Tag Archives: Father-Son Birding

Golf and Birding

Welcome to our new subscribers! We appreciate your interest in our adventures and experiences, and hope you feel free to share this post with others. If you’d like to support FatherSonBirding, feel free to order some of Sneed’s books from online stores or, better yet, by through your local independent bookstore. Thanks, and have a great weekend! Next week: more of Braden’s High Sierra adventures!

Did you ever stop to think that the words “golf” and “bird” both have the same number of letters in them? No? Good. It’s a stupid lead to a blog. Plus, golf is a sensitive subject for me. In my mid-thirties, I began playing with friends and found I quite enjoyed it. Sort of. In between the tears and swearing and bouts of hopelessness and low self-esteem. After my golf swing betrayed me once and for all, in fact, I tossed my clubs into the basement to collect dust for the better part of a decade. Foolishness springs eternal, however, and a few years ago I began a ritual of golfing once a year with a buddy—only to discover an aspect of golf I had never before recognized: Birds.

**Many golf courses’ locations adjacent to wetlands and other natural habitats give them a wide range of opportunity for the golfing birder!**

When I golfed in earlier years, Braden and I hadn’t yet become birders. Imagine my surprise, then, when I got back onto the links to discover that birds abounded—at least at Linda Vista Golf Course, my favorite course in the area (and one that happens to have a great cafe). I realized, in fact, that this course could actually be one of the best birding spots in Missoula. The problem? It is challenging to golf and record birds at the same time, and I have to thread a fine line so that my buddy doesn’t brain me with a 4-iron while I’m trying to figure out which kinds of swallows are circling around us. This dilemma, however, gave me an idea—one that I finally carried out last week: to get permission to bird the course sans clubs one morning before the golfers showed up.

Even with the distractions of actually playing a round of golf, I had managed to record 25 species of birds a couple of days earlier. These had included surprises such as Cinnamon Teal and Red-naped Sapsucker. I wonder what I’ll find with more time to study my surroundings? I asked myself as I again headed out two days later.

Given the trees close to the water, Wood Ducks made sense for the golf course, but Ring-necked Ducks?

Almost immediately, it became evident that there were greater numbers of birds than I had noticed before. The Yellow Warblers were particularly insane with a new one spouting off every twenty or thirty yards—about the distance of a short pitching wedge. This made sense because part of what made this course such a great birding spot is that it was shoe-horned between river and wetlands on two sides and farm/pasture on another. Along with the Yellow Warblers I noted an abundance of Red-winged Blackbirds and Gray Catbirds—but was also surprised by an absence of Common Yellowthroats and dearth of Song Sparrows. Hm . . . maybe they were just quieting down for the season?

**Spotted Sandpipers are always a welcome sight—though I’m not sure the plastic sheeting around this pond made it a great choice for this bird.**

Continuing around to the third hole, I came across several open ponds where I was pleased to see at least seven Wood Ducks, Killdeer, a Spotted Sandpiper, and a pair of Ring-necked Ducks, an unlikely find for the time of year. One of the delights of birding a place that doesn’t get much attention is the frequency of red “unreported” dots that appear on the eBird checklist. The Killdeer were unreported and while I was logging species on eBird, another unreported species, Double-crested Cormorant, flew by. I devoted a good ten minutes to figuring out swallows and quickly noted Tree and Northern Rough-winged. As my binoculars pin-balled back and forth, however, I made another great discovery: Bank Swallows! Braden and I love finding these because they always seem to pop up when we least expect it, and this morning they followed tradition!

**Double-crested Cormorants were one of several species that earned me a coveted red “Unreported” dot on eBird!**

The rest of my birding round yielded nothing that will upend the scientific community, but proved mightily enjoyable nonetheless. While talking to the lone golfer out this early in the day, I spotted a gorgeous male Western Tanager. A Bullock’s Oriole also flew by. Over on the pasture side of the course, Eastern Kingbirds abounded and Cliff Swallows replaced the Bank Swallows zooming around me. I finished the day with 33 species—not dramatically more than I had found while actually golfing, but I had savored every tee, fairway, and green.

