Tag Archives: adventure travel

Birding Festivals of the West 2026!

As April proceeds apace, it’s time to greet our spring birds with the word “Tadaima!”—Japanese for “Welcome Home!” However, it’s also an excellent time to finally do something you may have contemplated for years: attend a birding festival!

Never fear, it’s not too late. Particularly as recent geopolitical events make you rethink vacationing in Paris or visiting the Egyptian pyramids, birders have the chance to seize opportunities on our very doorstep. During the past few years, Braden and I have participated in a number of birding festivals and they have always been huge fun. They have allowed us to explore places and see birds that we never imagined, and connect with great birders from all around the world. Pick up a copy of BWD or Birding and you’ll see that there are literally dozens of birding festivals to choose from throughout the year. Today, I’d like to focus on three in the West that I’ll be participating in—and that you may want to consider for yourselves.

The Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival, Cortez, Colorado, May 6-10

In just three weeks, I’ll be traveling to the Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival in Cortez, Colorado, which runs from May 6 to May 10. Fun story: I was invited to this year’s festival because of a blog post I wrote last summer called In Search of the Green-tailed Towhee. The UMMV organizing committee happened to have chosen that bird as this year’s “mascot” and when they read the blog, Voila!, they invited me to give the keynote!

**The charismatic Green-tailed Towhee is this year’s featured bird at the Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival—but is only one of the cool specialties participants are likely to see!**

Now I’ll admit that I’d never considered birding southwest Colorado, but as I delved into the various field trips, I grew more and more excited. The variety of birds and habitats in this part of the country is fabulous and includes many species that can be a challenge to see elsewhere. 180 species have been observed at the festival including waterfowl, shorebirds, raptors, and songbirds. Most exciting to me are the Southwestern birds I rarely get a chance to see including Black-throated and Sagebrush Sparrows, Gray Flycatcher, Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay, Scaled Quail, Sage Thrasher, Virginia’s Warbler, Juniper Titmouse, and at top of my list, Gray Vireo.

**The Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival not only offers up great birds, but a chance to explore some of our nation’s most iconic scenery and cultural sites, including Mesa Verde National Park.**

What really sets this festival apart is the chance to bird while exploring some of the most breathtaking scenery in America. Think dramatic canyon country like Mesa Verde National Park (see photo above) and Ute Mountain Tribal Park. This Four Corners region is loaded with archaeological sites and a unique culture found nowhere else in the world, and just begs to be explored. In fact, my wife and I are going down a couple of days early to do just that. To get there, we’re flying into Durango and renting a car. If this intrigues you as much as it intrigues us, do check it out! https://utemountainmesaverdebirdingfestival.com/

Wings Across the Big Sky, Kalispell, Montana, June 12-14

This will be Braden’s and my fourth time participating in our home state birding festival, and we couldn’t be more excited. One of the things that makes this festival special is that it travels to different parts of the state each year, allowing birders to explore Montana’s extensive variety of habitats and birds. Braden and I are leading two field trips, including one to the CSKT Bison Range, but all of the trips offer a surprising wealth of bird life. Montana is especially known for its raptors and grassland birds, but most people don’t realize that it’s a great place to see waterfowl and songbirds, too.

Just one of dozens of field trips at the 2024 Wings Across the Big Sky festival, including trip leaders, field biologist Hilary Turner (far left) and Andrew Guttenberg (third from left). And yes, that’s Braden towering over Hilary on the left!

If you’ve never visited Montana before, I highly recommend the field trips to Glacier National Park. At least ten kinds of warblers can be found in the park, along with four kinds of chickadees (think Boreal Chickadee), and three kinds of grouse, including Spruce Grouse. The park is especially known for breeding Black Swifts, Harlequin Ducks, Common Loons, and American Dippers. Again, you might just want to come a few days early to explore on your own!

**Glacier National Park may be the best place in the Lower 48 to score breeding Harlequin Ducks! Braden and I saw this one, our lifer, on our very first Wings Across the Big Sky festival!**

Glacier, though, is not the only draw to this part of Montana. Flathead Lake is the largest natural freshwater lake in the West and hosts a great variety of birds along its shores. The Mission Mountains are truly one of the most spectacular and little-known mountain ranges in the Lower 48, and several field trips will explore the grasslands and wetlands of the Mission Valley. Passionate local trip leaders and Montana hospitality will ensure that you make this festival a regular part of your birding calendar.

