Tag Archives: Grassland Birds

Eastern Odyssey 2024: Return to Westby

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Our fourth post about our epic 2024 eastern Montana expedition takes us to the birding mecca of Westby. Over the years, Westby has grown an outsized reputation in the imaginations of Montana birders. To find out why, read on—and don’t forget to check out Sneed’s newest picture book, Like No Other—Earth’s Coolest One-of-a-Kind Creatures by clicking on the image to the right!

After, to be honest, a pretty disappointing time in Plentywood (see last our last post), Braden and I continued our Eastern Montana Odyssey 2024 by driving twenty-six miles to a place that has obtained almost mythical status among Montana birders: Westby. Westby sits in the very northeastern corner of the state and has long been known as a place where eastern songbirds clip Montana on their way to northern breeding grounds. Some fool cut down some of the best bird habitat there a few years ago, before Braden and I ever visited, but birders still discover rarities such as Mourning Warblers, Black-throated Green Warblers, and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks every year. The bad news? Braden and I were about two weeks late to have a serious shot at anything like that. The good news? We still had a great chance to see migrating shorebirds.

Westby literally straddles the North Dakota border, making it a go-to destination for birders hoping to snag rare migrants for their Montana life lists.

We arrived early and decided not even to waste time looking for songbirds right away. Instead, we immediately drove north out of town toward a series of pothole lakes well known for shorebirds. Changes in water levels can be shocking out here year to year, and I quickly saw with dismay that one pond that had brimmed with water during my visit with my pal Scott Callow last year had gone bone dry. Fortunately, another pond with just a brief window of visibility did have water. “Shorebirds!” I shouted. We broke out the spotting scope and did our best to ID what was out there. Sanderlings could be made out by their distinct dark red heads and boldly black legs and bills. More exciting, we were able to ID Semipalmated Sandpipers and a species we hadn’t seen in Montana for four years, White-rumped Sandpipers.

This is about as close as we got to a White-rumped Sandpiper, but you can see a distinctive ID feature—the dark spots stretching down its side under the wings. Sanderlings are feeding behind it.

As we continued to explore, we got better looks at all of these birds in various places, along with Wilson’s Phalaropes, Willets, and Marbled Godwits. One bird high on our list was Nelson’s Sparrow, and at a little marshy area right next to the road, Braden was able to hear one, though my crummy hearing once again thwarted me.

A Marbled Godwit checked us out as we were scoping other shorebirds.

We continued to explore the rest of the day, both driving north and south of town and even making a foray across the border into North Dakota, where we picked up a respectable 23 species in a couple of miles. A wonderful development in Westby is a new AirBnB about fifty yards from the border and I had reserved it for two nights. That evening, I took a stroll through town to see what could be seen. No rare warblers, but I did have a lovely visit with a Brown Thrasher and gobs of American Goldfinches feeding on spilled grain next to the grain elevators looming over the north end of town. When I returned, a Say’s Phoebe was sitting on our house!

Thanks to our rented house, we hit the streets of Westby early the next morning. Again, no rare songbirds, but we did see a couple of Swainson’s Thrushes, along with Orchard Orioles and Purple Martins as part of our 22-bird list. Once again, our best surprises popped up as we explored surrounding areas. Venturing north we got great, close looks at the shorebirds we’d seen before, with a soundtrack of Wilson’s Snipe and Soras—one right next to the car—filling the air. Braden identified a Ferruginous Hawk flying overhead and we heard two Baird’s Sparrows and even a Sprague’s Pipit! Braden picked up at least four Nelson’s Sparrows and one popped up right next to our car, giving us our best look ever. Range maps don’t even show that Nelson’s reach into Montana, so this is a great place for birders to pick them up for their Montana life lists!

With few people on the roads, this Wilson’s Snipe took time to check out what we were up to.