**One of the fun things about my round of birding was the number of juveniles about—including this young Eastern Kingbird waiting to be fed by a nearby parent.**

Speaking of golfing, I did notice an odd phenomenon while doing the round with my buddy two days earlier. I actually played better than I had in recent memory. It may have been that I had forgotten my bad habits, but I think that the birds actually helped. One of my problems with golf is that I overthink everything. Instead of just hitting the ball, I am telling myself Remember to tuck in your hip as you draw back or Keep that left foot planted and your elbow straight. With half of my mind on birds, I didn’t have time to do that—and hit some of my best shots in years. The lesson? There isn’t one. Just get out there and keep birding, wherever you happen to be.

Note: if you would like to bird your local course, be sure to ask permission—and it obviously wouldn’t hurt if you already golf that course yourself. With the manager, discuss the best time to go out and stay polite even if she/he/they says no. After all, golf courses generally are money-making ventures and they have real customers to take care of. But speaking of that, I can’t help wondering if any particularly birdy courses have considered charging a modest fee to people who would like to bird them? Especially for courses that adopt green practices such as using less water, pesticides, and fertilizers, it might be a great way to earn a bit of extra income while promoting sustainability. Just a thought.

Braden’s Tales from the High Sierras, Episode 2: Bearly Birding

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We hope everyone had a nice 4th of July weekend. To help you get back into the usual routine, we’re delighted to present Braden’s second report from his job looking for Northern Goshawks in the California Sierras. So far, the goshawks are few, but the other animals abound! To see his first post, click here. Will there be more goshawks? What other surprises will greet his intrepid crew? Be sure to check in on upcoming posts to find out!

The Brushy Hollow PAC lay about forty-five minutes from Beardsley Lake, a man-made reservoir in the Stanislaus National Forest where we’d be spending the next two nights camping. After waking up at the crack of dawn and unsuccessfully trying to snag some good photos of the Black-throated Gray Warblers around camp, our crew began driving the cliffside road up to Brushy Hollow. As we neared the PAC, my peripheral vision caught a large brown animal absolutely booking it away from the car. Stanislaus National Forest was (unfortunately) filled to the brim with cattle–we either saw them or heard the bells hanging from their necks every time we went out. No cow had ever fled from the car this quickly, though, and as I snapped my head back to look I spotted paws, not hooves, trampling the brush before the mammal disappeared into the forest.

“Bear!” I shouted, but it was too late. The bear wanted nothing to do with us.

**Our crew prepares to tackle another PAC in search of Northern Goshawks. But would mammals intervene?**

Again, the rest of the crew missed it, so a slightly disappointed car arrived at the parking lot for Brushy Hollow. The parking lot consisted of a small patch of grass off to the side of the dirt road, and we were greeted by an army of mosquitoes as we stepped outside of our brand new, cherry-red Nissan rental truck that the rental car company had decided to give us for the summer. We set off into the forest, which was only somewhat brushy and somewhat a hollow, despite the name of the PAC. Many of the usual birds greeted us, including calling Mountain Quail, Olive-sided Flycatcher and pairs of White-headed Woodpeckers flying between the pines. As far as ease of travel, the PAC turned out to be one of our best. Mountain Misery—a native, ground-hugging plant also called “bear clover” (foreshadowing warning)—covered much of the ground, meaning we barely had to lift our feet as we followed our transects. Sam and I met up and began walking up a hill towards Miles where we would enjoy lunch. As soon as we spotted Miles, he stood up and pointed frantically behind us.

“Bear!”

“Bear, bear, bear!!” We echoed as we whirled around to spot another bear sprinting away from us down a nearby road. Ivara followed suit, and we all yelled at the animal for a little while as was protocol before sitting down for lunch.