For complete information, click here: Wings Across the Big Sky

Southeast Arizona Birding Festival, August 12-16, Tucson, Arizona

The Southeast Arizona Birding Festival has built a reputation as one of the nation’s premier birding festivals, and so when I was invited to speak and co-lead field trips at this year’s festival, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. Of course, the first thing you’re probably asking yourself is “Arizona? In August???” I did, but believe it or not, this is one of the best times to bird the Grand Canyon State.

**Braden contemplating a glorious sunset near the mouth of Madera Canyon—one of the field trips I’ll be co-leading during the SE Arizona Birding Festival.**

Braden and I have been lucky to bird Arizona several times. See our posts “Portal Dreaming” and “Trogons and Border Walls.” One thing that always amazes us is the variety of habitats that can be found there, including wetlands, saguaro forests, and incredible canyons. Of special note are the region’s sky islands. These are mountains and mountain ranges that rise steeply out of the desert to altitudes of over ten thousand feet. Climbing up them, you quickly transition from desert through a variety of habitats, culminating with conifer forests at the top.

**While many people travel to Arizona specifically to see the Coppery-tailed (formerly Elegant) Trogon, Arizona offers an unparalleled diversity of other specialties to US birders.**

Sky islands not only provide welcome relief from Arizona’s summer valley heat, they offer an astounding variety of birds, many of which cannot be found anywhere else in the US. On our 2022 trip to Arizona, Braden and I nabbed life bird after life bird including Coppery-tailed (formerly Elegant) Trogon, Red-faced Warbler, Olive Warbler, Scott’s Oriole, Five-striped Sparrow, Mexican Whip-poor-will, and many more.

**Yellow-eyed Juncos are just one of the many specialty birds that can be found in Arizona during the upcoming birding festival.**

In addition to speaking at this year’s festival, I will be co-leading field trips to both Madera and Ramsey Canyons—two of my favorite places I have ever birded. But my buddy Roger and I are flying down a few days early to bird on our own. Registration for the festival begins on April 28, and if you’re interested, I wouldn’t hesitate to get on the website that day to reserve your preferred trips. The festival headquarters hotel, the Tucson Doubletree, is having some reservation issues, so you may want to call them directly as soon as possible to book a room.

SE Arizona Festival Link: https://tucsonbirds.org/festival/

So that’s it for this Festivals of the West post. We hope it has inspired you to give a birding festival a try. If the above festivals are out of reach, look into a local festival near you. For a list of festivals nationwide, check out Cornell’s All About Birds website. We can almost guarantee you’ll be glad you did! And if you spot me at one of the above festivals, please come and say Howdy!

If you’re enjoying FatherSonBirding, please consider subscribing by filling out the box in the column to the right. We won’t ever sell or give away your information and you can unsubscribe at any time. And do feel free to share this blog with others or link to it—but please contact us for any other uses! FatherSonBirding is written by REAL PEOPLE, and if you’d like to support our work, please also consider buying *new copies* of some of Sneed’s books, also shown in the column to the right.

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.**

Arenal for Antbirds: Birding Costa Rica, Part 2

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Like all FSB posts, this one is written by REAL PEOPLE. Feel free to share it and support real writers and artists everywhere by shunning artificial intelligence. Despite the hype, AI is not “just a tool.” Its primary utility these days is to increase profits by putting people out of work. Don’t make it easy for the giant corporations that control it and are participating in the greatest theft of intellectual and artistic property the world has ever known.

After our surprising morning birding near San Jose’s Juan Santamaría International Airport (see our previous post), Braden and I wasted no time heading into the heart of the region where we would spend the next nine days—the northern Caribbean slope of Costa Rica. Our first destination? The flanks of Arenal Volcano.

Despite having spent more than two months in Costa Rica back in 1994 (when I was writing my books The Forest in the Clouds and Monteverde: Science and Scientists in a Costa Rican Cloud Forest), I had never before explored this region. During his semester abroad here, however, Braden had thoroughly scoured the country for birds and had put together an itinerary that would give us the most bang for our birding buck. The Arenal area—near the bustling tourist town of La Fortuna—held many avian riches, but Braden and I had one group of birds we especially wanted to see: antbirds.

**The area around Arenal Volcano was the first major destination of our nine-day itinerary. Unfortunately, heavy rains greeted us during this supposed dry season!**

If you’re unfamiliar with them, antbirds are a group of birds that shadow army ant swarms—not to eat them, but to snag the many other invertebrates that the swarms dislodge during their ravenous raiding parties. I had seen many ant swarms during my time in Costa Rica, but again (and tragically), that was before I became a birder and if any antbirds were around, I had cluelessly overlooked them. Braden had, of course, been more alert and seen several kinds of antbirds—but never in the classic “insect-palooza” situation one reads about in scientific narratives.

