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Birding Japan: Kyoto

Since we published them, our birding posts about Japan have been read in dozens of countries. If you are planning your own trip to Japan, you’re in luck! Sneed’s book, FIRST-TIME JAPAN: A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE FOR THE INDEPENDENT TRAVELER, tells you everything you need to know about how to plan your trip to this remarkable, yet sometimes daunting, country. Order now by clicking here.

Welcome to Part 3 of Sneed’s recent Japan adventure. If you missed the first couple of Japan posts, start here. As always, we appreciate your interest, and please share these with anyone you think will enjoy them.

Our journey to Kyoto gave us one last chance to ride the Enoshima Electric Railway, the adorable little train Tessa and I both fell in love with during our long, rainy weekend in Kamakura. In fact, Japan’s train system is so well thought-out that we simply rode the EER to the end of the line in Fujisowa to catch the Tokaido train to Odawara. There, we boarded the shinkansen (bullet train) for the two-hour ride to Kyoto. Easy peasy. I have to say, however, that Kyoto Station was quite a bit more confusing than Tokyo or any of the other stations we’d visited, but fortunately I knew which subway to catch to our accommodation, a rather modern version of a traditional Japanese inn, or ryokan. As far as I can tell, there’s no perfect location to stay in Kyoto, but our place was only an 8-10 minute walk to two different subway stations. Even better, it was close to what turned out to be a wonderful birding spot, the Kamo River—a place that Tessa and I would return to several times.

Our first look at Kyoto’s Kamo River convinced us to return as often as possible. Kyoto’s birds felt the same way!

Our first full day in Kyoto, I planned for us to visit Fushimi Inari Taisha, a shrine famous for its hundreds (thousands?) of red “torii” gates straddling the paths leading up the mountain. Conveniently, to catch the train to the shrine, we got to walk along the Kamo River. It was a glorious day and many others were out enjoying the sunshine and blooming sakura trees. For my part, I also couldn’t help noticing a lot of birds enjoying the relatively unkempt river bed—including a real surprise, Common Merganser, a duck that we often see in our rivers in Montana!

A pair of Common Mergansers greatly surprised me in Kyoto.

We finished Fushimi Inari Taisha early enough that we decided to go ahead and visit Kyoto’s Imperial Palace and the surrounding Kyoto Gyoen National Garden. The palace was impressively, well, palatial and I was hoping for some excellent birding in the gardens. The over-manicured park, however, once again limited its attractiveness to only the hardiest of species. I did run into a nice little mixed flock that contained a Warbling White-eye, Long-tailed Tit, and my lifer Japanese Bush Warbler, but have to say that I was disappointed overall. Nothing that a big bowl of steaming hot ramen at Ichiran Ramen didn’t cure!

As Kyoto’s Imperial Palace demonstrates, Japanese architects knew what they were doing. If only the places hadn’t burned down every 20 or 30 years!

The next morning, after hitting Kyoto Station to reserve shinkansen tickets for the upcoming legs of our trip, we rode a JR local train out to Arashiyama. Tessa had especially been wanting to visit a bamboo grove, and a large, famous one grew here. We also visited Kameyama Park, located at the mouth of the Katsura River gorge. The sakura were especially wonderful here and, well, the birds turned out to be pretty great, too! As we strolled the gorgeous grounds, I saw a Warbling White-eye and the complete triumvirate of tits: Japanese, Varied, and Long-tailed. Just saying the word “tit” provokes giggles but these birds are essentially the Old World version of chickadees. They look like chickadees. They behave like chickadees. Just as in the States, if you see a tit, chances are other interesting birds are lurking nearby, so I am always happy to spot one.

Kameyama Park is the only place I managed to convince Tessa to give the peace sign for a photo—something almost mandatory for the Japanese!