Adrenaline filling our veins, we sat down in the Mountain Misery, slapping mosquitoes and talking about what we’d just seen. Two bears in one day! And then, our eyes darted again to the same road, where two MORE brown bears ambled by, as if on their way to work!

We finished our lunch quickly, heading towards the other side of the PAC. I proceeded to get very lost, then eventually found, and we took one last break on a log before finishing up our transects for the day. As we scarfed down our last snacks, a crack echoed behind us. The sound of a branch breaking. We turned around, and the response was immediate.

**Five bears in one day was a record for all of us. We were too excited to remember to take any photos, but here’s a mama bear staring suspiciously at my dad in our backyard in Missoula.**

“Bear! Bear!”

This time the brown bear just watched us for several minutes, wondering why four humans had suddenly started yelling at it during its afternoon walk. Eventually, though, this bear did turn tail, but not after my adrenaline hit new levels! Five bears was enough, and Ivara called it for the day.

Bear Note: All bears in California today are black bears. Black bears vary widely in color from black and cinnamon to the “brown black bears” that Braden observed. The bear on the California state flag, however, is a subspecies of the much larger grizzly bear. Apparently, about 10,000 grizzlies once roamed California. Large carnivores such as the grizzly, however, were not welcome by cattle ranchers and the influx of settlers following the gold rush, and the California grizzly was shot, trapped, and poisoned to extinction by the mid-1920s. Some efforts have been made to reintroduce grizzlies to the state, but so far, all proposals have been rejected. To read a nice article about the situation, click here.

Braden’s Tales from the High Sierras, Episode 1: Stumbling into Saw-whets

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We want to thank all of you for making June our biggest month ever at FatherSonBirding! The number of you viewing our posts absolutely demolished all previous records with more than 1300 visits to our site. We kick off July with the first of a series of posts from Braden. Since early June, he has been working as a field intern for The Institute for Bird Populations. His job? Monitoring Northern Goshawks on the west slope of California’s Sierras. While searching for the elusive accipiters, he and his four-person team are having birding adventures most of us only dream about. Here is his first field report: an encounter with Northern Saw-whet Owls.

Northern Saw-whet Owl

In our first week on the job my team leader, Ivara, decided that we would get the Black Oak PAC over with. A PAC is basically an area of land chosen kind of arbitrarily based on goshawk habitat, territory size and private land boundaries that we survey, and we usually try to complete a PAC every two days. Black Oak was by far the toughest PAC, but we dove right in, bushwhacking through brush in search of any signs of Northern Goshawks. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really focus on scanning the trees above us for nests given the sheer density of the vegetation growing on the slope in front of us. While birds certainly loved all of the brush, with Fox Sparrows and Nashville Warblers singing from exposed perches around me, the foliage did not welcome me as it did them. After about thirty minutes, I found myself wildly off my compass bearing, following the edge of an intimidating thicket in an attempt to get back to my correct line. We considered being five degrees off as “off course”. I was off by thirty!

**Some of the typical Sierras terrain where we conduct our Northern Goshawk Surveys.**

I took a deep breath, plunging into the vegetation in the direction of my coworkers and my correct bearing. I bent to avoid spiderwebs stretching between branches, jumping on top of decaying logs at any chance I got to relieve myself from the sticks that drew blood from my legs. After about fifty meters, the brush somehow worsened. I couldn’t see three feet in front of me, but I pressed on. And suddenly, I flushed a bird.

At first, my mind went to American Robin. It was a medium-sized, brown species, and it darted away from me as if planning to disappear into the impossible maze ahead. Instead, it landed on a nearby tree branch. I lifted my binoculars, peering through a small gap in the leaves, and exhaled in shock. My voice quavered as I spoke into my radio.

“Holy cow. I just found a baby Saw-whet Owl.”

