Tag Archives: Listing

Gunnison Sage-grouse: Bird #13 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown, April 10th, 2026

Today, Braden shares the latest installment of his series counting down the remaining ABA Life Birds he has been attempting to see. It’s just like listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 Countdown—but better, because it’s about BIRDS! To catch up on his other recent life bird adventures, click on these previous posts:

Black-chinned Sparrow: Bird #14 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown

Fulvous Whistling-Duck: Bird #15 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown

Lower 48 Life List Countdown: Crissal Thrasher (Bird #16)

The sun still hadn’t woken up when I pulled over behind the half dozen or so other cars parked along the side of the road. I rolled down my window as a local game biologist approached.

“Are you here for the grouse?”

“Yes,” I answered quietly as a Horned Lark began singing somewhere in the darkness.

“And where are you from?”

“Montana, though I’m en route from California.”

She marked a few things off on her clipboard, then returned to her car. Through the gray pre-dawn darkness, I could make out a huge field of sagebrush, the foreground for Ponderosa-covered hills rising in the distance. In other words, my car was parked on a dirt road surrounded by a typical landscape of the American West. Even the birds were similar to those found in Montana: a winnowing Wilson’s Snipe, calling Red-winged Blackbirds, the husky chirps of a singing Mountain Bluebird. And yet, in Gunnison County, Colorado, there lives a bird that has never lived in Montana. Me and the other birders, silhouetted through their car windows, had driven from various corners of the country to see it: The Gunnison Sage-grouse.

**The Gunnison Sage-grouse birder “lek” watching the actual Gunnison Sage-grouse lek in the distance at sunrise.**

Superficially, Gunnison Sage-grouse and Greater Sage-grouse aren’t all that different. Both species require expansive sagebrush habitats like the plain that stretched out before me in the rising light. The Greater is larger (hence the name), and, during the breeding season, Gunnisons have much longer filoplumes adorning the males’ heads. While Greater Sage-grouse are found across much of the West, Gunnisons occupy only a small area in Colorado and western Utah. The ranges of the two birds do not overlap.

**Many of the birds I saw while driving through Colorado reminded me of my home in Montana—complete with meadowlarks on signs!**

Sage-grouse breeding displays are some of North America’s most famous avian experiences. Males and females gather in breeding groups in early spring. Both the breeding groups and their display grounds are commonly referred to as leks. While lekking, the males, decked out in the most ridiculous plumage of any North American bird, pump their chests to the viewing amusement of nearby females. Although I’d seen Greater Sage-grouse a few times in my life, I’d never been able to experience one of these leks. And while there are several sites across the country where one might watch a Greater Sage-grouse lek, there is only a single public Gunnison Sage-grouse lek, a spot about fifteen miles east of Waunita Watchable Wildlife Area. Because of their small population and increasing threats to the habitats they’re found in, the grouse are endangered, and so the public lek is open for viewing only during certain weeks of the year. I had arrived on April 10th, the last day the lek would be open for another two weeks.

About half an hour before dawn, another birder’s car alarm went off. I could see everyone in their cars wince—Gunnison Sage-grouse are quite sensitive to disturbance, and this could have been enough to send them scampering away. Thankfully, the birds (which were about ¾ of a mile away from the road), didn’t seem bothered, and about ten minutes later, I began to hear the popping sounds of their displays. I eventually located them, distant black dots, even through my binoculars. Fifteen minutes later, with the permission of the biologist, we started getting out of our cars to set up spotting scopes.

Though our “birder lek” stood too far away from the Gunnison Sage-grouse to get photos, their behavior is very similar to lekking Sharp-tailed Grouse, captured here by my dad at Benton Lake NWR a couple of years ago (see post “The Best Prairie Day Ever: Benton Lake NWR.”)