Following the trails down to the river, we encountered a nice collection of ducks and my first-ever Japanese Wagtail and House Swift! By this time, large crowds had gathered to enjoy the sunshine and sights, so after a quick bite at a local food stand, we high-tailed it back to our ryokan. Our birding in Kyoto was not quite finished, however. I managed two more sessions at Kamo River, the final one the evening before our departure. Tessa was chilling in our room after a busy day of seeing Nijo Castle and the Manga Museum, and doing some gift shopping in Teramachi-dori, one of the expansive covered street malls that seem to be popular in Japan. I had some extra energy so decided on taking one last visit to the river.

My lifer Japanese Wagtail at Kameyama Park. I actually had probably seen one at the Kamo River earlier, but it took me a while to tease out the differences in markings with White Wagtails.

It was a lovely afternoon, and hundreds of Kyoto residents were out taking advantage of it. I walked downstream, enjoying the Black Kites flying overhead and Gray Herons, Great and Little Egrets, Great Cormorants, ducks, and Japanese and White Wagtails along the river. One thing I’d sorely missed on the trip were any kind of shorebirds, but suddenly I saw a suspicious bird standing on a rock across the river. From eBird quizzes I’d taken, I immediately guessed that my shorebird drought might be at an end and that this could be a Common Sandpiper. I was too far away to get a good look at the bill, though, and it seemed too short. That was good because it forced me to call up the Merlin app and dive deeper into the Common Sandpiper’s ID features. Two things stuck out: COSAs had a prominent white “spur” at the shoulder and they often bobbed their tails like wagtails. I again focused my binoculars. “Yep,” I said out loud. “That’s a Common Sandpiper!” Just a few minutes later I saw yet another bird sitting on a rock in the river—this one a Gray Wagtail, completing the “Wagtail Trilogy” for the trip. Neither the Common Sandpiper nor Gray Wagtail were lifers for me, but they brought my Japan bird list up to 47 species. More important, they were an awesome way to finish up our time in Kyoto.

Throughout Japan, I enjoyed Black Kites, but they put on a special show along the Kamo River.

More, much more, lay in store.

Sneed’s Kameyama Park eBird checklist.

Sneed’s final Kamo River eBird checklist.

Birding Japan: Kamakura by the Sea

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Since we published them, our birding posts about Japan have been read in more than a dozen countries. If you are planning your own trip to Japan, you’re in luck! Sneed’s new book, FIRST-TIME JAPAN: A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE FOR THE INDEPENDENT TRAVELER, tells you everything you need to know about how to plan your trip to this remarkable, yet sometimes intimidating, country. Order now by clicking here.

Welcome to the second installment of my birding reports from Japan. To read the first report, click here, and of course feel free to share these reports with others—and add your own experiences in the comments section. Thanks for reading!

As mentioned in my last post, one of my goals in birding Japan was to reach 1,000 bird species for my life list. I arrived in the country needing 31 species to hit that mark, but picked up only 13 new lifers during my daughter’s and my first three days in Tokyo. A day trip by bullet train, or shinkansen, to the northern town of Sendai added Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker and Varied Tit to my total, but I felt like the next stop on our itinerary, the seaside town of Kamakura, would have to perform better if I were to keep on pace.

Kamakura lies only about an hour by train from Tokyo and has earned a reputation as a weekend getaway and favorite place for surfing and other water sports. Anticipating that we might need a break after five days in the Big City, I had rented us a tiny apartment only two blocks from the beach, and as soon as we stepped off the train, the area enchanted us. The main train station sits adjacent to a vibrant street full of food and crafts shops, but to reach our lodging we had to hop on the cutest little train you can imagine, ride a few stops, and then roll our luggage a half a kilometer through a quirky little beach town that easily could have been on the Oregon Coast or in Southern California. While trying to find our accommodations, we crossed a little bridge over a canal when a scintillating blue flash caught my eye, followed by another. I didn’t get a great look, but knew immediately what they were—Common Kingfishers, one of my favorite birds and, as it turned out, the only time I got to see them on the trip.