Still, the “catch” of the morning happened as we were skirting Round Lake. Ever since arriving, we had kept our eyes sharp for one particular shorebird. This morning as I drove, Braden suddenly yelled, “Stop!” We quickly got our eyes on it and then set up our spotting scope. It was none other than a Piping Plover! I had seen my Montana lifer PIPL last year with my buddy Scott, but this was Braden’s Montana lifer. Even better, there were two—one stalking another with obviously amorous intentions.

I think that Piping Plover on the left should be looking over its shoulder, don’t you?

North America has three distinct breeding populations of Piping Plovers: one in the Northeast, one in and around the Great Lakes, and one on the northern Great Plains. The world total population may have dropped to as low as 3,000 pairs, but the Great Lakes and Northeast populations have apparently been making a comeback. Montana, is home to a breeding population of perhaps 1-200 pairs of these delightful birds, but the outlook for the northern plains population may not be as rosy as it is for the Northeastern population. Frequent drought (exacerbated by climate change), poor water management practices, pesticides, and an increase of predators make its future dicey. Still, this near-threatened bird is hanging on and our fingers are crossed that some better management practices will also help it increase.

We got an amazing number of great Bobolink photo opportunities on the trip, including this one south of Westby.
This Baird’s Sparrow popped up on the fence while we were scoping a brand new lake south of town.

In the trip’s spirit of birding new places, we decided to head down a new road south of town. We had low expectations, but soon encountered a lake with lush green grasses surrounding it. We got out to scope the lake and discovered at least 250 Sanderlings out on a sand bar. It is while we were scoping that we got our biggest surprises, however. Grassland birds just kept popping up on the barbed wire fence to check us out or perch on plants very close to us. During the next forty or fifty minutes, we got incredible looks at Bobolinks, Baird’s Sparrows, Chestnut-collared Longspurs, Grasshopper Sparrows, Clay-colored Sparrows, Horned Larks, and of course, Savannah and Vesper Sparrows. Every time we looked up, there was another great bird not fifty feet away. It truly was one of the coolest things we’ve ever experienced—and was a great reminder to keep taking the road not birded!

It’s become a tradition to visit this old homestead every time we trek to Westby. Each visit, the old place loses a bit of ground. Soon it will be part of the prairie earth.

Eastern Montana Odyssey 2024: Big Surprise on the way to Plentywood

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Welcome to Part 3 of our 2024 Eastern Montana Odyssey! In this installment, we recount our adventures traveling from Fort Peck to Plentywood, including a wonderful grassland birding site and a big raptor surprise as we start trying to knock off our last seven birding counties in Montana. Enjoy, and don’t be shy about sharing!

After breaking camp at Fort Peck (see our last post), Braden and I continued onto the next stage of our epic eastern Montana safari. We had several goals for the day, including birding one of the remaining seven counties we had yet to fill in on our eBird maps. Unfortunately, gusty 20-40 mph winds continued, so we knew we needed to stay flexible. After grabbing breakfast at the French restaurant Le McDaniels in Glasgow, we headed north to our first stop, Kerr Road, south of Opheim, Montana. Last spring, FWP biologist Heather Harris (see my brand new Montana Outdoors article “12 Little Brown Grassland Birds Every Montanan Should (Kinda) Know” in the July/August 2024 issue) took me and my buddy Scott Callow on a delightful visit to Kerr in search of grassland birds, and I was eager to show Braden the area as well.

If this shot of me posing near the beginning of Kerr Road doesn’t get me a modeling contract, I don’t know what will. Can you shout, “ROCKIN’ IT!”?

Thanks to progressive grazing and conservation policies, much of the land alongside the road has been kept in grass, making it great habitat for grassland birds. Despite the wind, we spotted Upland Sandpipers, Willets, and at a spot called Ward’s Dam, Wilson’s Phalaropes. We also saw or heard a full complement of smaller grassland birds including 17 Chestnut-collared Longspurs, Lark Buntings, a Baird’s Sparrow, and what would turn out to be our only Thick-billed Longspurs of the entire trip! All told, we saw forty species, but our total would have undoubtedly been higher without the howling gusts from up north.