**Braden and I looked forward to finding an antbird flock as much as any other birds on our trip. Note the army ants below the leaf upon which this Bicolored Antbird stands.**

We got our first shot at antbirds on our second morning in the country when we birded the internationally famous Arenal Observatory Lodge & Trails, a rather pricey destination with a fabulous sweep of nature to offer visitors. Fortunately, you don’t have to book a room to bird the place, but can simply pay a fee to spend the day. Unfortunately, waves of heavy rain greeted Braden and me when we arrived. Don’t get me wrong. We still had an incredible day here, including bird lists totaling more than 100 species and a fantastic sighting of a northern tamandua, a small, incredibly shy species of anteater—a first for both of us. Alas, we got only a brief glimpse of a single antbird—a Spotted Antbird—and encountered no army ant swarms where more antbirds might be plying their trade.

**On our first day of antbird searching, we saw only a single Spotted Antbird that didn’t happen to be following any army ants. Still, a gorgeous creature, verdad?** **(Note: the featured image at the beginning of this post shows a female Spotted Antbird!)**

Still hopeful, the next morning we headed to another nearby spot, a combo nature area and zip-lining destination called Sky Adventures. And guess what? It was again pouring down rain! After spending the previous day pretty much soaked, neither of us looked forward to another day of damp garments and soggy boots. A ray of hope was that one of the Sky Adventures guides told us that he had seen antbirds only the day before and even told us where to look.

**Braden wondered if he would see any life birds on this Costa Rican adventures, but quickly spotted this Black-headed Tody-flycatcher, the first of FOUR lifers he would collect this day!**

In this kind of weather, we had the trails pretty much to ourselves, and we realized that there was no shortage of birds around us. I should backtrack a bit and explain that while more than a third of the Costa Rican birds I was seeing were lifers, Braden had already seen so many birds in the country that he wondered if he’d get any lifers on our entire trip. That question got answered pretty quickly as we began crossing a spectacular hanging bridge over a lush ravine. Almost immediately, Braden said, “Black-headed Tody-Flycatcher!” Sure enough, on a branch hanging over the bridge, we spotted one of the cutest birds in the tropics—and a lifer for both of us! In fact, a huge variety of amazing birds seemed to be hanging out around the bridge, and before long a yellow and black bird landed just below us. Braden got even more excited by this one. “Black-thighed Grosbeak!” he exclaimed. Ka-ching! His second lifer in ten minutes!

Braden’s second life bird of the day, a Black-thighed Grosbeak, put in a leisurely appearance just below the hanging bridge. Look closely and you can even see the black thighs—though this is still one of the worst bird names ever!

Still, we hadn’t forgotten the antbirds and pressed across the bridge and up a winding trail. And at a sharp left, suddenly, there they were. Antbirds!

I confess that it took both of us a few minutes to embrace exactly what we were looking at. Columns of army ants marched along both sides of the trail, and the antbirds skittered and skaddled all about us.

**Braden, looking happily in shock at finding his best antbird mixed-flock ever!**

According to Vallely’s and Dyer’s Birds of Central America, Costa Rica hosts nine species of antbirds and we recognized four working the ant columns around us. These included Bicolored, Spotted, and Zelodon’s. It also included the one we both most wanted to see. “I’ve got an Ocellated!” Braden shouted with glee—his third lifer of the day.

**One of our top targets of our entire trip, Ocellated Antbirds gave us extensive, if very quick, looks for our full ant swarm visit.**

Why were we so excited about this bird? All antbirds are subtly beautiful, but Ocellated has the most distinct patterns of any Costa Rican species. It sports gorgeous blue, black, and rufous colors around the face and eye, and a remarkable scalloped pattern of feathers down its back and chest. As thrilled as we were to find it, we were even more thrilled to watch what the antbirds were doing.

**Only a single female Zeladon’s Antbird joined the ant swarm, and apparently these do not usually follow mixed flocks, and are not obligate ant swarm feeders. Males are black instead of brown.**

Back and forth they darted snagging insects, spiders, and other arthropods that were startled by or fleeing from the army ants. Braden and I paced back and forth, mesmerized by this performance. At least fifteen or twenty antbirds surrounded us, the most abundant being the Bicolored, who were also the least shy. WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW!