The Island of Sodor? No, but the delightful Enoshima Electric Railway made us wonder!

We arrived at our apartment too early to check in so decided to sit in a children’s playground for a few minutes to rest and recover from our hectic travel morning. I felt eager to get out and find some birds, but there in the playground I didn’t have to. Instead, the birds came to me. First, a dove landed on a phone wire only a few yards away. My adrenaline surging, I whipped out my binoculars and sure enough, it was a lifer I had been hoping for: Oriental Turtle-Dove! Then, I espied a bluish bird flitting around on a nearby rooftop. Swallow or flycatcher? I thought to myself. Instead, I was surprised to identify another lifer I had desperately been wanting to see—a Blue Rock-Thrush. Right there in the playground, we were also joined by a Warbling White-eye and either Japanese or Varied Tits, though I didn’t get a great look at the latter.

**My lifer Oriental Turtle-Dove landed next to our lodging in Kamakura, and we were fortunate to also see them on Enoshima Island and other locations on our trip.**

Leaving our bags, Tessa and I walked down to the beach. Perhaps a hundred surfers crowded the two- to three-foot waves, and Tessa and I saw Carrion Crows and Black Kites for the first time on the trip, both species Braden and I had seen in Israel right before the pandemic.

I’m not sure what this Carrion Crow has in mind, but Tessa and I had great fun watching it and its colleagues on Kamakura’s beach.

Since the forecast called for a rainy weekend, we tore ourselves away from the beach and hiked a mile or so to Kamakura’s most famous attraction, the Great Buddha. This forty-foot-high bronze sculpture was completed around the year 1253, and truly impressed both of us. When we arrived, a rock pigeon perched comfortably atop the Buddha’s head, a fitting signal that the Buddha welcomed both of us! After taking the mandatory photos, we sat on a stone wall and chilled in the statue’s peaceful presence before grabbing an early dinner at a café and then checking into our residence.

**The Great Buddha, or Daibutsu, of Kamakura is apparently the second largest Buddha in Japan and harkens back to about 1252.**

We had plans to take a genuine forest hike in Kamakura, but unfortunately the weather forecast turned out to be all too true. Saturday, umbrellas in hand, we braved the Kamakura food street next to the station, but were forced back home by chilling wetness—though not without nabbing a box of fresh mini-donuts! Sunday, we took the cute little train down the coast to Enoshima, famous for its picturesque island just offshore. A short causeway connected the island to the mainland, and on the way across I spotted the trip’s first Eurasian Wigeons, a species Braden and I are lucky to see once a year in Montana. I was also surprised to find Herring Gulls sitting atop light posts.

A Herring Gull? In Japan? Apparently, the birds know a lot more about their distributions than I do.

Following a beautiful paved winding path up the island’s mountainous terrain, we encountered birds that were now becoming familiar to both of us including Brown-eared Bulbuls, White Wagtails, White-cheeked Starlings, Eurasian Tree Sparrows, and a trio of Oriental Turtle-Doves. The highlight of the day, however, turned out to be a small, gorgeous red shrine tucked away in the trees near the summit. It apparently is one of three shrines on the island collectively known as Enoshima Shrine, and it was built to worship the deities of fishing and sea transport. We weren’t sure what to do there, so I quickly texted Ryosuke, a Japanese foreign-exchange student who happens to be spending the year at Tessa’s high school and who had been tutoring me in Japanese. He quickly texted back instructions, and we paid our respects before heading back down the mountain. Thank you Ryosuke!

Don’t look into his eyes. Just move on slowly. Nothing to see here.

Lifer count for the weekend? A mere two species, making our next destination, Kyoto, essential for my evil plans to reach my life list millennium mark.

My Enoshima eBird Checklist.