Kerr Road offered great looks at what would be our only Thick-billed (formerly McCown’s) Longspurs of the trip. Braden and I just love the interesting colorations on these birds. In Montana they are much less common than the equally impressive Chestnut-collared Longspurs.

Our Kerr Road Checklist.

The grass along Kerr Road offers wonderful habitat for Upland Sandpipers and, sure enough, we saw three of them on our relatively brief excursion.

Our next destination? Daniels County, the first of the final seven counties Braden and I needed to bird to fill in our lifetime Montana county birding map profiles. Humorously, we first stopped to bird in the small town of Richland—only to discover that it sat not in Daniels County, but in Valley County, a county in which we already had a long history of birding! Our blunder turned out to be a good thing, though, because it forced us to stop for a picnic in Roseland Park in Scobey—yielding one of the biggest surprises of the trip. As soon as we parked on the street next to the park, Braden said, “Look over there!” I trained my binoculars on a large raptor sitting in a tree—a raptor that turned out to be a Broad-winged Hawk!

Our second Montana Broad-winged Hawk in three days couldn’t have been more cooperative, perched only yards from where we had chosen to picnic.

A few BWHAs come through Montana every year, but you usually see them hundreds of feet high as they migrate across the state. In fact, Braden and I had collected our first Montana Broad-winged only three days before while birding Camp Creek Campground near Zortman. And yet, here was another, sitting right in front of us! We were both totally astonished and it put us in great moods to eat our turkey-and-cheese sandwiches and do a little birding on nearby streets. We ended up with 14 species for our first Daniels County list, including Swainson’s Thrush, Warbling Vireo, and three Yellow Warblers. Not bad for a (sort of) accidental stop!

Canvasbacks put on a show in several places on our trip, including Ward’s Dam. Can you spot the Blue-winged Teal and American Wigeon flying among them?

From Scobey, we bee-lined for Plentywood, a known hotspot for rare migratory birds that clip Montana’s northeastern corner on their way north. Alas, for various reasons we were missing the peak migration opportunity to find rare eastern warblers, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, and other songbirds. Not only that, but warm, howling winds continued, squashing our plans to camp that night. Instead, we checked into a local motel and birded two local hotspots, Harry de Silva Park and Bolster Dam Campground.

A tiny roadside marsh along Kerr Road afforded us the trip’s best opportunity to observe a Blue-winged Teal.

Not unexpectedly, results were disappointing. The highlights were spotting several Purple Martins and a nice kettle of Turkey Vultures. To make matters worse, downed power lines had knocked out electricity to most of the town’s restaurants, forcing us to eat at Dairy Queen. It had been several decades since I’d eaten at a DQ, and I have to admit it wasn’t the worst meal in the world. Unfortunately, our food situation was destined to worsen as, the next day, we prepared to head to Montana’s Birding Mecca, Westby.

Make sure you don’t miss the next installment of our epic eastern Montana adventure by subscribing to FSB now. Simply scroll down on the right and fill out the “Subscribe Now” box that you find there!

Eastern Montana Odyssey 2024: Bowdoin NWR & Fort Peck

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Here is Part 2 of Braden’s and my eastern Montana trip report, which began with a wonderful time at the Wings Across the Big Sky birding festival in Helena (see our last post by clicking here). Today’s installment details this year’s visit to one of our favorite birding destinations, Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge, and then our evening birding and camping at Fort Peck. Enjoy and please feel free to share this post!

After our two days enjoying scintillating field trips and lectures at this year’s Wings Across the Big Sky birding festival in Helena, Braden and I spent two nights at American Prairie’s Antelope Creek Campground. I’d tell you what we were doing there, but for now at least, our lips are sealed. On Tuesday morning, however, we rose early, packed the car and headed toward what has become an annual favorite father-son destination: 15,551-acre Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge.

You know you’ve reached eastern Montana when you start seeing Franklin’s Gulls. These gulls were made famous by ZZ Top’s classic hit, “Sharp-Dressed Gulls!”

