greeted by not only Josh, one of Montana’s birding mammoths, but also by an assortment of the country’s top birders: Tom Forwood Jr., a southern Montana-based birder well-known for the Big Day records he had set across Montana (some of which had been with Josh) and working at Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park; Marky Mutchler, a recent graduate of Louisiana State University who had been the ABA young birder of the year a few years back and whose six-out-of-five star photos decorated every part of eBird’s website; four field techs currently studying nesting birds like Lazuli Buntings and Spotted Towhees on MPG Ranch, and two more birders, who along with Marky, currently spent their time researching grassland birds like Long-billed Curlews and Sprague’s Pipits out on the American Prairie Reserve. Several of the people I had already met through Facebook, while I was excited to meet others for the first time. I knew I was in the presence of greatness the minute I stepped out of the mini-van and onto Josh’s lawn, where I pitched my tent.
We were all here for one reason: to see Glacier National Park and its birds under the guidance of Josh, who knew the park like a Black Swift knows the underside of a waterfall, and who had, in fact, just started a Glacier-based guiding company! While several of us had been here before, others (including many of the field techs) had never seen this part of the country before, and we were prepared to assist in blowing their minds.
We woke up on Saturday morning at 5, getting into the park before the ticket period started, and were up and over Logan Pass by 6. A MacGillivray’s Warbler sang downslope of us as we bug-sprayed up in the Piegan Pass trail parking lot, and then set off into the forest of Engelmann Spruce and Subalpine Fir. Almost immediately Josh halted the group to point out several White-winged Crossbills singing from treetops, their complex trills a new sound for me. This habitat made much more sense than the cemetery in which I’d gotten my lifers earlier in the year.
My dad and I usually see Pine Grosbeaks at lower elevations during winter, so it was very special to see them at their breeding altitudes.
In a clearing several miles up the trail Josh called in a Varied Thrush for the photographers of the group (several people including Marky, had brought giant lenses) and a pair of Pine Grosbeaks, not wanting to be left out, had decided to forage in the grass and shrubs at eye-level about ten feet from us.
As we hiked, I learned about the individual research projects that each of the field techs were looking at on the APR, which included Long-billed Curlew migration patterns and parasitism on grassland birds by Brown-headed Cowbirds. We talked about top birding spots everywhere from New Mexico to Missouri and exchanged stories about how everyone had gotten into birds. It was particularly fun visiting with Tom and Josh, as they seemingly had an answer to everything I wondered about along the trail. Tom didn’t just know the birds—he identified every flower and butterfly we came across, and he and Josh pointed out the glaciers and peaks around us as we rose in altitude, many of which they had individually hiked to. They also had a wealth of knowledge of birding Latin America, specifically Costa Rica, something I was incredibly interested in.
After about three miles we rose above the stunted forest marking the end of the subalpine zone and were hiking along scree fields and across lingering snow patches. A Golden Eagle soaring high above welcomed us to the alpine zone as pikas mewed at us from their rocky burrows, and the bird community changed abruptly. Rather than crossbills and grosbeaks, Gray-crowned Rosy-finches filled the finch role up here, and all of us were shocked to encounter a Brewer’s Sparrow belting out a song from a patch of young trees! A rare subspecies of Brewer’s Sparrow, known as the Timberline Sparrow, lived above the tree line in Glacier Park and in mountain ranges farther north, a rather strange change from the normal sagebrush habitat the species used elsewhere in its range. No one in the group had ever seen one before, including Tom and Josh, which meant that everyone had gotten at least one new bird out of the hike!
This surprise Timberline Sparrow (a subspecies of Brewer’s Sparrow) was a Lifer for our entire group!
Speaking of new birds, I was here for my Montana life bird #299: White-tailed Ptarmigan. These cryptic, high-altitude game birds only lived in the northwest part of the state, and only in Glacier were they easily-accessible. As we reached Piegan Pass, Josh pointed out a large snowfield. We would be walking around the base of the field after a quick lunch, as it was perfect ptarmigan habitat: it turns out that most alpine habitat was unsuitable for ptarmigan. These picky birds require access to water, shade (i.e. low cliffs) to hide from the sun, and vegetation (i.e. moss) for food. If a site does not have one of these three things, it’s unlikely to contain ptarmigan.
After a lunch full of various mammals from Least Chipmunks to Hoary Marmots trying to steal our food, we set off in a large search line to try to find ptarmigan as an American Pipit displayed in the air high above us, an activity shared with the Sprague’s Pipits my dad and I had found earlier this year. After about fifteen minutes, Skyler Bol, one of the MPG Ranch field techs, yelled, “Got one!”. We all maneuvered across the rocks over to where he stood, and sure enough, there sat a surprisingly small game bird, half-white and half-brown, curiously staring up at us.
It had taken me more than seven years for me to finally see a White-tailed Ptarmigan, but I couldn’t have asked for a better experience—or company—in finding my 299th Montana bird species!
Everyone whipped out their cameras and settled around the fairly unconcerned bird, and soon Skyler spotted another one sitting on a small waterfall nearby! We basked in the ptarmigan glory for at least an hour, then wished the small birds good luck and cold temperatures, and headed back down the trail.
Once we were firmly in the subalpine forest again, we began stopping periodically and playing for Boreal Chickadee. It was great habitat for them, and several members of the group had never seen them before. You might call it “pushing our luck”, but hey, it worked! About two miles from the parking lot after hearing a Mountain Chickadee and several Canada Jays impersonating Yellow-throated Toucans, Josh decided to play for them and a pair of Boreal Chickadees showed up! I had not expected to see them again this year after nabbing my lifer in May and it was great to watch them from a distance as other people took photos of their very first of these boreal birds.
Though our goal was to see White-tailed Ptarmigan, the day facilitated several epic QUACHs as well!
After spying a trio of Golden Eagles again at the parking lot, we headed back to Josh’s house, stopping briefly for a Chestnut-backed Chickadee (there would be several QUACHs completed today) at Avalanche Campground. I had to head home but many of the others stayed another day, and I would soon hear stories of Black Swift, Spruce Grouse and American Three-toed Woodpecker.
As we left the Piegan Pass trailhead, Josh mentioned that he thought it had been his best day of birding in the park, and I would have to agree. And not just because of the great and cooperative birds we saw—because of the people. I had learned so much from everyone as we hiked, and had really gotten to experience what the community I would soon be immersed in would be like. Everyone was so knowledgeable, yet humble and kind, and I was honored to be a part of the first annual “Camp Montana”, even if it was only for a day.
However, seeing the ptarmigan was also a bit sad—who knew how long these alpine birds would be here? With temperatures already breaking record highs within the park, the birds living at the tops of mountains barely had anywhere to go, and snow was disappearing fast. I am very fortunate that I got to experience the birds while they are still here, and hope that somehow, they can adapt to whatever climate change throws at them.
Ptarmigan are a poster bird for how climate change is negatively impacting our planet. As permanent snow fields disappear, habitat for these birds is rapidly shrinking—a call to action to drastically and rapidly reduce the CO2 emissions we as humans produce.
Another problem was posed by seeing the ptarmigan: What will my 300th Montana bird be? Now that I’d nabbed #299, I had no choice but to get to 300, but my options were few and far between, and my days in the state are running out…stay tuned to see what it will be! (I don’t have it yet).