Through the scope my viewing experience was marginally better. I could make out the males, with their furry white chests and black heads, pumping their shoulders at each other. Occasionally, a female would scamper through my view. Though far away, lekking sage-grouse had been on my bucket list for years and taking them in as the sun peeked above the horizon could only be described as a magical experience. Fog escaped my lips every time I took a breath, and a few nearby Sage Thrashers began singing across the road from us. Soon my fellow birders were beginning to whisper to each other, and I learned just how far people had come to see these birds. The man in the car whose alarm had gone off had driven through the night from Oregon en route to a bird point-count job in Oklahoma, stopping here just for this species. Another man had come here from a few hours away.

**As my dad pointed out in his recent post “Colorado’s Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival,” numbers of Spotted Towhees in Colorado are CRAZY!**

“My kid loves it, birding,” he said to me. “The last year especially, he’s really gotten into it. He wanted to see these grouse, so here we are.” I couldn’t help but see the similarities between that father and son and my birding experiences with my own dad.

After about four minutes of the grouse lekking, a group of birders stormed out of the blind that was set up beside the cars. I’d run into this group last night and learned they were doing a “chicken run.” Colorado is known for having almost every grouse species in the US and tour groups often target all of them during weeks in March and April. One of the birders asked if I knew any nearby spots for White-tailed Ptarmigan before the four of them noisily piled into their car and drove away. So much for staying quiet while the grouse were displaying! Either way, the birds didn’t seem to mind.

**I was especially excited to see Pinyon Jays in Colorado, since they can be a challenge to find back home.**

Beyond seeing these endangered birds, I had been enjoying seeing more and more landscapes that reminded me of home as I neared the middle of my road trip back to Montana. On my drives through Arizona and Colorado I watched the desert transition into mountainous valleys, complete with juniper and sagebrush-covered canyons, rushing streams with permanent water, and the snowcapped peaks of the San Juans and other mountain ranges. Of course, my trip was nowhere near over. I’d be visiting several more new habitats before that happened. In fact, one of those habitats would be later in the day, where I might just manage to see another life bird! Stay tuned to see what comes next . . .

Black-chinned Sparrow: Bird #14 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown

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Today, we continue Braden’s countdown of the remaining birds he needs to complete his American Birding Association life list. For more information on this journey, check out his post, Lower 48 Life List Countdown: Crissal Thrasher. As always, if you’d like to support FatherSonBirding, consider buying new copies of some of Sneed’s books shown to the right. If you already have them all, why not buy a copy for a friend? As always, thanks for reading!

On April 4th, 2026, I left my job of eight months, with my internal compass pointing home. I’d lived and worked in Running Springs, California since late August of 2025, as an educator and camp counselor at Pali Institute for Outdoor Education. I’d seen so much of the country during this time, and met some really cool people, but on April 3^rd I finished my last work shift. The next day, I moved out of staff housing and drove south to Ramona near San Diego to stay with my cousins. That night would be the first of many on a twelve-day road trip I’d planned across the American West on my way back to Montana. Though I looked forward to seeing many birds (see my Crissal Thrasher blog) on the trip, I especially set my sights on the last US sparrow that I’d never laid eyes on: Black-chinned.

Black-chinned Sparrows are classic chaparral birds found in canyons and hillsides across much of California, Arizona and New Mexico. They’re particularly drawn to post-fire habitats—the dense shrubbery that rises from the sooty ground five to ten years after a burn. Outside the core of its range, the species can be quite local, which might explain why I hadn’t bumped into one so far. While I have spent extensive time in both central California and southeast Arizona, a lot of the birding I’ve done in these locations is either too wooded or too deserty for Black-chinned Sparrows. The one concentrated effort I made for the species was both at a bad time of year and a bad time of day for the species, when a friend and I had driven up a random road south of San Francisco where a single singing bird had been reported weeks prior.

When planning my route home from Running Springs, I had several goals in mind: to explore parts of the West I’d never before visited and to target a few bird species that would either be lifers, or living in new locations I’d never explored. With all of this in mind, I left my cousin’s house in Ramona on April 5th and drove six hours through the Mojave Desert, arriving at a location known as the Beeline Highway an hour or so after sunset. This section of the highway ran through Sycamore Canyon, a middle-elevation canyon that stretched from the saguaro-covered foothills north of Phoenix up towards 7,000-foot Mt. Ord. No longer a through road thanks to a closure on the lower section, it was known to be one of Phoenix’s top birding locations.