Birding Japan: Tokyo, Part I

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Well, I warned you it would be a while before you heard from us again, but we hope you find the reasons acceptable. Braden has been chasing salamanders and frogs in Maine while I have spent the last three weeks with my daughter, Tessa, in Japan! We had dreamed of visiting the Land of the Rising Shopping Mall for many years, and the country and people delivered in every way. While birding was not the purpose of the trip, you might guess that I took advantage of every opportunity to get to know Japan’s avian wildlife—experiences I’d like to share in the next few posts, starting with the focal point of Japanese civilization, Tokyo.

**While disguised as a train station, Tokyo Station is actually a small city in itself—and the transportation hub for Birding Central HQ during our stay.**

While we planned to visit several Japanese locations, Tessa and I agreed that we wanted to spend the most time in Tokyo. Accordingly, we reserved five days there on the front end of the trip and four days to finish up our journey. Wrapping our heads around such an incredibly large and diverse city proved a challenge, but after much research I booked our first hotel near Tokyo Station. Mind you, this is no ordinary train station. Trains for hundreds of destinations come in and out of the place and the station itself is a vast, entertaining commercial complex featuring hundreds of shops and restaurants, many lined along extensive underground “streets”. The area also happened to make a pretty good headquarters to begin birding.

On our first day there, we worked in a visit to Hamarikyu Gardens in between Tsukiji Outer Market (former home of the famous tuna auctions) and Tokyo Tower. While Tessa enjoyed a park bench in the sun, I quickly snapped up six life birds including Eastern Spot-billed Duck, Common Pochard, Tufted Duck, Oriental Goldfinch, White-cheeked Starling, and Brown-eared Bulbul. I was especially taken with the bulbul—only to find that apparently it is the most commonly observed bird in Japan! Still, I didn’t let that dampen my enthusiasm for these noisy, beautiful birds.

**My first day of Japan birding, I was so excited to see my first Brown-eared Bulbul, a bird that I’d been studying assiduously. Little did I know that it’s probably the most common bird in Japan!**

Because of the 15-hour time difference with Montana, I woke at 3 a.m. the next day, and as soon as it got light I let Tessa sleep in and walked over to the Imperial Palace a few blocks away. The grounds were still closed, but I began exploring the moat around the walls and some potentially birdy parks across the street. Right away, I saw a Little Grebe, and then the discoveries grew even more exciting. I saw a small, greenish bird flitting around some bushes—another life bird, Warbling White-eye! Continuing my prowl, I discovered two more lifers—Falcated Duck and Dusky Thrush, two species I had studied intensively before the trip. They put me in a great mood before we went to watch the Yokohama BayStars defeat the Yomiuri Giants 1-0 in the Tokyo Dome that afternoon!

I began Day 2 of my Tokyo birding with a visit to the uber-dramatic Imperial Palace. The grounds were not yet open, but I found some great life birds nearby!

I should pause at this point and say that besides wanting to see Japan’s birds, I had another ulterior motive for birding. When we left Montana, my life list stood at 968 species—perilously close to 1,000. Maybe, just maybe, I thought, I can crack 1,000 while in Japan. In fact, looking over what I might see, I felt fairly confident about meeting that goal—something that spurred me to take advantage of every opportunity.

**Falcated Ducks were a new species I studied before heading to Japan. After seeing them on Day 2, I had no idea this would be the only time I’d see them on the entire trip.**

On the third full day of our adventure, Tessa and I planned to head over to Tokyo Disney to try to score tickets. We did get some and visited the Disney Sea park—but that’s another story. More important, we stopped at perhaps Tokyo’s best birding location, Kasai Rinkai Park. As we got off the train, the reason this park is birdier than others seemed evident: it is one of the few Tokyo locations with remotely natural habitat. Tessa got some of her now-favorite milk tea from a vending machine and settled in to draw on a bench while I hurried off to see what might be living there.

I had not yet met any Japanese birders, but a couple of hundred meters down the trail, a woman with binoculars and a camera saw me looking for birds and silently pointed into reeds next to a pond. “Arigato gozaimasu,” I whispered and crept toward where she was pointing. Sure enough, a half a dozen small brown birds were gleaning seeds and once again, my study paid off. They were Reed Buntings—birds I had hoped, but not expected, to see!