I’d only seen pictures of juvenile Saw-whets once before, on a checklist from Missoula that I’d stared at with jealousy. This bird stared right back at me, its curious, unmoving eyes gazing at the beast that had just disturbed it. The bird’s back was a creamy brown color, adorned with a few spots, and a bushy unibrow accented golden eyes. I could barely see its tiny talons clutching the branch, complemented by buffy feathers that coated its legs.

Unfortunately, I was too lost to direct my coworkers to come see the owls, but I was in no hurry to continue the goshawk search. Our rule: looking for goshawks is important, but so is watching cool wildlife that happens to pop up! On cue, in fact, a second bird flew to a lower branch on the same tree. It was another juvenile owl! My brain registered that it must have just abandoned its day roost mere feet from where I stood. That meant—

My eyes scanned the foliage immediately around me and I saw it: a third baby owl who had not yet flushed in a young pine tree two feet from my face. Staring intensely at me. I didn’t dare move, shifting my gaze between this third, most fearless owl and its siblings in the mature tree behind it. I’d left my camera behind in anticipation of the tough bushwhacking, but slowly snapped a few photos with my phone. I’d never found a roosting owl all on my own before, and here I’d just blundered into three!

**This third, and most fearless, of the three baby Saw-whet Owls I discovered will forever be one of my most memorable birding encounters.**

After about twenty minutes of staring contests with the cutest birds I’ve ever seen, I slowly backed out the way I had come, taking a left into more brush. Soon, I was on my stomach, army-crawling through somehow-worse vegetation, but I couldn’t be happier. Little did I know that this would mark only the first of many unforgettable wildlife encounters I would experience in the coming weeks . . .

The Best Prairie Day Ever: Benton Lake NWR

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After speaking at the inaugural Billings Kid Lit Festival (see Billing’s Riverfront Park: Montana’s Premier Songbird Hotspot?), I awoke at 4:30 the next morning and hit the road by 5:15. My plan was to book it to Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge and start driving around the lake by 8:30. The problem? I kept passing ponds with birds in them—and I, of course, had to stop to find out what they were! My efforts were rewarded with a variety of ducks, Wilson’s Phalaropes, American White Pelicans, Sandhill Cranes and more, but delayed my arrival at Bowdoin until 9:30. Then, even greater disaster struck: I ran into way more birds than I expected at the Bowdoin visitor’s center—including both male and female Baltimore Orioles!

Bowdoin NWR lies at the eastern edge of the Baltimore Oriole’s range, but Braden and I have seen them often enough that it seems certain they breed there. Oh, and seeing both the male and this female offers an added clue!

Finally entering the first five-mile stretch of the loop, I was shocked by how much of the lake had been sucked dry by eastern Montana’s multi-year drought. This really was a disaster and I wondered if I would even find any place conducive to water birds. Meanwhile, I encountered great grassland birds including Long-billed Curlews, Loggerhead Shrike, Chestnut-collared Longspurs, Lark Buntings, and Grasshopper, Vesper, Clay-colored, and Savannah Sparrows. Finally, near the end of the lake, I found water but at pathetically low levels. A much-vaunted Cassin’s Sparrow (discovered by Joshua Covill, I believe) had been observed repeatedly at about Mile 7 of the loop and I ran into Robin Wolcott and her husband who had driven over from Big Fork to see it. While we stood there, Robin did hear the sparrow, but with my crummy ears I couldn’t be sure so didn’t count it. I also had many miles to drive so I kept on truckin’, driving the three hours to Great Falls.

The next morning I again woke early, loaded up the car and arrived at Benton Lake NWR as dawn filtered over the prairie. After the dry conditions at Bowdoin, I fretted about Benton Lake—but my worries were hijacked by what may have been the most astonishing grassland birding experience I’ve ever had. It began with a sighting of a Long-billed Curlew in flight, always a welcome bird. Then, I saw other large shorebirds and stopped to behold the incredible courtship displays of Willets, flying madly around emitting their haunting, looping calls over the prairie. Other curlews joined in and a Marbled Godwit briefly gave chase to a Willet. Meanwhile, meadowlarks sang and a pack of coyotes unleashed their insane yelping cacophony across the landscape—all in the dawn light.