As I began to set up my tent, thinking about all the fun canyon country birds I might see tomorrow, a barking echoed from the creek a couple hundred meters away. I recognized it as a sound I’d only heard a few times: an Elf Owl! Deciding my tent could wait, I grabbed my flashlight and camera, walking towards the sound. When I got to the tree I thought it was coming from, I raised my light and immediately spotted the bird: America’s smallest owl was barking, unperturbed, from a small cavity in the sycamore. Then another Elf Owl landed on a tree on the other side of the road! I’d only heard this species before, never gotten eyes on one, and I hadn’t even realized they lived this far north! Happy, I went to bed as the Elf Owls called into the night.

The next morning, unfamiliar bird songs woke me, and I packed my tent before the sun crested the hills. As I headed down the road, I spotted Northern Cardinals and Ash-throated Flycatchers, knowing full well that Black-chinned Sparrow reports were more frequent higher up the canyon but curious as to what else lived below. Arizona sycamores followed the creek down the canyon, which contrasted with the dry, rocky, juniper-covered slopes surrounding me, and created great habitat for birds like Hooded Oriole, Bell’s Vireo and Cassin’s Kingbird. From the hillsides sang Rufous-crowned Sparrows, a southwestern bird with a messy jumble of a song that I’d been learning to love over the last few months.

Forty minutes after I started walking the canyon, another car pulled alongside me. A woman got out, introducing herself as Shannon and stating that she was a local birder. From then on, we mostly birded together, taking turns pointing out cool birds as we encountered them.

“Zone-tailed Hawk above us!”

“Check out that male Scott’s Oriole!”

“Oooh, that Costa’s Hummingbird is displaying!”

Eventually, we arrived at a natural turnaround point—a large, grassy pile of dirt blocking the road. The road continued behind it, but Shannon decided to turn around. I felt that I should keep going a little farther, a birding strategy that I’d adopted in recent years. Often, when I feel like turning around, I decide to push on around ‘just one more corner’, and it’s gotten me some great birds over the years. I did just that, and wasn’t disappointed.

To be honest, Black-chinned Sparrow was not the main reason I’d selected this location. No, the Beeline Highway was known for another species, one I’d seen before in Costa Rica but never in the US—Common Black Hawk. In the tropics these raptors are hard to miss, using mostly coastal habitats, especially mangroves. North of the Mexican border, though, there are fewer than 300 nesting pairs, confined to sycamore-covered canyons.

Sure enough, after walking around ‘just one more corner’, I spotted it: A Common Black Hawk sitting on a nest in the crook of a sycamore. I snapped a bunch of pictures and watched as it began flying back and forth, its calls bouncing off the walls of the canyon.

I headed back up the canyon and again met Shannon, who gave me a ride to my car. We parted ways and I continued driving slowly with the windows down. I’d seen a ton of cool birds so far, but I couldn’t help feeling a little stressed. Where were the Black-chinned Sparrows?

Apparently, near the top of the canyon! Pulling over for probably the fourth time, I immediately heard one sounding off from the valley below—a musical, descending song like that of a Field Sparrow but more piercing. While I don’t enjoy using playback, I went ahead and played its song. My bird didn’t come any closer, but the sound prompted another sparrow to start singing on the other side of the road. I snuck up on him and suddenly, not ten feet from me sat a male Black-chinned Sparrow. Almost immediately, a second male flew in to join him and the two flitted from bush to bush together, never staying in one place for longer than ten seconds but giving me satisfying views. I knew they were both males because only the male of this species has the diagnostic black chin.

The Beeline Highway offered up one more gift before I left. While watching the sparrows, I heard the telltale varied song of a mimid. I walked to the edge of the road expecting a Northern Mockingbird, and instead was treated to great views of a Crissal Thrasher! This high-altitude shrubby habitat differed in nearly every way from the desert wash where I’d seen one in Vegas, but the bird seemed to be thriving here! As I headed north, away from the sycamores and saguaros, I felt a pang of regret since I likely wouldn’t be seeing these birds again for a long time. However, I knew that today’s experience would give me hours of pleasant reflection as I continued my adventure into new, exciting habitats.

