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With single-digit temperatures in Montana this week, it is still very much book reading season, a time when all birders can—and should—beef up our birding resumés by tapping into the vast wealth of research and experience of the global birding and scientific communities. This past week, I delved into a topic that intrigues most birders by picking up Joan E. Strassmann’s The Social Lives of Birds: Flocks, Communes, and Families (Tarcher, 2025).
Joan Strassmann’s The Social Lives of Birds is packed with delightful revelations for beginning and experienced birders alike. (Click on the cover for ordering info.)
A well-regarded professor and scientist, Strassmann has created a comprehensive resource that introduces readers to almost every aspect of bird society. She begins by answering the simple question “Are Birds Social?” (You can probably guess the answer to that!) Then, chapter by chapter, she explores topics that fascinate beginning birders as much as they do veteran scientists. These include flocking behavior, mixed-species flocks, the predilection of many birds to roost and/or nest in colonies, the pros and cons of nesting and/or roosting together, lekking behavior, and more.
The author devotes an entire chapter to the fascinating and intriguing world of seabird colonies, such as those of one of the world’s most popular birds, the Blue-footed Booby.
I learned something fascinating with each chapter. For instance, I was first drawn to the book because the cover showed a line of six Long-tailed Tits packed tightly together on a branch. I had had the pleasure of observing these birds in the Netherlands (see our post Layover Birding in Amsterdam), Japan (see our post Birding Japan: Kyoto), and Spain (see our post Birding Barcelona, Part 1: The Urban Core), but had no idea that they lived and foraged in stable flocks that are often built around a main breeding pair and its offspring. In her book, Strassmann recounts a study that showed that on chilly nights, the tits nestle tightly together to stay warm, and that often it is the lowest birds on the “tit totem pole” that have to endure the chillier end positions. This is no trivial matter since the birds lose about 9 percent of their total body mass in a single, chilly night.
After observing Long-tailed Tits in Europe and Asia, I was fascinated to learn more details of their highly social behavior in The Social Lives of Birds.
Similar revelations emerge with every chapter, examining birds from a wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic habitats. My favorite chapter was the last, “Supersocial Groups: Birds That Are Always Together.” That’s probably because it featured one of my favorite birds, the Acorn Woodpecker (see our post College Search Birding in California), and three other species I was fascinated to learn more about: White-winged Choughs, Sociable Weavers, and a bird Braden and I are always delighted to see, Pinyon Jays. Regarding the latter, Braden and I have seen Pinyon Jays only a handful of times here in Montana, and I had wondered why they aren’t more common. Strassmann explains that the birds need extremely large territories to guarantee a dependable food supply. Unfortunately, their main food source, the pinyon pine, has suffered extreme losses from clearing for agriculture and other reasons. Warmer temperatures driven by climate change have also impacted the production of pinyon pine seeds, leading to large-scale die-offs of these beautiful, dynamic, gregarious birds.
Strassmann devotes much of the final chapter on one of Braden’s and my favorite birds, Pinyon Jays, shown here in a cemetery in Helena, Montana.
The Social Lives of Birds struggles a bit over whether it wants to be a comprehensive resource or an engaging narrative in the vein of the recently reviewed The Great Aukor A World on the Wing. The author mentions her personal connections to many of the topics, but I found these more distracting than engaging. Still, that will not prevent readers from enjoying the book and harvesting a wealth of information—knowledge that will help you look at birds with greater understanding and appreciation each time you head out to bird.
All photos and text on FatherSonBirding.com are strictly protected under copyright law. To request permission for use, contact Sneed at sbcollardiii@gmail.com. You DO NOT have permission to use these posts to train Artificial Intelligence models or do anything else with them without permission.
Richard L. Hutto’s new book A Beautifully Burned Forest: Learning to Celebrate Severe Forest Fire(Springer, 2025—click here to order) offers both timely insights into the roles of wildfire in our modern, over-heating world and an engaging memoir of a scientist’s journey. Before I met Hutto—Dick to his friends and colleagues—I had no idea of the vital ecological processes and multitude of species that depend on severe forest fires in the West. Although I had met Dick casually several times through a mutual acquaintance, it wasn’t until I needed someone to teach me about woodpeckers for a proposed children’s book that I reached out to him directly. I asked if he could take me out to show me some woodpeckers and explain a bit about them, and he graciously agreed.