**Most birders take Willets for granted, but watching and listening to them display over the prairie where they breed will forever make them a favorite bird ‘o mine.**

Suddenly, I spotted a small bird rising high into the sky in an obviously courtship display. “No way,” I excitedly muttered, struggling to focus my camera on the small black dot. My thought? That it could be one of the prairie’s most magical creatures, a Sprague’s Pipit! Alas, Nick Ramsey studied my photos later and suggested it was actually a Horned Lark, and after further study, I agree. Still, it was no less incredible—especially because I didn’t even know that Horned Larks make such displays!

This “Sprague’s Pipit” got me uber-excited, but I learned later that it was almost surely a Horned Lark performing a similar high-altitude display. Thank you, Nick Ramsey, for setting me straight!

Passing the visitor center, I thought that I would finally make my way to the lake and start looking for water birds. Guess again. As soon as I turned right, down the dirt road, I stopped to look at juvenile Horned Larks and saw more Willets and curlews. Then, I spotted one of my top target birds: Upland Sandpipers! I had barely had a chance to look at them, when I saw another top target bird—a Short-eared Owl! As I was snapping some blurry photos of the owl, eight Sharp-tailed Grouse flew low across the road 100 meters in front of me and zoomed like cruise missiles across the prairie—something Braden and I had never seen at Benton Lake. But the best was yet to come . . .

Upland Sandpipers are one of our favorite grassland species—and they undertake one of Earth’s most incredible migrations, traveling from our prairies to southern South America in a matter of weeks each year!

As I was watching the Short-eared Owl, I noticed a white spot perhaps a quarter-mile away. At first I thought it was some man-made structure, but then it moved. I drove closer and raised my binoculars to see a sight I had never in my life observed—a male Sharp-tailed Grouse in full “impress mode” trying to woo a nearby female! Fumbling for my camera, I was so excited that my hands actually shook, and I watched this chase-and-pursue courtship for the next ten minutes. Like so many birds recently, a displaying male grouse was something I never thought I would see, and yet here it was when I was least expecting it!

A hopeful male Sharp-tailed Grouse tries to woo a mildly interested female (left). Sound familiar, gents?

My heart still racing, I finally moved on, and was relieved to see water filling the two main ponds—along with thousands of avocets, ducks, Eared Grebes, Yellow-headed Blackbirds, phalaropes, Forster’s Terns, Franklin’s Gulls, White-faced Ibises and just about everything else I had hoped to see. Water levels looked good to me, but refuge manager Bob Johnson later told me that they struggled to keep the ponds filled. They had the water rights, he said, but it cost so much—think hundreds of thousands of dollars—to pump the water up to the refuge that they had run out of money. That makes it more imperative than ever to support increased funding for our refuges and other wild lands by calling or emailing U.S. Senator Daines and our other representatives.

**It’s hard not to love ibises, and I was delighted to see at least nine White-faced during my circumnavigation of Benton Lake.**

I had planned to continue on to Freezeout Lake, but after four breathless hours at Benton, I wasn’t sure my sensory systems could handle it. As I said, it was my most incredible grassland birding day ever, and certainly my best at Benton Lake, not just for the species I saw, but for the intimate observations of their natural behaviors as they repeated their ancient life cycles. What’s more, I didn’t see a soul the entire time I was on the driving loop. It gave me a real, reverent feel for what the prairies must have been like before we plowed, grazed, and harnessed the vast majority of them. My wish is that we continue to protect Benton Lake and other vital refuges—and that all of you reading this get to visit there on a summer sunrise of your own.

My Benton Lake eBird list Oh, and my species count for the trip totaled 110!