Lower 48 Life List Countdown: Crissal Thrasher

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Today, we take a break in posting about our recent Costa Rica adventure to share one of Braden’s most memorable domestic birding experiences of 2026. His mission: to see a bird with very specific habitat requirements—and one that had frustrated him several times before. If you’re in Vegas for March Madness you will definitely want to read this post!

In 2025, I saw a lot of birds. Besides international trips to Oaxaca and Costa Rica, I birded across the United States and Canada in places I’d never been before—a road trip from Maine to Montana and another from Montana to southern California, with a side detour through southeastern Arizona. Not surprisingly, I racked up tons of life birds, including Whooping Crane, Roseate Tern, Kirtland’s Warbler, Buff-breasted Flycatcher and California Gnatcatcher. As 2025 came to a close, though, I started to wonder: how many regularly-occurring US species were left out there that I haven’t seen?

In considering the question, I didn’t count Hawaiian or Alaskan birds; those are species that will take extra, dedicated trips to see. I also cut out seabirds that require pelagic boat trips, a style of birding that is exclusive, expensive, and not particularly appealing to a landlubber such as myself. My list omitted rarities—birds that do not regularly occur in the United States—because I much prefer finding a species in its proper habitat as opposed to chasing a single individual bird in the wrong place found by another birder. Finally, I did not include three species that only breed in the Florida Keys—Mangrove Cuckoo, Antillean Nighthawk and Black-whiskered Vireo—because they only occur there in summer, a decidedly miserable time to visit the Sunshine State. I also believed that I’d encounter these species elsewhere when I eventually visited the Caribbean some day.

**Before Braden’s return to Las Vegas, Least Bittern is one of just sixteen “regular” birds he needed to complete his Lower 48 life list.**

So, by my very specific standards, I came up with the following list of regularly-occurring US birds that I had yet to see as of January 1st, 2026:

Least Bittern
Chihuahuan Raven
King Rail
Swainson’s Warbler
Black-chinned Sparrow
Fulvous Whistling-Duck
Connecticut Warbler
Golden-cheeked Warbler
Black-capped Vireo
Island Scrub-Jay
Smith’s Longspur
Colima Warbler
Boreal Owl
Lesser Prairie-chicken
Gunnison Sage-grouse
Crissal Thrasher

16 birds. 16 birds left in the US that I care about seeing that I’ve never seen before. Some of them I have pursued many times (looking at you, Least Bittern and Boreal Owl). Others, I’ve never even tried for once, because I’ve never been within their ranges.

When I realized that I would be driving back to California after spending Christmas in Montana, however, and saw that the shortest route took me through Las Vegas, I knew that I needed to take another stab at Crissal Thrasher. This is the last US mimid (member of the family Mimidae) that I’d never seen before—and one that had frustrated me before.

Like all other US thrashers except Sage Thrasher, this Long-billed Thrasher (and the Sage Thrasher featured at the beginning of this post) belong to the bird family Mimidae. As this family name suggests, thrashers and other mimids have a remarkable ability to mimic other birds. No wonder they are some of our favorite birds here at FSB!

My dad and I had looked for Crissal Thrashers when we visited Arizona in May of 2022, in Yuma, Arizona. They were also on my target list when I visited the Chiricahuas in August of 2025, and while I did find my lifer Cassin’s Sparrow and Scaled Quail out in the desert near Portal, there were no Crissal Thrashers to be found. However, my most recent—and heartbreaking—near-miss had happened just a few weeks previously, at the beginning of December, 2025.

During one of our last weekends of work, three friends and I decided, almost on a whim, to drive four hours and camp near Death Valley National Park. On Saturday morning, my friend Sam and I snuck out of our tents early, staying quiet so as not to wake the others, and drove an hour west to a spot known for having Crissal Thrashers. The habitat featured tall, brushy vegetation growing along a desert wash. I’d later learn that Crissal Thrashers preferred this riparian desert habitat, and were much more common in this environment than out in the middle of the desert, away from water.