I left my good camera at home for this trip, opting for a lighter “travel camera” that unfortunately didn’t produce the sharp bird images I craved, but I was still delighted to get a photo of this male Reed Bunting who is obviously shouting something important at me.

Continuing down the trails I made more discoveries including Japanese Tits and Masked Buntings, both also lifers! Then, walking along the water, I spotted two suspicious shapes about one hundred meters offshore. As I grew closer, the shapes resolved into what has to be one of Earth’s most gorgeous, elegant water birds, Great Crested Grebes!

**Despite this lousy photo, you can probably get an idea of why I was so excited to see my first Great Crested Grebes!**

As I went back to meet Tessa, I was happy with what I had found, but I also knew I had missed some important species here that I would probably not get a second shot at. These included Azure-winged Magpie and any kinds of shorebirds. No matter. I felt grateful for this look at Japanese nature and optimistic for the days to come!

Sneed’s Kasai Rinkai Park eBird checklist.

Starting 2023 in the Dumps

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If you’ve been following our posts the past five years, you’ve probably learned that Braden and I like to kick off a new year with a big day of birding. Last year on January 1, we enjoyed an exceptional day, chalking up almost 50 species including Snowy, Short-eared, and Great Horned Owls. This year, we didn’t get out until January 3—and following a much colder snap of weather—and weren’t sure what we might find. I predicted we’d see 45 species while Braden opted for a more conservative 40. We both agreed, though, that we might be a bit optimistic.

We backed out of our driveway in total darkness and an hour later, as dawn spread over the horizon, were greeted by the sheer majesty of the snow-covered Mission Mountains, surely one of the most stunning mountain ranges in the Lower 48. Our first destination? Duck Road at Ninepipe, perhaps our most reliable spot for Short-eared Owls. Alas, these owls are not to be trusted. They had obviously received advanced intel about our arrival and skedaddled to some other part of the refuge. As we crept along in the early light, though, we spotted a flock of about sixty small birds suddenly rising up from the snow-covered grass. “Waxwings?” I asked as Braden quickly got his binoculars on them. I parked the car as he answered, “No. Guess again.” “Snow Buntings?” I asked excitedly. “Yes!”

Can you find the buntings? Even with the spotting scope, the rascals proved challenging to observe.

We watched the birds whirl around before landing again, and quickly broke out the spotting scope. Often, Snow Buntings travel with Lapland Longspurs, but as we scanned the birds feeding hungrily about a hundred yards away, we saw that this flock was pure buntings. Remarkably, these were the first Snow Buntings we’d ever seen on the west side of the mountains and it kicked off the day in fine fashion.

We left Ninepipe with only about ten species, but felt optimistic heading north, and sure enough, found a pair of gorgeous Long-eared Owls at a well-known spot near Polson, Montana. At a nearby bakery, we also happened to snag two donuts and a cinnamon roll for our Year List. Yum!

**Bird of the Day: Even concealed in this thicket, this Long-eared Owl and its companion gave us our best-ever look at these animals in the wild.**

We weren’t sure what we were going to do next, but decided to retrace last year’s route and continue on to Kalispell in hopes of finding a Snowy Owl. Last year, we had happened into an amazing group of waterfowl at the north end of the lake, but this year we ran into a much smaller group about halfway up the west side of Flathead at Dayton Bay. Here we found Trumpeter Swans and six kinds of ducks, and it was a good thing as we discovered that the north end of the lake was almost completely frozen.