Antbirds, though, aren’t the only birds that join in on following army ant columns. As we watched, we also saw Wedge-billed Woodcreepers, Northern Barred-Woodcreepers, and Fawn-throated Foliage Gleaners. As a bonus, the rain had let up by now, letting us fully enjoy what might be for me a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. In fact, we spent at least half an hour with these remarkable birds, trying to grasp exactly what they were doing and just appreciating that things like this could still happen in the world. Finally, as the trail’s foot traffic increased, we moved on.

**Woodcreepers can be intimidating birds to identify, so I relished spending time with several species at the ant swarm, including this Northern Barred-Woodcreeper.**

We, of course, saw many more species on this outing—including Braden’s fourth lifer of the day, a White-throated Shrike-Tanager—but it was the antbirds that would stay with us as we headed to our next, equally spectacular destination, Caño Negro wetlands.

Our Sky Adventures checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S303092147

Birding 2025: It’s a Wrap

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As always, we encourage you to share and link to this post. We absolutely do not give permission to use it to train AI models or for other purposes without permission. Happy New Year, Everyone!

As 2025 rapidly winds up, Braden and I want to thank you for your continuing interest in FatherSonBirding and all that you do for birds. We can’t believe that it’s been almost EIGHT YEARS since we published our very first post, A Quest for Snowy Owls! We certainly wouldn’t have kept at it without your interest and support.

We’re thrilled to report that 2025 has been FSB’s biggest year yet. We published a record 49 posts this year, including our 250^th post, “Binoculars and Scopes for the Happy Holiday Birder”. Speaking of that, we also launched FSB equipment reviews—articles we do NOT get paid for, but which have attracted a ton of viewer interest.

FSB received a record 20,000 views in 2025, greatly helped by our equipment and travel reviews!

And speaking of viewers, our site attracted 20,000 views this year, shattering last year’s record of 14,000—with the caveat that about a thousand of those views were likely from AI bots stealing our content without permission (Grrrr…). Still, the vast majority of those extra visitors were legitimate—and from an astounding variety of places. More than 15,000 viewers from 104 countries visited our site this year! Huge gracias, arigatos, mercis, and many more thank yous to our international visitors!

By now, we can hear you pleading, “But please, Sneed and Braden, tell us your Top 5 most popular posts!” Astoundingly, four of our five top posts were equipment review posts:

1) Vortex Triumph 10X42 Binoculars: Entry Level Excellence with 1,425 views. (View post here!)

2) Nikon Monarch HG Binoculars: FSB’s First Equipment Review with 950 views (View post here!)

3) Vortex Razor HD 13-39X56 spotting scope with Mountain Pass tripod: A Perfect Travel Combo? With 580 views (View post here!)

4) Birding Barcelona, Part 1: The Urban Core with 510 views (View post here!)

5) Vortex Viper HD Binoculars (Equipment Review, and/or Texas 2025 Part 2-½) with 480 views (View post here!)

Our 2024 blog about birding downtown Barcelona snuck into the Top 5 for 2025—with several of our Japan and Costa Rica posts close behind!

The numbers reveal some clear trends: with rare exceptions, our most popular posts have been our equipment reviews and reports from travel destinations. Our posts from Japan, Spain, Colombia, Mexico, and Costa Rica have been especially popular—as have posts about very birdy domestic locales such as Texas and San Diego. Our book reviews also have done well, but a decline in America’s literacy rate is clearly evident, as our statistics reveal that many more viewers are interested in buying gear than in reading books.

On a personal level, Braden and I are grateful for the many wonderful birding experiences we got to share, both together and separately. Braden was fortunate to visit both Mexico and Costa Rica in 2025 as well as take an epic cross-continent trip from Maine to Montana following his graduation from the University of Maine. He also birded the heck out of Arizona while on his way to his current job in California, where he’s racking up all kinds of new birding experiences.

As for Sneed, I kicked off the year with a trip to Victoria, Canada, thanks to my wife, Amy—and, honestly, the year never seemed to slow down. As soon as we returned, my buddy Roger Kohn invited me on an epic last-minute trip to Colombia. There followed journeys to Texas, Maine, eastern Montana, California (twice!), and most recently, Georgia and Oregon. Most of the latter were not planned as birding trips, but you won’t be surprised to learn that we saw a ton ‘o birds along the way.

Thanks in great part to trips to California with my friend Scott and . . .

You also won’t be surprised to learn that, quite unintentionally, Braden and I shattered most of our own birding records. Braden finished out his birding year with a remarkable 867 species while I smashed my own previous record with 551 species!

One of the low points for the year was having to say goodbye to our wonderful “birding dog” Lola. She left us far too soon and we still miss her terribly. (See this post.)