Richard L. Hutto’s A Beautifully Burned Forest is not only a must-read for anyone interested in the health and future of our forests, it makes an, ahem, red-hot Christmas gift idea. Click on the above image to order.
Dick took me to the Blue Mountain burn area just south of Missoula and he did indeed start showing me woodpeckers and telling me about them. What he was really teaching me, I began to realize, is the beauty of a burned forest and how many plants and animals depend on it. I would still eventually write a children’s book about woodpeckers, but first I decided to write Fire Birds: Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests.
Both of our books focus on Hutto’s groundbreaking research into the many organisms—especially birds—that depend on standing, severely burned forests. The Black-backed Woodpecker is the poster child for burned forests. This bird is highly adapted to blend in with charred tree trunks and excavate wood-boring beetle larvae from the rock-hard wood. In the West, in fact, this bird is found almost exclusively in severely burned forests that have a high density of larger diameter standing trees.
In the West, the Black-backed Woodpecker relies on severely burned forests perhaps more than any other bird species. By excavating holes, these birds and other woodpeckers, also open up the forest for a host of other birds, mammals, and other vertebrates.
Once they move into a fresh burn the Black-backed—along with American Three-toed and Hairy Woodpeckers—open up the forest to many other cavity-nesting birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. They do this by excavating holes in the trees, often many more than they will ever use themselves.
The problem, Hutto points out, is that our society has been conditioned to view all forest fires as bad. As soon as a severe fire roars through an area, the clarion call rings out to somehow “save” the burn by “salvage” logging it. Which trees do loggers take? The best and the biggest—the exact trees that Black-backed Woodpeckers need to hunt and nest in. Hutto also points out that as soon as these large trees are removed, their cones can no longer reseed the forest naturally, necessitating hiring battalions of workers to replant the forest by hand—at taxpayer expense.
Dick Hutto (left) leads a local birding group through a newly burned forest near Seeley Lake, Montana, explaining the vital ecological role the burned forest plays.
In A Beautifully Burned Forest, Hutto dives deeply into our society’s entire approach to managing forests and fires, tracing the beginnings of fire suppression to the widely spread notion that our forests are somehow “out of whack” and need to be overly managed with thinning and prescribed burns.
Climate change, of course, is a wildcard in the future of forests and wildfires, but Hutto makes a strong plea to focus on solving the underlying problem of reducing greenhouse gas emissions instead of making our forests ecologically less viable through extensive, often poorly planned micromanagement.
Mountain Bluebirds are just one of dozens of bird species that prefer nesting in burned forests to other habitats. Here they find plenty to eat along with safety from small predators, whose populations are reduced by forest fires.
Anyone with an interest in our forests and wildfires—in other words, every single person living in the American West—should read A Beautifully Burned Forest. It’s a fairly quick read that will change the way you view and understand our spectacularly diverse region. Especially in this day where misinformation rules, Hutto’s book is a valuable step in creating an educated public that insists on smarter management of the lands that sustain us.
Note: If you are interested in Sneed’s children’s book, Fire Birds, supplies are down to a couple of dozen in the warehouse so order soon by clicking here or calling your local indy bookstore. Both Fire Birds and Woodpeckers: Drilling Holes and Bagging Bugs make ideal Christmas presents for grades 3-8 readers.
A happy by-product of our second child going to school in California is that Amy and I have the perfect excuse to go visit the Golden State. Not that I would everdo any birding during a family trip, but you know, it’s hard not to see some great birds when you just happen to stop at a wildlife refuge or stumble into a local park that happens to be a bright red eBird hotspot!
I was especially excited to head to California a couple of weeks ago because, as previously reported, I was perilously close to breaking my all-time single year species record of 527 birds. In fact, when Amy and I landed in Sacramento and headed up to Chico, I needed only one bird to hit 528 species for the year. What would my “go ahead bird” be? (And yes, that is an homage to the upcoming World Series, which happens to feature a team named after birds!)
Visiting our youngest in California has given me a great opportunity to see friends and get in some bonus birding!