The place Sam and I visited that morning in December was called Shoshone Village, nothing more than a trail looping through the desert. We started to hike and immediately spotted some of the more common Mojave Desert birds—Phainopeplas and Gambel’s Quail. As we rounded a bend and entered some more dense vegetation, Sam pulled out his phone and ran the Merlin app.

**Phainopeplas greeted Sam and me on our previous search for Crissal Thrasher—a search that ended in muddy disappointment!**

“Crissal Thrasher,” he said, looking at me. Suddenly, I heard what the app had been hearing—the squeaky, repeating song of a thrasher coming from around the corner. I felt disappointed that I hadn’t picked up on it—the bird was singing quite loudly—but figured that it wouldn’t matter that an app had identified the bird if we got eyes on it. Unfortunately, a large mud puddle sat in the trail between us and the thrasher.

I carefully made my way around the edge of the slippery puddle, moving thorny branches out of the way and stooping underneath thick tree limbs. After about a minute of careful effort, I reached the other side, turning around to help guide Sam around it. Sam followed in my footsteps until halfway around the puddle he suddenly slipped into the mud puddle with a splash! Not only was Sam soaked and muddy (including the large seagull onesie he was wearing), but the commotion of us trying to avoid the puddle caused the thrasher to stop singing.

We never saw the bird.

Flash forward to the Clark County Wetlands, only two months later. Clark County Wetlands sits on the eastern edge of Sin City, just upriver from Lake Mead, the giant, now-shrinking reservoir created when President Herbert Hoover decided to dam the Colorado River, and it just so happens to be one of the best places in Nevada to find a Crissal Thrasher. The presence of year-round water (a rare commodity in these parts) in the Las Vegas Wash allows for the existence of perfect thrasher habitat, complete with more extensive, green vegetation than can be found elsewhere in the Mojave.

**It was a decidedly odd experience searching for on of my last Lower 48 bird species within sight of perhaps the most “unnatural” city in North America, Las Vegas!**

As I stepped out into the landscape of mesquite, palo verde, and barrel cacti, I immediately regretted wearing shorts and a tee-shirt. In contrast to the 100-plus temperatures during my last visit here, this morning I shivered in cool 45-degree air. Nonetheless, birds were far more vocal than they had been back in December. Mockingbirds called from atop the trees. Black-tailed Gnatcatchers and Verdins were in nearly every little scrap of brush. Again, there were Phainopeplas and Gambel’s Quail, as well as lots of wintering birds—Yellow-rumped Warblers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Northern Flickers.

Then, as I rounded a corner, I heard the song again—the same song I’d heard from the leeward side of that mud puddle in Shoshone Village. This time I was ready, with no puddle standing between me and my bounty. I bushwhacked off the trail, into the desert scrub, and soon spotted it, a long-tailed bird with a long, curving beak silhouetted against the early morning sky!

I didn’t manage any still photos of my lifer Crissal Thrasher, but this video captures the moment even better!

Me and that thrasher spent a good fifteen minutes together, with bare desert mountains looming on one horizon and the Las Vegas Strip looming on the other. Eventually, the thrasher flitted away, only to take up another perch a dozen meters away. After spending more minutes admiring it, I walked back to the trail, happy and at peace.

To be honest, that thrasher wasn’t even the coolest bird experience I had that day. As I continued along the trail, I got to watch an adult male Costa’s Hummingbird performing its flight display above my head. I found two rarities, a long-continuing Northern Parula and a Golden-crowned Kinglet that no one had reported. And from the deck of the Clark County Wetlands Visitor Center, a beautifully-designed educational building, I got to watch three Greater Roadrunners chase each other, constantly clacking their bills. The last time I’d been to Las Vegas had been a hot, emotionally turbulent week, but this morning that I spent at Clark County Wetlands was so enjoyable that it is now what I recall when I think of that gambler’s haven in the desert.