It had actually been a couple of years since Braden and I visited Bowdoin together, so we especially relished this year’s opportunity. Bowdoin offers a wonderful mix of wetlands and prairie habitat where you can find a terrific diversity of birds. Even better, this year’s water levels showed a significant improvement over last year, when it looked as though the main lake might dry up altogether.

Aaaaaw. Baby Killdeer at Bowdoin!

Unfortunately, today, windy conditions proved a challenge, especially in the grassland sections. While usually we can just drive with the windows open, listening for various songs, this year we generally had to keep the windows rolled up to keep from being sand-blasted by wind and dust. The wind also forced the smaller sparrows that we especially sought to sit down in the grass where they were difficult if not impossible to see. Only the intrepid meadowlarks braved the tops of sage plants, being blown back and forth as if they were on a carnival ride.

We saw at least 18 Willets while driving the Bowdoin loop—a record for us there. These birds, like several other shorebirds, breed in the grasslands around the main lake.

Nonetheless, thanks to diligence and Braden’s great ears, we managed to locate at least a few Chestnut-collared Longspurs, Lark Buntings, and Grasshopper, Lark, Clay-colored, Savannah, and Song Sparrows.

We also got great looks at White-faced Ibises, Willets, American Avocets, and other “usual suspects” in the aquatic realm. It’s always reassuring to see the hundreds of white pelicans nesting out on the main island.

We never get tired of seeing Wilson’s Phalaropes, which breed at Bowdoin NWR in good numbers.

One bird we especially missed was a Baltimore Oriole, which we usually see by stopping at the refuge visitor center before driving the big loop. After we finished the loop, however, we decided to give the BAORs one more shot and sat in our car munching our turkey-and-cheese sandwiches. Sure enough, after ten minutes, a bright orange bird with a black head flew across our vision! Sometimes, you just gotta be patient. All told, we observed 76 species at Bowdoin. But our day had not yet finished.

Our Bowdoin Bird List.

I’ve always felt captivated by these giant Art Deco power station towers at Fort Peck Dam. By camping here, we discovered that the towers are brilliantly lit up at night—a strange effect so far from “civilization.”

After Bowdoin, we drove to Fort Peck to spend the night camping below the dam. I’ve always been fascinated with the story of the Fort Peck dam and how, out in the middle of nowhere, a medium-sized city sprang up to build what, at the time, was by far the largest dam in the world. Today, it is still impressive, stretching more than four miles long, and “looked over” by two large (and to me beautiful) Art Deco power plant towers.

Who said Fort Peck doesn’t have fine dining?

Braden and I found a cozy campsite, set up our tents, and set out to explore the extensive campground. Our top target here were Field Sparrows. We didn’t see any. But we did get an unexpected triple shot of orioles: Baltimore, Bullock’s, and Orchard, all of which dropped by our campsite at least once.

Fort Peck gave us by far our most cooperative experience ever with Baltimore Orioles. This male was part of at least two breeding pairs we found in the campground.

We also got great looks at another Montana favorite, Brown Thrashers, the first of quite a few we would see on our trip.

One of our favorite Montana birds, Brown Thrashers would put in several appearances on our trip, including right in our Fort Peck campsite!

We generally try to avoid staying at large campgrounds, which can be noisy and sterile, but I was glad we gave Fort Peck a try. Even though my sleeping pad kept deflating through the night, the campground was a bit out of the wind, and offered up birds aplenty! Besides, how could I dislike a place that featured my book Beaver & Otter Get Along . . . Sort Of on its summer reading program? Tomorrow, we would try more prairie birding and hope that the wind would die down . . . but would it? Stay tuned for our next report!

As we were lining up our campsite, Braden suddenly exclaimed, “Oh my god! It’s your book!” Helped make my day! Thank you Fort Peck!

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.

Chestnut-collared Longspur
Grasshopper Sparrow

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?