When we arrived, I quickly finagled a couple of birding opportunities, but saw only species I had seen on our last trip to California in August: California Scrub-Jays, Acorn Woodpeckers, Yellow-rumped Warblers and the like. My biggest discovery was a White-winged Dove at the Panera’s near the hotel! It was a rare bird so far north in California’s Central Valley, but not unheard of. Still, I felt proud to have spotted the distinct white stripe across each wing as it flew—undoubtedly hoping to score one of Panera’s kitchen sink cookies!
The next morning, I headed out to the home of a close childhood friend who just happens to live outside of Chico in an agricultural area. I had almost reached her place, when I noticed birds feeding on a coyote carcass on the side of the road. I saw Turkey Vultures and ravens. Then, I saw something that got my heart racing: magpies!
My All-Time Best Year Record Breaker: Yellow-Billed Magpie! Whoo-Hoo!(Photo from earlier trip.)
Not just any magpies. I knew that the Black-billed Magpies we had back home in Montana were unlikely in this part of California. No, these were Yellow-billed Magpies—a bird I had failed to see on our last trip in August! Ka-ching! My record shattered like falling glass! And with a California endemic species no less! Personally, I couldn’t have been happier. YBMAs are some of my favorite birds, and hold an interesting history, too:
“This species was named by John James Audubon in 1837 (as Corvus nutallii, corrected the following year to nuttalli) in honor of the ornithologist Thomas Nuttall, who collected the first specimen near Santa Barbara, California. Nuttall was a prodigious botanical collector and ornithologist who authored a Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada.” —Birds of the World database by Cornell Lab of Ornithology (accessed Oct. 19, 2025)
Later that day, I picked up an “insurance bird” at the Llano Seco refuge just southwest of Chico, where Amy and I delighted in Sandhill Cranes, Black-necked Stilts, and my 529th bird of the year, Greater White-fronted Goose.
Greater White-fronted Goose was a great “insurance bird” for my record-breaking year—just in case the Birding Powers That Be decided to lump a couple of species together or I found a mistake in my earlier checklists!
But my fall California birding adventures had just begun!
After a few wonderful days with our child, Amy flew home from Sacramento, and my high school buddy Scott (see Scott’s Guest Post about the Morro Bay Bird Festival), picked me up for an additional four days of exploration. As I’ve mentioned, my emphasis lately has not been so much chasing target species, but exploring places I’ve never before birded, and Scott indulged me to the hilt. After he collected me in Sacramento we explored the Sacramento River delta, hitting Cosumnes River Preserve, where we got a little shorebird action—and a LOT more Sandhill Cranes and Greater White-fronted Geese. On the following days, we hit a huge variety of habitats as we hiked through oak woodlands, explored the large abandoned—and very birdy—grounds of the Sonoma Developmental Center, and scoured rocky shores and intertidal areas in American Canyon, Golden Gate National Recreational Area, Bolinas, and Bodega Bay. I loved every location and, not surprisingly, my “insurance bird” list grew.
Scott and I enjoyed a wet hike through Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in Sonoma County and fortunately, the rain did not dissuade the birds as we sighted a host of classic oak woodland species including Oak Titmouse, Golden-crowned Sparrow, and Nuttall’s Woodpecker.
I picked up Mute Swan in American Canyon as Scott and I gleefully observed thousands of shorebirds including Western and Least Sandpipers, Long-billed Dowitchers, Marbled Godwits, and Black-bellied Plovers. That afternoon, we saw my FOY (First Of Year) White-tailed Kites at a place called Buchli Station Road.
Our adventures gave us plenty of time to learn more about peeps as we picked out the subtle details of Least and these Western Sandpipers. Note the rufous shoulder patch (not always present), black legs, and longer, curving bill that distinguishes these Westerns from Least’s.
Our favorite—and most productive—day happened October 15th. With a visit to Rodeo Lagoon, we found one of my favorite California birds, Wrentits, along with Western Gulls, which I had somehow managed not to see the entire year! At the nearby Bolinas Lagoon, we also observed hundreds of Elegant Terns and my trip MVB (Most Valuable Bird), a Whimbrel.
This Whimbrel at Bolinas Lagoon nabbed Bird of the Trip honors as it was the first WHIM I’d seen in more than six years.
Another bird I had somehow failed to see all year was Red-shouldered Hawk, but as we made our way north toward Point Reyes, Scott suddenly shouted, “Red-shouldered!” We pulled over to look at this handsome creature perched on a power line and even got to see it nab some kind of morsel from roadside weeds. The funny part? We saw four more Red-shouldered Hawks on our drive back to Scott’s house in Glen Ellen! I call that a Grand Slam!