**Watching a trio of Greater Roadrunners from the visitor’s center added a great bonus to seeing a bird that had frustrated me multiple times before.**

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Our 2024 Recap: Spain, Costa Rica, Japan (again!) and More

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2024 has been a record-breaking year for FatherSonBirding—and in more ways than one. Let’s start with the stats. Number of views to our site increased by almost 50% over last year to almost 14,000, while the number of visitors increased 65% to about 10,000. Much of what is driving these increases is interest in our posts about foreign birding destinations including Japan, Costa Rica, and Spain. In fact, viewers from 104 different countries visited our site this past year. Top views from countries other than the US were:

Japan: 445

United Kingdom: 384

Canada: 352

Australia: 244

Singapore: 208

Despite being published in 2023, our birding posts from Japan dominated views this year, especially with FSB visitors from foreign countries! Here, Tessa and I visit The Great Buddha, or Daibutsu, of Kamakura—apparently the second largest Buddha in Japan, one that harkens back to about 1252.

So which of our posts received the most views? Here is our Top 10 for 2024 (plus/minus 10 views each, given the quirks of the statistics-accumulating program):

1. Birding Japan, Kyoto: 811

2. Birding Japan, Tokyo Part I: 573

3. Birding San Antonio’s Riverwalk, Are You Nuts?: 568

4. Birding Barcelona Part I, The Urban Core: 463

5. Birding Japan, Kanazawa: 332

6. Birding Glacier National Park in the “Hot Dry Winter” of 2024: 289

7. Getting Serious About State Birds: 284

8. Braden’s Costa Rica Report #3, El Copal: 249

9. Turning Useless Lawn into Vital Habitat: 196

10. Monotypic Birds, Evolution’s Survivors: 195

A couple of things become evident from this list. One is that many birders are travelers. Even though they are from 2023, our Kyoto and Tokyo posts (links above) continue to get hits every day, often from people outside the United States. Despite this stiff competition, our post about San Antonio’s Riverwalk still wears the crown of our all-time most viewed site. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that all of this is because of how many birders are out traveling the world!

If you remember this Red-shouldered Hawk, you’ve been reading FSB almost from the beginning! Our post on birding San Antonio’s River Walk still holds the title of our most viewed post ever, with almost 2,000 views.

Our top posts, though, also reveal that readers of FSB have a major interest in environmental issues, as is revealed by our Glacier National Park post and our post “Turning Useless Lawn into Vital Habitat.” We take great satisfaction in that because one of the main reasons we write FSB is to help increase awareness of the environmental plight of our planet—and birds in particular—and what we can all do to improve the situation. Planting native plants in our yards is an especially simple, effective approach to increasing vital habitat that birds and their prey depend on. We’re happy that so many people took time to read our post on this topic.

**Enthusiasm for our post on the dry hot winter of 2024 revealed a strong interest in the environment among FSB readers. Good job, readers!**

But the year is only a little about statistics. Braden and I both had wonderful birding adventures in 2024. Thanks to his semester abroad in Costa Rica, Braden saw a remarkable 736 species of birds in 2024. More important, he got dozens of other young people into birding by starting the wildly successful UMaine Birding Club. The club did all kinds of fun activities, from leading dozens of birding outings to hosting movie nights and launching a project to reduce bird strikes on the UMaine campus building windows. Braden and I also finally got to take the eastern Montana birding safari of our dreams, spending two weeks exploring corners of the state we’d never before visited.

**Braden’s adventure-packed semester in Costa Rica led him to see a remarkable 736 species of birds for 2024.**

I had my own birding adventures including my wife’s and my trip to Barcelona last February, where I picked up a dozen species for my life list and had a whole lot of fun with Amy. I had two great trips to California: one to show my youngest, Tessa, a couple of potential colleges for next year; the second a great Bay Area trip to visit family and friends, including four fab days of birding with my childhood buddy, Scott. Work travel gave me additional opportunities to bird in Oregon, Washington, and throughout Montana. The highlight of the end of my year was getting to bird Cape Cod with Braden during Thanksgiving Week. I am also elated that my newest book, Birding for Boomers, is off to such a great start, reaching #8 the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association bestseller’s list for nonfiction paperback books!