After an unsuccessful search for Snowy Owls, we stopped at Panera’s for lunch and contemplated our next move. “We could go to the Kalispell dump,” Braden suggested. I cringed at the idea since we’d been yelled at a couple of years before when trying to go there to find gulls and Gray-crowned Rosy-finches. The trick was to arrive with some trash to throw away, but we’d forgotten to bring any. As we munched away on our Kitchen Sink cookies, however, we formulated a plan. After leaving Panera’s I drove behind some of the big box stores nearby and, sure enough, found some wasted cardboard sitting there. I tossed it into our trusty minivan and we were all set!

Alas, we found nothing truly extraordinary at the landfill. We did pick up Herring Gulls, which can be a bit tricky to locate in Montana, but the real surprise was a group of about ten turkeys feeding on garbage. Hm. “I didn’t know they could do that,” Braden said, but it made sense. After all, the amount of food Americans throw away could easily feed several other countries. Though we failed to find anything really rare, we had completed our covert mission and headed south again feeling like we’d done our best. Click here for our dump checklist!

Who knew that Wild Turkeys liked to forage in landfills? We didn’t get any photos of this happening since we had to get in and out of the dump quickly, but thought you’d enjoy this “non-landfill” turkey—a different subspecies than the Landfill Turkey.

As the day again drifted toward darkness, we again hit Ninepipe on our way back to Missoula, picking up American Kestrels, a Northern Harrier, and a couple of large groups of pheasants, but no Short-eared Owls. As a consolation prize, though, as soon as we got home, Braden heard Great Horned Owls hooting from our front porch and called me out to listen. We ended the day with 35 species, undershooting even Braden’s smaller target, but felt good about the day. It was still a respectable number to start the new year, and with Braden heading back to college soon, we both cherished another day getting to bird together. How can you do better than that?

The Good ‘Ole College Try: As our first 2023 day of birding wound down, Braden trudged off across this field to determine if perhaps any Short-eared Owls were just laying low. They weren’t. Still, we felt pleased by our first day of birding, 2023.

Counting Down Braden’s and Sneed’s Top 2022 Birds

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A tradition Braden and I have formed over the years is to make top birds lists after any big trip or, as this year, for our entire year of birding. This probably stems from the many hours I listened to Casey Kasem counting down the American Top 40 every weekend as a youth. Our own “Top 40” lists have diverged a bit since Braden is now on the East Coast for most of the year—but this year we still managed to have a lot of birding adventures together, and so have a lot of common birds on our list. It’s funny, though, how some birds we might have been super excited about when we first saw them often drift lower on the list. I suppose it’s like being super excited about Barry Manilow when you first heard him—and then realizing you could be listening to the likes of the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and John Lee Hooker. Anyway, we thought you might enjoy our Top 10 birds of 2022—and hope you might share some of your own!

# 10

Coming in at Number 10 for Braden was the Florida Scrub-Jay, which is remarkably vulnerable in Florida, but Braden got to see with his birding buddy Nick Ramsey on their epic Spring Break Florida adventure. Read about it here. Sneed’s #10 was an unlikely Cape May Warbler—his Lifer—that he spotted in front of the house of his good friends Mollie and Craig Bloomsmith in Atlanta this fall.

**Florida Scrub-Jays are the only bird species entirely restricted to Florida.**

Braden had excellent adventures with Northern Saw-whet Owls while out in California, running into some adorable juveniles while thrashing through the woods during his job with the Institute for Bird Populations. Elegant Trogon finished #9 on Sneed’s list—an exotic bird if there ever was one! And yet, both Braden and Sneed wondered why this bird didn’t finish higher on either of their lists. Probably just too much on the beaten birding path. (Photo at top of the blog.)

**Non-stop birding for his job throughout the summer led Braden to a remarkable encounter with these juvenile Northern Saw-whet Owls.**

Braden’s night car camping (literally) in the Everglades landed Chuck-will’s-widow on his Top 10 while Zone-tailed Hawk swooped out of a flock of Turkey Vultures at Madera Canyon to nab Sneed’s Number 8.