I don’t know that I’ve ever appreciated Red-shouldered Hawks more than I did this one—especially when it launched after some prey!
One thing that made the trip so fun was eating lots of great food and kicking back to watch the MLB playoffs with Scott each evening. I hadn’t seriously watched baseball since Amy and I were still childless more than twenty years before, and it was wonderful to lean back, relax, and watch grown adults try to hit balls with sticks. Goooo Ohtani!
For our final day of birding, Scott drove me to Bodega Bay, one of my favorite places in California. While studying at Cal I had taken an ichthyology course here one summer, and now that I was a birder, the place held even more charm. On the rocks below Bodega Head, Scott and I were astonished to see a group of sixteen Surfbirds—far more than I had ever seen in one place! We also got great looks at both Brandt’s and Pelagic Cormorants, and spotted a Pigeon Guillemot in the far distance.
Since Braden and I saw our first Surfbird from a distance during our first pelagic cruise in Monterey in 2016, these birds have held a special place in our hearts. Never, though, have I seen so many in one place! (Can you also find the lone Black Turnstone in this photo?)
After a lunch of fish tacos, we headed up to the beaches north of Bodega Bay and were treated to a second Whimbrel sighting and more than 120 Surf Scoters casually ducking the breakers offshore. It was a wonderful way to wrap up the trip, and I am grateful to Scott both for being such a great host and for his patience when I was experiencing a blood sugar meltdown at Bodega Head. Of course, you may be wondering where my year list stands now, and I’m happy to report that I am now at 537 species. Will there be any more? I don’t know, but 550 seems awfully tempting, so stay tuned!
Update: Just before posting this, I picked up bird #538 for the year, Lapland Longspur, in some fields northwest of Billings!
Can one ever get tired of Surf Scoters? I don’t THINK so!
Just for fun, can you name the birds and places above? Answers in the nest—I mean next—post!
Need a good book to read? Birding for Boomers recently racked up its fifth award of the year and has been a hit at indie bookstores throughout the West. Why not help support our efforts at FatherSonBirding by picking up a new copy of “Boomers” or one of Sneed’s other books? Just click on one of the images to the right.
After a slow start, August saw the Collard family shift into hyperdrive as Braden drove to Southern California to take a job as a nature guide and camp counselor, and Amy and I saddled up the minivan to drive Tessa to her freshman year of college at Cal State Chico. Braden left a few days early so that he could bird the summer heat of Arizona before arriving at his job. It seemed like a (heat) rash thing to do, but his efforts paid off as he saw 201 species and scored 9, count ‘em, NINE Lifers! These included Montezuma and Scaled Quail, Lucifer Hummingbird, Buff-breasted Flycatcher, Gray Vireo, Cassia Crossbill, and Rufous-winged, Botteri’s, and Cassin’s Sparrow. Just listing the above stats, in fact, makes me hesitant to bring up my own relatively modest birding luck driving to California—but let’s back up a second.
Our drive to California—complete with a stop in Ashland, Oregon—promised to prove crucial to my quest to break my own one-year species record of 527 species. (Sadly, I did not pick up any Year Birds while watching this Shakespeare play!)
As mentioned in previous posts, both of us Collards are having record-breaking years. Braden’s World Species total for 2025 sits at an astonishing 833 species, thanks not only to trips to Mexico and Costa Rica, but his cross-country drives to Montana from Maine and his recent journey to California via Arizona. As for moi, when last I reported (see our post “Swift-ecta!”), I needed twenty birds to break my all-time one-year World Species total of 527. The thing is, twenty species this late in the year was looking a bit dicey. While it might be possible to pick up twenty more species here in Montana, I was counting on the drive to California to put a major dent in that number. Nonetheless, I birded hard before our departure and by the time we hit the road, my year total had crept upward to 512, leaving only sixteen species to break my record.