**Besides finding birds, Lola proved adept at finding marine mammals such as this whale. We miss you Lola!**

Moving forward, we hope to continue to publish a wide variety of posts for your reading pleasure, including those about everyday birding experiences that are at the heart of a birder’s joy and wonder. Just a few adventures that we have lined up for 2026 include trips to Costa Rica and Germany, along with visits to birding festivals in Colorado, Arizona, and Montana. Meanwhile, it is our sincerest wish that the next year brings you all good things, including many incredible birding experiences and a brighter outlook for birders, birds, and the planet we all share.

For some ideas about how to help birds this coming year, please visit our last post, Giving Back to Birds—with Great Breaking News! As always, if you would like to help support FatherSonBirding, consider buying new copies of some of Sneed’s books by clicking on the book jackets to the right.

Flight of the Godwit (Book Review)

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**Bruce M. Beehler’s *Flight of the Godwit: Tracking Epic Shorebird Migrations* (Smithsonian Books, 2025)**

Any birder who has aspired to learn about shorebirds will find a welcome companion in Bruce M. Beehler’s new book, Flight of the Godwit: Tracking Epic Shorebird Migrations. Shorebirds, after all, can be considered somewhat mythical, mysterious beings. Not only do many of them make remarkable annual migrations covering tens of thousands of kilometers, quite a few are notoriously difficult to identify. Certainly, Braden and I realized we had entered a more advanced stage of learning when we started to search out and try to identify shorebirds and, in fact, we both often still struggle with figuring out some of the more difficult shorebird species. Yet the more we encounter and learn about these birds, the more we love them—and that same kind of passion radiates from Beehler’s words as he sets out on his own journeys to observe and learn more about these birds.

**In Montana, we are lucky to host three of the “Magnificent Seven” shorebirds as breeders—including Marbled Godwits, one of the focal birds of Beehler’s new book.**

In Flight of the Godwit, Beehler recounts a series of recent adventures across the US and Canada to follow and observe shorebirds as they migrate north, stop over at resting and staging sites, settle on breeding grounds, and then head south again for their long non-breeding seasons. Although Beehler discusses all of our North American shorebirds at some point, he clearly targets what he calls the Magnificent Seven: Hudsonian Godwit, Marbled Godwit, Bar-tailed Godwit, Long-billed Curlew, Whimbrel, Bristle-thighed Curlew, and Upland Sandpiper. As he shares his encounters, he sprinkles in liberal amounts of natural history and personal experiences about these birds to make the book much more than a birder’s travelogue.

**This Marbled Godwit checked us out as we were scoping shorebirds in Westby last summer.**

That said, the travelogue aspects of the book are a big part of what fascinated me about this tale. Even after eleven years of birding, my shorebird experiences have been much more limited than I would like. Although my home in Montana is fortunate to host a number of breeding shorebirds—including three of the Magnificent Seven—for most shorebirds, we get only brief glimpses of them as they pass through in spring and fall. Partly because of this, Braden and I have especially sought out shorebirds on our out-of-state travels to Texas, New England, and the West Coast. Sigh. It is never enough.

**It always surprises new birders that some of our largest shorebirds actually breed in grasslands—including Long-billed Curlews.**

As I followed Beehler up through the Midwest during spring migration and around Alaska during breeding season, his experiences filled in giant gaps in my own experience with these remarkable birds. I got a better sense of where the birds stop to refuel and rest, and my vague impressions of their nesting territories and habits were sharpened by Beehler’s actual observations and descriptions. Many times, I found myself nodding my head thinking, Yeah, I know what he’s talking about or Oh, so that’s what they’re doing. All of this felt especially satisfying since there’s a good chance I will never experience many of Beehler’s destinations for myself.

**As much time as I try to spend with shorebirds, it is never enough. *Flight of the Godwit* helped fill in many of the experiences I probably will never have for myself.**

Those who will appreciate Flight of the Godwit the most probably are birders who have already spent time observing shorebirds and struggling over their identifications. Those with limited shorebird experience may find themselves getting a bit lost as Beehler throws out bird names that may seem a bit abstract without solid brain images to connect them to. Still, there’s a good chance that even beginning “shorbers” will find that Beehler’s tales of adventure excite them to plunge more deeply into this remarkable set of birds. As for intermediate and advanced birders—especially those who may never get to Alaska or follow spring migration through the Midwest—I highly recommend this intriguing book that is not only a valuable educational document, but a labor of love with which many of us can relate.

You can order Flight of the Godwit from almost any outlet that sells books—but why not visit your local independent bookstore and order it there? Another easy way to do this is through the online website Bookshop.org.