The Road More Pipit (Grassland Birding Part 2)

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The burbling call of a Long-billed Curlew echoed across the dry fields as my dad and I stepped out of the minivan to listen. We stood on a dirt road about 20 miles west of Malta, craning our necks as we squinted at the sky, searching for a tiny dot that might be a Sprague’s Pipit. The unnamed road ran smack-dab through the middle of some of Montana’s best pipit habitat, and after missing several other prairie and marsh specialists at Bowdoin that morning (including Baird’s and Nelson’s Sparrows and Sedge Wren), we had come here for one last-ditch effort.

Even for us, it’s hard to get our head around the fact that Long-billed Curlews we’ve seen in, say, Morro Bay, California (above) fly to the grasslands of Montana to breed. We’ll take ’em, though!

Unfortunately, we had limited pipit experience to draw on. We’d only seen one before, in a thunderstorm on a road-turned-to-gumbo last July. Nick Ramsey had spotted that bird as we had frantically knocked mud off our car wheels, so we’d never even found the species by ourselves—making locating one now seem like a long shot. Thankfully, few clouds loomed on the horizon, meaning we probably wouldn’t have to deal with another thunderstorm.

Our search tactic involved conducting five-minute point counts every half mile, getting out of the car and listening for the birds. This was how most pipits had been detected on this road in the first place, and thanks to the science project I’d worked on last summer, I knew roughly how long to stay at each place before designating it “pipitless” and moving on. 

The first couple of points produced good birds, but nothing of exceptional interest. Vesper and Grasshopper Sparrows sang from the tufts of grass along the fence, and a few acrobatic Franklin’s Gulls spun in the sky above us. At places with more dense shrubbery the dry, buzzy trills of Clay-colored Sparrows joined the grassland chorus.

Our “Road More Pipit” also boasted the greatest numbers of Lark Buntings we’ve ever seen!

Then the scenery changed. Rather than parking next to fenced-off rangeland, the habitat on the left side of the road turned into a more natural-looking swath of native shortgrass prairie. As I got out of the car, I swore that I heard what eBird describes as the sound of “a cascading waterfall of tiny pebbles.” I’d been continuously playing the song as we’d driven between points to instill it in my head, so I couldn’t tell if what I’d heard was just my own brain playing back the song of a Sprague’s Pipit or not. Then, I heard it faintly again. As my dad grabbed his camera from the car, I set off into the prairie after the sound, flushing a pair of Ring-necked Pheasant from a bush. I climbed several ridges, watching my footsteps for rattlesnakes, until it sounded like the bird flew right above me. I looked up, and suddenly saw it—a tiny speck hovering in the blue space between the clouds, singing away.

Here’s a Sprague’s Pipit—Not! If we were to show you a photo of one, it would look like a tiny dot in the sky. This American Pipit, though, looks almost identical to its much rarer cousin, so we ask that you pretend.

After showing it to my dad we just stood there watching what would have been the most incredibly boring part of birding for many people—but not for us. The pipit never descended, and instead slowly drifted further and further away until it was out of sight. We’d found a Sprague’s Pipit on our own! Of course, we knew that they were in the area, but locating an individual bird was still no small task!

The pipit was just the beginning of the prairie species we spotted on that road. As we kept driving, we began to pass large numbers of displaying Lark Buntings, which flew up about five feet before floating down, compared to the pipit’s display hundreds of feet above the earth. We passed a cattle grate, flushing a quintuplet of Sharp-tailed Grouse, several of which posed on the side of the road for us. Some of the Lark Buntings flashed white rumps, revealing themselves to be Bobolinks instead, which had a very similar display to the buntings, and in a very short-cut grain field I spotted three Chestnut-collared Longspurs. We’d ticked off most of Montana’s prairie birds on just this one road! Thrilled and relieved by our success, we got back on Highway 2 headed west, ready for the birds of Glacier National Park.

There’s no better reason to celebrate than finding your very own Sprague’s Pipit—though maybe graduating high school comes close!