Normally, I would have thought, “Piece of cake,” especially since I hadn’t visited any West Coast states so far in 2025. But not so fast. Remember that little winter trip Amy planned for us last January (see post “Birding Victoria, BC”)? Well, believe it or not, in Victoria I had already nabbed Bushtits, Anna’s Hummingbirds, and Chestnut-backed Chickadees, removing three potential gimmes from the California trip. Even my Colombia trip with Roger (see post “Antpittas and Tody-Flycatchers”) had allowed me to pick up Acorn Woodpecker and Lesser Goldfinch, removing those bird potentials as well.
The birds of Colombia, including this stunning Toucan Barbet, seen on Roger’s and my trip, are one reason my single year species record has crept tantalizingly to within reach.
Nonetheless, I remained cautiously optimistic as Amy, Tessa, and I hit I-90 for our first stop of the trip, Portland, Oregon. We would spend only two nights there, but I wasted no time, getting up early the first morning to hit Broughton Beach along the Columbia River. My goal was to find cool shorebirds, and I did find both Least and Western Sandpipers—but no Year Birds. While there, though, I met a very nice birder named Ted who told me about another cool spot, Force Lake, and I decided to head over there. I was rewarded by Long-billed Dowitchers and Red-necked Phalaropes—but again, no Year Birds. In fact, the only Year Birds I nabbed in Portland were California Scrub-Jay in the backyard of my in-laws and Black Phoebe at another new spot I visited, Whitaker Ponds Nature Park. As we rolled out of Portland, I hoped that the rest of the trip would prove more productive.
I got turned on to Force Lake by another Portland area birder. It’s a place I’ll return to often, as it offers the best shorebird habitat I’ve found in Portland. Alas, it yielded no Year Birds on our recent trip.
Our next stop was Ashland, Oregon, where Amy had bought us tickets for the Shakespeare play The Merry Wives of Windsor and the musical Into the Woods. Both were excellent productions, but I felt so sleepy I barely made it through them without crashing to floor. Our first morning there, though, I hit another new birding spot, Emigrant Lake (South Shore). Here, I managed to nab three more Year Birds: Oak Titmouse, Bewick’s Wren, and California Towhee. My biggest surprise were a pair of Nashville Warblers. In fact, it’s been a great year for learning about these birds as I saw them migrating through Texas last April and now, making the return migration through California. (Though I must point out that this species has an unusual “bifurcated” distribution so the birds in Texas and California probably came from separate, distinct populations.)
Finding Nashville Warblers along the shore of Emigrant Lake was one of the day’s best surprises.
Chico greeted us with 104-degree temperatures, less than ideal for birding. Our major goal here, of course, was to get Tessa settled into university housing, but you know me. My first morning, I was up at dawn to explore Hooker Oak Park, a great city park I’d discovered when first bringing Tessa to check out Chico (see post “College Search Birding in California”) in 2024. This morning, the park did not disappoint. One of my favorite birds, Acorn Woodpeckers, were flying everywhere and I had a wonderful encounter with Anna’s and Rufous Hummingbirds, who put on a real show for me in a dry riverbed. As far as Year Birds go, however, my only score was a bird that happened to earn Bird of the Trip honors.
I recorded more than two dozen Acorn Woodpeckers in Chico’s Hook Oak Park. Good thing they are one of my favorite birds!
As I was leaving the hummingbirds and walking back down the dry wash, I glanced up at a medium-sized black bird landing high in the top of a pine tree. The bird showed a distinctive, tall peak on its head like it had styled its feathers with pomade, and at first I thought, “Is that a Stellar’s Jay?” Though I knew STJAs were common in the adjacent mountains, it didn’t seem likely that they’d be here on California’s Central Valley floor. However, as I stared at the bird—and three others that joined it—a wave of delight crept over me. I was looking at Phainopeplas!
I love that the orange throat patch of this Rufous Hummingbird looks like an upside-down heart! Several of the birds were aggressively chasing each other—and a few Anna’s that were around.
At first I didn’t believe it. While I knew that Phainopeplas lived in Southern California, I’d only ever seen the birds in Arizona and here in Chico they seemed wonderfully out of place. Quickly calling up Merlin on my phone, however, the range map showed a tiny, seasonal finger stretching up the Central Valley—and stopping almost exactly where I was standing!
With their surprise appearance in Chico, Phainopeplas easily nabbed Bird of the Trip honors for our sojourn to Chico.
