Tag Archives: Montana

250 Montana Birds or Bust!

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In our last post, I explained how close Braden and I had come to reaching our goal of 250 Montana species for the year. Braden, in fact, had reached 245 birds while I pulled up the rear with 239. Now, as some of your comments pointed out, 250 species would seem like a slam dunk with six months to go in 2020, but not so. Not only had we exhausted our supply of “easy birds”, but another large birding safari seemed unlikely—until, that is, Braden and his birding buddy Nick Ramsey came up with the idea for a Big Day. The plan? To get up before dawn and drive 500 miles, birding Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge, the Swan River Valley, Glacier National Park, all the way to Malta, home of Bowdoin NWR. Insane? Yes. Would we do it? Definitely!

None of us knew how many species we might see in a day. Our record for a day in Montana was only in the 80 or so species range, but we’d never attempted anything like this and hoped we might get as many as 150. Alas, the weather gods frowned on us the morning of June 30, with steady drizzling rain. Undaunted, we set off, missing a number of target species here in Missoula and near the National Bison Range. At Ninepipe NWR, however, we hit Short-eared Owl City! Braden and Nick both still needed SEOWs for their Year Lists, but neither of us had ever seen one at Ninepipe until I spotted one about a month ago. This morning, driving Duck Road in the rain, we hadn’t gone a mile before Braden shouted, “There’s an owl!” In the next three miles, we saw NINE MORE! Maybe they should call the refuge Nineowls?

**Our first Big Success of our first Big Day was to hit the Short-eared Owl Jackpot at Ninepipe NWR.**

After missing LeConte’s Sparrow at Swan Valley (but seeing lots of Lincoln’s Sparrows), we headed to Glacier, where my top priority of the trip just might be located: Harlequin Duck. With the coronavirus raging, we didn’t know what kind of traffic we might expect, but the poor weather ended up a blessing as we cruised right into the park and made record time to Avalanche Creek. Still, none of us really expected to see a Harlequin Duck as the males had fled and breeding was probably winding down. We walked out onto the beach on the river, though, and sixty seconds later, we all saw a duck flying downstream. It was a female Harlequin! Even better, it landed fifty feet from us! None of us could believe it. After admiring the beautiful creature, we walked around a bit, picking up the eerie calls of Varied Thrushes, but failing to get our pie-in-the-sky target, Black Swifts. Still, our stop a success, we headed back out to West Glacier and began the six-hour drive to Bowdoin, picking up new birds all along the way and ending up with a day’s total of 119 species—a personal Montana record and not bad given the weather.

**One of my favorite all-time birds, this Harlequin Duck was just waiting for us as we zoomed into Glacier National Park during our (first) Big Day!**

Of course, the problem with doing a Big Day that finishes up in a place like Malta, Montana, is that you have to get back home again! Not surprisingly, we spent two days finding our way home—and not without some adventures that included Braden almost stepping on a rattlesnake, almost getting our minivan permanently mired in mud far from civilization, and getting a rear tire blowout—fortunately, just at an exit in Butte.

**On Day 2 of our, ahem, Big Day, we had some of our best experiences with nesting shorebirds—including the spectacular American Avocet at Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge!**

“So did you make your 250 birds?” you may be asking yourselves. Well . . . YES! Braden finished the trip with 255 species for the year while I slipped in there with 251. Which begs another question, “What now?” Well, fortunately birding is fun, interesting, and educational even without keeping track of lists. Every day, in fact, we see cool birds and learn more about them. Will we object if our species counts climb higher in the next six months? No way, but do we need them to? Naw. Birds are great any time and in any season—even if we’ve seen them before.

Six Months and 245 Birds

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It continues to be a crazy year for everyone, and we feel deeply for all of those who are being directly or indirectly affected by the coronavirus, either through their physical or mental health, loss of employment, or simply missing their friends and family. It stinks. One bright spot is that many people are rediscovering the simple pleasures of spending time outdoors, and for many, birding is a big part of that. A reminder that Braden and I have posted several bird-related educational videos on my YouTube channel, including a Birding Basics that introduces people how to bird and some common birds to look for. Our friend, ornithologist Dick Hutto, and his wife Sue Reel, have also been posting some great short tip videos for you to look at.