**Thanks to the year’s second trip to California, I got to spend more time than usual with friends—and coastal birds such as this Black Turnstone.**

As usual, Braden and I have only vague ideas where 2025 will take us and what we will be moved to write about. A few destinations in the mix: Indonesia, Vancouver Island, Texas. Whatever adventures we have and end up writing about, we deeply appreciate all of you for checking in and taking an interest in the coolest group of critters on earth. We also appreciate you supporting our work by buying our books and sharing FSB with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Until next year, Happy New Year, and may 2025 bring you joy, satisfaction, closer connections and, of course, a whole lotta birds!

Sneed & Braden

In Montana, Some Real October Surprises

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For birders, October is an odd month—especially in Montana. Our resident birds have left. Winter residents are just arriving. Most migrating birds have passed through the state—but not quite all. The month poses a special dilemma for those trying to set any kind of Big Year milestone, because time for new birds is running out. This year, for instance, I have found myself tantalizingly close to making 2024 my second best Montana birding year ever. 2020 was Braden’s and my best year, when we put a ton of effort into it, and I recorded 266 species on my list (see our post “2020 Wraps, 2021 Underway”). Last year, thanks in part to an Eastern Montana trip with my pal Scott, I notched my second best year with 253 species. As October wound down this year, however, I found myself with 247 species—seemingly within striking distance of breaking that 253 mark. Or was it?

The Fort Missoula gravel quarry delivered our first American Tree Sparrows of the season—a bird that, unbeknownst to me, I had failed to see earlier in the year! This, dear readers, is also where Braden and I got our lifer ATSPs years ago.

A mere seven species might seem like an easy task with three months to go in the year, but that small number is deceiving. As mentioned above, very few new birds arrive this time of year. As for winter arrivals, most birders (myself included) already saw those in January and February. Bottom Line: By October, birders hoping to set a mark need to track down some rarities.

Braden and I have chased plenty of rarities in the past, but I am more reluctant to do so these days. The main reason? Unless I really, really want to see a particular bird, I can’t justify burning up gasoline just to notch another species on my list—especially to break a rather arbitrary record. After all, climate change—powered in large part by burning fossil fuels—is one of the major threats to birds, not to mention to all other species, and my desire to make 2024 my second best year doesn’t rate as a worthy enough goal to place the planet in even greater peril. With Braden gone, chasing rarities also isn’t as much fun.

Still, last week, with the end of the month in sight, I felt like I could use a good birding session to take advantage of our last warm weather and improve my mental health, made particularly jittery by the craziness of the upcoming elections. And then, out of the blue, I got a text from Nick Ramsey: “Hey! Are you in Missoula? And any shot you want to go birding tomorrow?” I didn’t hesitate. “Yes and yes!” I shot back.

**With only hours to spend in Missoula, Nick picked me up for a quick trip to the Fort Missoula gravel quarry and Lee Metcalf NWR, showed above.**

Nick, it turns out, had a brief layover in Missoula between a summer field job in Alaska and guiding gigs in Louisiana. Regular readers of FatherSonBirding (or of my new book Birding for Boomers) will recognize Nick both as a member of our extended family, and as our most important mentor when Braden and I first started to bird. We’ve had countless birding adventures together including our first expedition to eastern Montana and Braden’s and Nick’s epic Florida birding trip in 2022. I was thrilled that Nick, who recently graduated from LSU, reached out to me—especially because he had only hours to spare before hitting the road for a 30-hour drive to Louisiana. I asked him what he’d like to do and he suggested visiting the Fort Missoula gravel quarry and Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge. That sounded great to me, and just by coincidence, a Northern Parula had just been sighted at Lee Metcalf.

Decidedly eastern birds, Northern Parulas are almost unheard of in Western Montana. Although chances were low that it would still be there when Nick and I got there the following day, I couldn’t help thinking this could move me closer to tying my “second place” record of 253. For his part, Nick especially wanted to see a Swamp Sparrow, another uncommon bird for Montana. I figured we had almost no hope of finding one of those, but if anyone could, it was Nick.