These, of course, are the moments a birder lives for—amazing surprises in new places—and the encounter put a bounce in my step as I returned to the hotel for a day of getting Tessa ready for college. Alas, the PHAIs were the last Year Bird I managed to find on the trip. I returned to Montana at 520 species for my Year List. Since then, I’ve managed to add Clark’s Grebe to my list, but that still falls seven short of breaking my record.
Will I make it? Do I have any surprise opportunities up my sleeve to put me over the top? And what of Braden? Could he reach that magical 1,000 number for the year? Well, you know the answer: you’ll just have to keep reading to find out!
A fun visit to Emigrant Lake south of Ashland, Oregon helped nudge me closer to breaking my all-time one-year species count record—but not close enough!
Today, we continue Braden’s epic birding trip from Maine to Montana with an astonishing visit to a place few people get to experience: Algonquin Provincial Park. Enjoy this latest installment, and if you’d like to support FatherSonBirding and independent journalism, please consider buying one of Sneed’s books shown to the right. Oh, and please share this post!
Twelve hours west of the Maine border, I spotted the giant sign reading “Welcome to Algonquin Provincial Park.” When many birders think of Canada, they imagine huge tracts of boreal conifer forest filled with the birds of the north: Canada Jays, Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, crossbills and, of course, Black-backed Woodpeckers and Spruce Grouse. Much of my drive from western Maine towards Ontario did not give that impression at all. In fact, the part of Canada that includes Montreal and Ottawa (both cities that I drove through) is lower altitude than western New England, and much of it lies in the St. Lawrence River Valley, a warmer, more humid region filled with deciduous forests, agriculture and suburbs. The area reminded me more of central Pennsylvania or New Jersey than of western New England, despite being at a similar latitude.
But Algonquin Provincial Park was noticeably different from the St. Lawrence River Valley. Three hours west of Ottawa, this large preserve sat at a higher elevation than the valley. The soil was rockier and because of that, far more conifers grew here, especially around the various lakes and bogs scattered through the park. Finally, I felt like I was back in good boreal habitat.
Algonquin Provincial Park represented a significant departure from lower altitude St. Lawrence River Valley only a few hours away.
I wasn’t allowed to camp in the park without paying a hefty fine, so I pitched my tent on a dirt road right outside it, in what appeared to be a site for keeping horses on the shore of a large lake. As dusk fell, I heard the twitter of an American Woodcock displaying high above. I’d seemingly settled in the middle of his territory, and he kept me company all night as I dreamed of what birds I’d see the next day.
My impromptu campsite outside of the park rewarded me with an American Woodcock that serenaded me to sleep.
After a short walk around my campsite at dawn, during which I detected a few Cape May Warblers, I headed into the park. My first location: the Spruce Bog Boardwalk. Spruce bogs, which I’d gotten to know during my time in Maine and the Northeast, are strange, almost other-worldly habitats scattered across the northern United States. Generally consisting of an outer area dominated by spruce trees with a core of peat moss floating atop water, they are home to a variety of unique species including carnivorous plants like pitcher plants and sundews. Because of their unique habitat structures, spruce bogs are also havens for a variety of boreal bird species that are otherwise less common in more southern parts of their range. So, as I set foot on the boardwalk, I found myself once again searching for Spruce Grouse and Black-backed Woodpecker—species I find myself looking for frequently.
Extensive searching brought no luck, although I did find more boreal warblers, including several Cape May Warblers and another great look at a Bay-breasted. I also heard a Lincoln’s Sparrow, my first of the year, singing from the wet back half of the bog. I had much of the day to bird Algonquin Park, so after striking out on my main targets at the boardwalk, I decided to take a short stop at the visitor center.
I had hoped for both Black-backed Woodpeckers and Spruce Grouse in this spruce bog, but struck out with both species.
Within ten seconds of pulling out onto the road my Toyota RAV4 screeched to a halt. There, ten feet away, staring me down, stood a huge female moose. The animal had to be at least five feet tall, though from my seat in the car it seemed a lot taller! After we shared several seconds of each other’s presence, the moose trotted off into the woods. I didn’t end up seeing any of my bird targets at the visitor center and the center itself was closed, but I was now filled with adrenaline—I’d just scored my most wanted mammal of the trip!