**Cassin’s Kingbirds were one of seventy Year Birds we found on our epic Eastern Montana birding safari.**

As you can see from our last post, we haven’t been blogging as much—but we have been birding. In fact, once we returned from Israel, we decided to shoot for 250 Montana birds as our goal for the year. We spent an exhilarating week taking an eastern Montana birding safari, during which we saw more than 180 species of birds—including about 70 Year Birds. Braden also has been conducting an independent bird-related science project for his upcoming senior year of high school. So how are we doing?

**A great thing about climbing a mountain is that it can put you at birds-eye level with spectacular species you usually just see from below. Meet a Townsend’s Warbler!**

By the beginning of this week, Braden had seen 243 species of birds while I was pegged at 234. Now for non-birders it might seem like a shoe-in for us to hit 250, but believe it or not, we were (and remain) more than a little anxious about our prospects. For one thing, we have seen virtually every one of the “easy” species there is to see in Montana. For another, birds are “quieting down” now that they are in the process of, or have already finished, nesting, making them more difficult to find. In other words, every new Montana Year Bird we get from now on will take significant effort, luck, or both. Undaunted, we woke early Wednesday morning to investigate a new birding location for us just west of the town of Lolo. A logging road led up into the high country from there, and even more intriguing, it passed through a two-year-old burn area where we hoped to see one of our most coveted species, the Black-backed Woodpecker.

**On the day, we located five of the dozen or so common warbler species that breed in Montana, including this stunning Yellow-rumped.**

It was a flawless day, and we pulled over a couple of times to listen for birds in green, lusher forest. Thanks to Braden’s sharp ears and ear-birding skills, we immediately picked up a host of species including several kinds of warblers, Swainson’s Thrushes, Warbling Vireos, and a surprise flock of Gray Jays (I refuse to cede this species to Canada!). Driving further, we finally reached a burn area where Braden had seen a Three-toed Woodpecker several days before. The burn had mostly smaller trees and I wasn’t optimistic, but Braden played a Three-toed drumming call and a Hairy Woodpecker immediately responded. Then, a blacker bird swooped in. “Three-toed!” Braden shouted. Ka-ching. A Year Bird for me.

Black-backed Woodpeckers aren’t endangered, but can usually only be found in burned forests 1-5 years old that have NOT been salvage-logged. This one immediately leaped into our Bird of the Year competition!

A mile or so further, we reached an even better burn area with larger-diameter trees. I pulled over and we played a Black-backed drumming call. Within fifteen seconds, a gorgeous female Black-backed arrived to investigate, but that wasn’t all. Another half-mile up the road, we found a yellow-crowned male! “A Black-backed! We found Black-backed Woodpeckers!” Braden exulted several times. They were our first since doing our Big Year in 2016. The day was far from finished, either. Over the next couple of hours, we added Sharp-shinned Hawk to our Year lists, and I added two more that Braden already had: Fox Sparrow and Golden-crowned Kinglet, both of which Braden found me by ear. We also found Wilson’s Warblers on their nesting grounds—our first time doing so near Missoula.

The day brought our totals to 245 and 239 respectively. Will we make it to 250? We’re finally starting to feel better about our prospects, but stay tuned. We still have a lot of birding to go!

Listening to Birds

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Please follow Braden’s and Sneed’s birding adventures by subscribing to FatherSonBirding.com using the box on the right below. As always, feel free to share this with other birders, bloggers, editors at big high-paying publishing houses—anyone you wish!

Last week, to celebrate the final days of summer, Braden and I did something we’ve always wanted to do: bird banding. This, however, wasn’t just any bird-banding session. We were lucky enough to accompany the team of biologist Debbie Leick, whom we first met during last year’s Christmas Bird Count.

**When Braden and I got to hang with them, Debbie Leick and her bird banding and recording partners had a productive morning, capturing thirty birds of fourteen different species.**

Debbie works for MPG Ranch, a wonderful operation that supports a host of restoration and academic science. Debbie’s project? To see if she and her crew can count migrating birds by listening to their flight calls with a large array of microphones spread throughout the Bitterroot Valley. Before she and her team can start counting birds, however, they have to be able to distinguish their calls.