Nick picked me up at eight the next morning, in the company of his adorable diminutive companion, a chihuahua mix named Dixie, who decided that my lap would be her domain for the rest of the day. Our first stop? The gravel quarry. Nick hoped for a Swamp Sparrow here and we both thought it might be a good chance to see scoters, Long-tailed Ducks, or other laggards passing through the area. Unfortunately, a guy flying a drone was most likely scaring off any interesting water birds. Still, we had a nice sparrow session, finding a ton ‘o Song Sparrows, along with White-crowned Sparrows, and the season’s first American Tree Sparrows—which, I didn’t realize I had failed to find earlier in the year! By the time we headed back to the car, the drone flier also had departed, giving us a look at a few Hooded Mergansers. “Hey, there’s also a Horned Grebe!” I told Nick. That was a nice surprise since I’d managed to miss them in Montana the entire year. Click. With the American Tree Sparrows and Horned Grebe, my Montana Year List had leaped from 247 to 249!

**I had given up on Horned Grebes for my 2024 Montana list when this one showed itself at the Fort Missoula gravel quarry.**

Continuing on to Lee Metcalf, Dixie keeping me warm, Nick and I caught up on the rest of our lives. This, I realized, was the first time Nick and I had ever birded together without Braden along, and though we both missed him, it was a great chance to share our adventures and discuss future birding dreams, plans, and possibilities. In no time, Nick was pulling into the Lee Metcalf visitor’s center parking lot. Several birders had arrived before us, but none seemed aware of the Northern Parula sighting the previous day. The bird had supposedly been seen in the elm trees next to the closest pond, but as we headed over there, what first caught our attention were two shorebirds pumping for food in the mud.

**A pair of Long-billed Dowitchers presented our first surprise at Lee Metcalf. More surprises would follow!**

“Are those Long-billed Dowitchers?” I asked Nick. “What are they doing here?” So late in the season, they surprised both of us and immediately made our trip down here worthwhile. While we were studying them, however, Nick’s sharp ears caught something else and he began walking over toward the south edge of the pond. I thought he had heard the Northern Parula, but when I caught up, I found him studying the cattails below us. “I thought I might have heard a Swamp Sparrow,” he explained. Then we saw movement. “There!”

**Nick’s Montana lifer Swamp Sparrow was too quick for me to catch in full sunlight, but did pause briefly behind this fence.**

Several other birders joined us and it took several minutes for us to get clean looks at the bird. “Furtive” is a good word to describe Swamp Sparrows as they like to stay hidden in reeds along the water’s edge, but finally, the bird gave us full, if brief, views. I was astounded. While only about fifty records exist for Montana, Nick explained that the birds definitely move through the state every year, and Birds of Montana lists several cases where the birds have overwintered. I’d only ever seen one in Montana—in the Shiloh recreation area in Billings—so for me, this was a big deal. Click. 250.

As we moved slowly, following the sparrow to a small brush pile, Nick almost casually said, “The parula’s right behind us.”

What?

**It being fall, I expected that if we saw the Northern Parula, it would be a drab specimen. The gorgeous bird, however, delivered a real October surprise.**

I spun around and, sure enough, spotted a spectacular yellow-and-bluish-gray warbler plucking insects from leaves in a deciduous bush not twenty feet from us. Nick called to other nearby birders, and they joined us for one of the most leisurely looks at a rare migrant ever. Much like the Black-throated Blue Warbler that appeared in Lolo last year, this bird seemed little bothered by people. We all hung back about thirty feet, trying to fill up our cameras’ memory cards while the bird fattened up on whatever it could find. Just to mix things up, it flew over to an elm tree for a while, before heading back to the bush. After a hike out to the more distant ponds (still no scoters), Nick and I hit the road back to Missoula, making only a quick nearby stop to get Nick a look at California Quail for the year. In a single outing, and at a most improbably time of year, my year list had advanced to 251 species, making me wonder if I could somehow nab three more species through December. Even better, I had enjoyed a wonderful day of birding and companionship with one of the best rare migrants possible, our friend Nick.