**Zone-tailed Hawks are well-known mimics of Turkey Vultures and often hang out with them—which is where we spotted this one at Madera Canyon, Arizona; only our second ZTHA ever.**

Ah, who doesn’t love a Swallow-tailed Kite—especially one that swoops right over your head? Braden obviously DOES, as yet another bird from his Florida trip snagged a Top Ten spot. Sneed, meanwhile, went with the shockingly beautiful Scott’s Oriole for Lucky Number 7. He and Braden both fell in love with these birds, and were lucky enough to see them several times on their Arizona adventures. In fact . . .

**Braden never tired of seeing Swallow-tailed Kites on his and Nick’s epic Florida adventure.**

Scott’s Oriole grabbed Braden’s Number 6 while Sneed went with Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher, also in Arizona, in a case that he couldn’t quite explain. “There was just something mysterious and intriguing about that bird,” he was quoted as telling a New York Times reporter.

**Though relatively widespread in the Southwest, Scott’s Oriole is a bird Braden and I wondered if we’d ever really get to see—or even if it really existed. It does!**

Unfortunately, the same New York Times reporter caught Sneed cheating for Number 5, as he listed THREE birds tied for #5: Mexican Whip-poor-will, Whiskered Screech-Owl, and Elf Owl. “How can you possibly justify this?” demanded the reporter. “Well, I only ever heard these three birds, but we listened to them on a magical night in Portal, walking down a darkened road. It’s just a night that Braden and I won’t ever forget.” Meanwhile Braden went with his many amazing experiences with Prairie Warblers this year for his #5 spot, seeing them throughout Florida, including the Everglades, in Maine, and during the Collard Family’s epic New York City trip in May.

**It blew Braden’s mind to learn that Prairie Warblers breed in the mangroves of Florida.**

The night walk in Portal also left a big impression on Braden, giving him his Number 4 in the form of Mexican Whip-poor-will. Sneed, meanwhile, went with Red-faced Warbler, spotted just a few miles and a couple thousand feet away—the first, and still only, RFWA the father-son duo has ever seen.

**Another fairly common Southwest bird that had eluded us until this trip, the Red-faced Warbler immediately captured our hearts. This is still the only we have ever seen.**

Number 3 is getting into some Serious Birds, and Braden selected Spotted Owl for his. Not only did Sneed and Braden both see them for the first time in the Chiricahuas, Braden got to see the California subspecies several times during his summer job. Sneed went with his recently self-found Long-tailed Duck—the first male he had ever seen—and one he discovered pretty much in his backyard near Missoula.

**When you find a bird by yourself, it naturally ranks higher in a Year List. Such was the case with this male Long-tailed Duck Sneed found near Frenchtown last fall.**

Braden paid for his Number 2 bird, Long-tailed Jaeger (a second cousin to former lead singer for the Rolling Stones) with repeated upchucking over the side of the boat during his summer pelagic boat trip out of Half Moon Bay. After cavorting with a bunch of Sabine’s Gulls, however, this bird took flight and then passed only ten feet above Braden’s head. He celebrated by once again barfing into the sea. Sneed opted for White-tailed Ptarmigan, just one of the coolest birds on the planet, seen during his and Braden’s stunning hike up to Piegan Pass in Glacier National Park in August.

**Blurry photo notwithstanding (or puking as was the case), this Long-tailed Jaeger flew into Braden’s #2 spot for the year.**

Drum Roll . . . And their Number 1s are . . .

The adventure and thrill of seeking out and finally finding a LeConte’s Thrasher on the east side of the Sierras stayed with Braden strongly enough to make it his Number 1 Bird of 2022! Remarkably, Spotted Owl, which had been only #4 on Sneed’s Arizona Trip list mounted an epic comeback to grab his Number 1 spot!

Braden’s #1 for 2022: LeConte’s Thrasher!

Thanks for tuning in as we’ve relived our top birds. Be sure to click on the links to get the full accounts, and may 2023 generate a memorable list for you, too!

FatherSonBirding

Sharing the Passion of Birds and Birding