**Birds in Bags! Birds extracted from mist nets are kept warm in bags while awaiting banding, measuring, and for a lucky few, recording.**

Braden, Debbie, and I joined the University of Montana Bird Ecology banding crew at a trapping station up Miller Creek. The team had set up mist nets to capture birds, and when we arrived, the action was in full swing. A Swainson’s Thrush, Yellow-rumped Warbler, MacGillivray’s Warbler, and a surprise (to us) Northern Waterthrush kicked off the bird parade. Some of these were recaptures, as evidenced by the bands around their legs. New or recaptured, each bird was carefully removed from its net, weighed and measured, and released. Some birds, however, got special treatment.

**This MacGillivray’s Warbler submits to a thorough health inspection by expert warbler wrangler Sasha Robinson before being banded, measured, and released back into the wild.**

When we caught a Townsend’s Warbler, Debbie’s colleague Boo Curry (and yes, no typo there) led me and the bird to a PRS or Portable Recording Studio. The warbler was gently placed in its own soundproofed recording booth and then Boo piped in some warbler calls (a bird’s version of elevator music) to see if she could get the Townsend’s to respond.

**A Townsend’s Warbler prepares to audition for Debbie’s flight call library. It passed with, ahem, flying colors.**

It did! In fact, it was the team’s first successful flight call recording of the season. Which just goes to show how painstaking field biology can be. The work of Debbie’s team, though, has great promise to improve not only our counting of migrating birds, but our understanding of them. Stay tuned for more when Braden and I follow up on their progress at a later date!

**Debbie’s colleague Kaitlyn shows Braden how to release a thoroughly-processed, somewhat bedraggled Ruby-crowned Kinglet.**

Chasing Rarities

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On Wednesday, July 10, both my dad and my Montana year lists stood at 203, mere inches from our previous all-time records. Two days before, we’d had an awesome all-day birding session, nabbing five year birds (Bobolink, Dusky Grouse, White-throated Swift, California Quail for my dad and Black-chinned Hummingbird for me). Now, a couple of days later, I had gone to swim practice and was surfing the recent Montana eBird reports when suddenly, I spotted something. A Virginia’s Warbler had been seen in Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park! Upon further investigation, I discovered that not one but two Black-throated Gray Warblers had been seen in the same spot. Up a nearby canyon an Indigo Bunting was hanging out! I talked to my dad, and we couldn’t take it anymore. The rarities coupled with other year bird possibilities pushed us to the brink.

**Bolstered by this Dusky Grouse and four other year birds we’d seen on Monday, July 8, we decided to make an all-out push to break our Montana Big Year records.**

The next evening—Thursday—we hit the road for a Super 8 in Butte and the next morning were up at dawn, heading for the caverns. I had a pretty good idea of where the rare birds were (or so I thought), so we started off on a mildly steep trail from the campsite, encouraged by neon Bullock’s Orioles swooping around us. In our haste, however, we had forgotten our bug spray, and about two miles in, the mosquitoes attacked, forcing us back to the campsite.

Slightly disheartened, we moved on to our next stop: Milligan Canyon Road. A male Indigo Bunting had taken up residence here among the usual Lazuli Buntings, and we expected him to stick out like an indigo wildebeest in a pack of green lions. As we continued up the road, though, seeing all lions and no wildebeest, we began to grow disappointed. At the actual entrance to the canyon, though, my dad pulled off the road and whipped out his binos.

“I’ve got him!”

**While common in the middle and eastern U.S., this Indigo Bunting was probably the rarest Montana bird we’d ever seen.**

We leapt out of the mini-van like it was about to explode and ran across the road, and sure enough, there he was. The wildebeest was singing his tiny heart out, as if nothing was weird about the fact that he was in Montana rather than North Carolina. My dad and I celebrated our first successful rarity chase in Montana with a high-five.

After a quick search up the canyon for Yellow-breasted Chats and Green-tailed Towhees (we found a Golden Eagle instead), we made our way towards Three Forks. We pulled onto the dusty Bench Road and spotted harriers and Swainson’s Hawks, bringing back memories of our first-ever eastern Montana trip two years before when we’d found curlews and Burrowing Owls with Nick Ramsey on this road. Soon, we saw our main quarry: a tiny owl picturesquely perched on a fence post ahead of us. We pulled up alongside it, and flushed another!