Next, I hit Rock Lake Road. While I hadn’t seen many reports of my target boreal birds here, I figured that this road—a dirt track winding past marshes and through patches of spruce and budding Paper Birch—was as good a spot to try as any! Over the next hour and a half I drove slowly with my head out the window. Again, no woodpecker and no grouse, but I ended up tallying 40 species, 15 of which were warblers! Nashville and Magnolia were the most abundant, along with a smattering of Black-throated Blue, Blackburnian, Canada and others. Near the beginning of the road I also heard several Wood Thrushes singing, a surprise this far north. Along my drive I was also accompanied by the near-constant drumming of Ruffed Grouse, and the loud, piercing whistles of a pair of Broad-winged Hawks.
Though I continued to strike out on BBWOs and SPGRs, Algonquin presented a nice assortment of warblers including Nashvilles, always a favorite!
At this point I admit that I was feeling a bit ungrateful. I’d been birding for three or four hours and had not so much as glimpsed either of my targets—birds that were supposed to be somewhat regular within the park, and had compelled me to drive through Canada in the first place. Sure, I’d seen some great birds and a moose. But if I went the whole day without getting a Black-backed or a Spruce Grouse, I was going to be a bit salty. I jumped on eBird to check on any recent reports of either of them nearby and elected to visit, as my last stop of the morning, Pog Lake Campground. A Black-backed Woodpecker had been seen there only a few days before, and I figured it would be my best chance before continuing my journey west. I parked the car and began walking toward Pog Lake, keeping my ears and eyes peeled for my target species. One of the first birds I heard was a Tennessee Warbler, another boreal species with an electric song, singing loudly from a campsite nearby. I recorded it and continued onwards.
Then, I came across Campsite #512. Surrounded by gorgeous coniferous trees, it at first seemed just like any other campsite in Pog Lake Campground. The first thing that made Campsite #512 stick out, though, was the Ruffed Grouse drumming in the bushes nearby. Now, I’ve heard plenty of Ruffed Grouse drumming in my life—and had heard dozens on this trip already. Seeing one in action was a different story. I’d tried to sneak up on them before, but was always unsuccessful—the birds would flush from under my feet. However, this particular bird sounded incredibly close so I shelved my other goals and went into full stealth mode, sneaking towards the campsite to see if I could watch the grouse in action. After about ten minutes of tiptoeing around, I heard the beating of its wings—and that’s when I spotted it. Through ten feet of dense foliage, there the grouse stood, its wings striking its chest to make the sound that you feel more than hear.
I promptly sat down and spent the next thirty minutes with that grouse. Every five minutes or so, it would stand upright on its mossy log and begin its display. Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom. I watched it drum five or six times—with and without binoculars, and filmed it on my phone’s camera. It was magical. (Click the above image to watch my short clip.)
After twenty minutes, I also heard honking overhead. At first, I couldn’t see any birds above me, but I figured it was just a flyover flock of Canada Geese, though the calls sounded a bit strange. Then, in the gap above Campsite #512, I spotted several flocks of two hundred or so geese—and quickly realized that these were not Canadas. Between a bad view I got through my binoculars and listening to their sounds on Merlin, I realized I’d just seen a massive flock of Brant migrating over me, headed for the Arctic! I’d never seen these birds away from the ocean and never in such numbers! Sure enough, though, Algonquin Park lies right in the middle of Brant’s narrow migration route across Canada, and I’d just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
The Brant disappeared into the distance and the grouse drummed again, and I decided that, even though I hadn’t found my targets, I felt more than satisfied with my experience with Pog Lake Campground. But Campsite #512 hadn’t finished with me.
As I slowly stood, taking care not to startle the grouse, I heard strange, frantic calls coming from the woods on the other side of the campsite. I quickly recognized them as calls I’d been listening for all morning, and suddenly, a male Black-backed, decked out in sleek black feathers with a yellow cap, flew into the campsite. It landed on a downed log near me, and proceeded to hop along the ground, getting closer and closer to until it stood only five feet away! It either didn’t notice me or didn’t care, poking for insects in the roots of the nearby spruce trees. After a minute or two, the woodpecker flew away, leaving me debating if I should EVER leave Campsite #512.
My best-ever look at a Black-backed Woodpecker will forever embed Campsite 512 in my birding heart.
As you can probably guess, I did continue on my journey, but knew that my visit to Campsite #512 would become one of my most memorable birding mornings ever, one that would be etched in my brain for a long, long time.