**The only thing better than experiencing the beauty of the prairie is to do it in the company of an Upland Sandpiper and Long-billed Curlew. Can you find them?**

Billings’ Riverfront Park: Montana’s Premier Songbird Hotspot?

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Thanks to your enthusiasm FatherSonBirding has garnered more than 1,000 views for the month of June—our best viewership ever! In fact, it’s been very gratifying to watch more and more people get involved in birding, and Braden and I want to let you know how much we appreciate all of you, whether you are a beginning birder or advanced, whether you work to protect birds or simply cultivate an appreciation for them. Whatever you do, keep it up and we will keep sharing our own experiences. As always, feel free to share these posts and encourage others to subscribe. Sneed & Braden

I have to admit that without Braden, birding isn’t quite as much fun. I also don’t see as many birds without his better skills and ears. Still, sacrifices must be made and I continue to seek out birding opportunities wherever and whenever they present themselves. Just such an opportunity arose a couple of weeks ago when I traveled to Billings to be the closing speaker for their first annual Kid Lit Festival. “A-ha,” I thought. “This sounds like a birding opportunity!” So instead of one night, I scheduled the trip for three—with an ambitious birding schedule in the mix. Just for fun, I set a goal of seeing 100 species for the trip, a number I hoped to easily surpass. Friday morning, June 10^th, I set out toward Billings, making several stops along the way, and arrived at the trip’s first real birding destination, Shiloh Conservation Area, mid-afternoon. Though it has been engineered by humans, I’ve always loved Shiloh and have seen many interesting birds there from dowitchers to my Lifer Swamp Sparrow. Today, the surprises included a female Bullock’s Oriole, male Western Tanager, and a Wilson’ Phalarope that didn’t seem to know quite what she was doing there!

**This lone, befuddled Wilson’s Phalarope at Shiloh seemed to be wondering where all the other phalaropes had gone!**

I was even more excited to get up early the next morning and visit Billings’ Riverfront Park, a place Braden and I had birded only once before, but that had netted a rich harvest of songbirds including our first state Ovenbirds and Plumbeous Vireos. I wondered Could it possibly be as good this time? As soon as I climbed out of the car, I got my first indication when I saw my first of 26 Yellow Warblers and 6 American Redstarts, and heard multiple Common Yellowthroats and Yellow-breasted Chats.

**With their weird calls and stunning good looks, Yellow-breasted Chats are always a delight to observe—even if they are no longer warblers!**

That’s not to say that the birding was easy. With the thick riparian canopy, the situation mostly called for ear-birding and with my lousy ears, my skills were put to the test. Nonetheless, using Merlin’s Sound ID to help alert me to what to look for and to help confirm calls that I thought I recognized, I slowly assembled a picture of the birds around me. Thankfully, most of the birds also put in an appearance for visual confirmation, but I’m still sure that I grossly underreported the numbers around me and probably missed one or two species as well.

That didn’t keep me from fully appreciating the diversity and abundance of songbirds, however. I felt especially thrilled to see so many warblers, with large numbers of Yellow Warblers, American Redstarts, Ovenbirds, and Common Yellowthroats.

**On our previous visit to Riverfront Park, Braden and I had gotten only poor, brief glimpses of Ovenbirds, but today multiple Ovenbirds not only sang but popped out for an appearance.**

Merlin also picked up huge numbers of Warbling and Red-eyed Vireos—the latter a lot easier for me to recognize by ear than the former—and eventually I saw both species. I had hoped for Plumbeous Vireo as well, but struck out on that one. I also saw only one Black-headed Grosbeak, though I’m sure many more were around. All in all, I found 34 species and came away thinking that Riverfront just might be the best spring riparian birding hotspot in the state, and I vowed to return every year if possible. Even better, I still had two full days of birding ahead of me as the next day I planned to drive to Bowdoin NWR and then to Great Falls for a visit to Benton Lake.

My Riverfront Park List