**We love it when birds pose only a few feet from us. This Burrowing Owl was really trying to score a permanent modeling contract, or at least a spot on “Project Owlway.”**

The owls gave us great pics, and after a half hour we turned tail and headed back to Lewis and Clark Caverns. Why? It turned out I had picked the wrong trail for the rarities! We gave it another shot, this time driving to the top of the state park. Sprawled in front of us were beautiful juniper and pine-covered hills, and we started off on another short trail after being interrogated by the park officials (“We aren’t going to sneak into the caverns, we’re looking for birds!”). A few hundred yards up the path, a new sound rattled across the landscape, different from the regular sounds of the Spotted Towhees. I peered down the slope, and saw a bird with the strangest color combination—green, gray and orange. Green-tailed Towhee! We pished it up the slope and got awesome looks. This wasn’t just a year bird; we’d never seen it before!

We tried one more trail before giving up all hope on the two warblers, then steered towards Helena. After a brief rest at yet another Super 8—this one far more depressing than the first—we visited a Helena cemetery, where my dad had gotten Pinyon Jays earlier in the year. I was skeptical, but sure enough, eight blue-and-gray corvids crossed the road in front of us, hopping onto a few tombstones and then loudly flying off. Another lifer for me!

**Chipping Sparrow? No! Green-tailed Towhee, a long sought-after Lifer for Team Collard!**

We had dinner at MacKenzie River Pizza, then hung out there reading and watching the men’s Wimbledon semifinal since our next and final stop wouldn’t produce what we were looking for until later. Flammulated Owls, one of the most secretive in North America, had been regularly reported in a nearby location known as Grizzly Gulch (ironically, there were no grizzlies there), and we arrived at the coordinates at about 9:00 p.m. Almost immediately we heard a low, single hoot in the trees. No way! Who knew owls could be this easy? We tried to make our way towards the sound, but gave up and opted to let the owls come to us. Making our way farther down the road, we picked up winnowing snipes and Willow Flycatchers, and tried in vain to find a Common Poorwill flycatching in the road. We never did see the owl, but were fine with that! My dad had surpassed his all-time Montana record, and now we have 210 and 211 species respectively in Montana this year. Can I break my old record of 213? Stay tuned to find out!

Stumbling After Sparrows

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Sparrows. A simple word that can elicit groans from the most experienced birder. Even after six years of dedicated birding, I feel like I am just beginning to grasp most sparrow identification, let alone sparrow behavior and song. With Braden’s help, I can now figure out most of Western Montana’s species, but put me in any new environment and I’m like a birding babe with a binkie.

**It’s always great to see Chipping Sparrows back in Montana—even if they add to the sparrow confusion this time of year!**

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Helena public library, followed by a lively Last Chance Audubon meeting nearby. The next morning, I decided to sneak in some birding before heading back to Missoula. I first chose a local site affectionately called the “K-mart Wetlands.” This was my first time at the ponds during spring migration, and my pulse raced as I heard the haunting call of a Sora from the cattails. That was followed by my FOY (First of Year) Common Yellowthroat and a flock of more than twenty Yellow-rumped Warblers.

I was fortunate to run into a Helena birder name Jeffrey Olsson who said, “I heard a Clay-colored Sparrow down at the end there.” Though Braden had done his best to educate me about this bird, I drew a mental blank. “What does it sound like?” I asked Jeff. He repeated a buzzy sound for me. “Great. Thanks,” I said and headed off down a fenceline in pursuit. Amazingly, I heard the distinctive call, but didn’t catch sight of the bird.

**No question, Lark Sparrows are some of the most stunning sparrows of all. This was only my third sighting in Montana.**

I did run into a large number of Chipping Sparrows along with a single White-crowned. After completing a loop of the end pond, I looked out into a gravel patch and spotted a lone bird foraging for seeds. “Clay-colored?” I asked myself, quickly raising my camera. It wasn’t. Instead, it was something just as exciting—a lone Lark Sparrow. After seeing one with Braden and Nick Ramsey only a couple of weeks earlier, the Lark got my pulse racing, especially after I managed some good photos. Alas, I still didn’t glimpse a Clay-colored—or so I thought.

While taking photos of the Chipping Sparrows, I noticed some with duller brown head stripes instead of the usual bright red. I assumed these duller sparrows were females, but they also seemed suspicious. Later, back at home, Braden confirmed something I’d been pondering. The “female” Chipping Sparrows were actually Clay-coloreds! Once again, it was the struggle over identifications that inched my knowledge forward. While it’s a certainty I’ll misidentify many other sparrows in the future, each time I run into these interesting little birds, my brain connections grow. Which, of course, is what makes birding an endless adventure.

Sparrow On!