Our loyal followers have undoubtedly noticed that our posts have slowed in the past year. While we have been birding as much as ever, Braden has less time to write as college looms, and I too am busy plotting what I want to do when I grow up. Nonetheless, we want to wrap up 2020 for you and give you a taste of 2021 so far.
Sneed’s Bird of 2020, the Northern Hawk Owl, a Lifer we found on Braden’s seventeenth birthday. May his 18th bring him as much birding luck!
2020, in fact, was an epic year for Team Collard. It kicked off with our amazing trip to Israel and Jordan, and once back home we embarked on a mission of seeing 250 species in Montana. For perspective, my previous Montana record was 222 species in a year and Braden’s was 225, so we knew that we had our work cut out for us. Astoundingly, we surpassed 250 by last August, leaving the question, how high could we go? For me, the answer turned out to be 267, and for Braden, 274! With Braden probably heading out of state for college next fall, it seems unrealistic we could equal that number for 2021, so we’ve invented some new goals for ourselves.
Goal #1: to end the year with an eBird checklist in every Montana county. (Braden still has nine counties to bird in and I have ten.)
2021 has already brought us amazing owl sightings including this Northern Pygmy-Owl near Bozeman and this studious Great Horned Owl in Meagher County, a new birding county for us.
Goal #2: to see birds we’ve never seen in Montana before.
Goal #3: to reach a Montana Life list of 300 species (currently Braden is at 293 while I am just behind at 289).
How are we doing so far? Even though it is still January, we are making progress on all fronts. Last weekend, we embarked on a thousand-mile, three-day birding safari to the center of the state. We added Meagher County to our eBird list, and added two Montana Lifers: White-winged Crossbills in Bozeman’s Sunset Hills Cemetery and Pine Warbler—a bird that shouldn’t have been within 1000 miles of Montana—at a feeder in Red Lodge. We had hoped to add at least two other species, but the birding gods were against us. The White-winged Dove in Bozeman that has lit up the Montana birding boards got eaten by a Sharp-shinned Hawk about half an hour before we saw it! Or more accurately, we saw the bird being devoured! We had also hoped to see our first Gyrfalcon, but despite searching the White Sulphur Springs area for more than six hours, the majestic predator was a no-show. Sigh.
Thanks to the generosity of Susan Hovde, who not only discovered but has been feeding him, we were able to spend a glorious winter morning with this out-of-range Pine Warbler—a Lifer for Braden and Montana Lifer for me!
Nonetheless, we found a lot of other great birds and met some terrific other birders. In the process, we set a January species record with still a couple of weeks to go. We do not know what the rest of 2021 has in store for us, but we will keep you updated as we are able. In the meantime, we wish you peace and health, and offer our hopes that this year will see some meaningful progress not only in saving birds, but in protecting this incredible planet we all share.
Though not much to look at from a distance, we were thrilled to see our first-ever White-winged Crossbills in Bozeman’s Sunset Hills Cemetery!
As always, we encourage you to share this post in the hopes that it might keep education rolling during these difficult, unprecedented times.Thank you!
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.
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On Tuesday, February 4th, my dad woke me up at 7 o’clock, a
restful relief from the 4:45 wake-up time I’d adapted to being on the Hellgate
High School Swim Team. Despite an increasingly significant school workload, I’d
decided (with parental permission, of course) to take my birthday off and head
north to bird with my dad. Aside from the obvious perks of birding places like
Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge and Flathead Lake, we had several goals in
mind. A few days earlier, an Ivory Gull, an incredibly rare arctic species, had
been sighted at Blue Bay on Flathead. There was also supposedly a Northern Hawk
Owl, a boreal species that rarely visited the United States, at Swan River
National Wildlife Refuge in the valley just to the east of the lake. We set out
at eight o clock, fifteen minutes after the bell for my school rang, heading
north with visions of rare birds soaring through our minds.
Though the gull, being the rarest of the possibilities
today, was our priority, we had to make several stops. First, we made a
speed-run of Ninepipe, visiting both the frozen lake itself and a nearby road
that supposedly had been supporting a Ferruginous Hawk all winter. The hawk
wasn’t quite as rare as the other species we were chasing, but raptors proved
hard to find even in their regular, summer habitat in the eastern prairies. Today,
we found the white-breasted bird fairly easily, along with several Red-taileds,
Bald Eagles, Rough-leggeds and a Prairie Falcon flashing its dark armpits as it
fled from a telephone pole. At Ninepipe itself, we almost collided with an
airborne Ring-necked Pheasant, and crept down a dirt drive to snap photos of a
possible Ross’s-Snow Goose hybrid.
We grabbed a delicious breakfast at the Ronan Cafe, then drove north through Polson, stopping at a fishing access on Flathead to check for gulls. The Ivory had last been seen heading south, and this hotspot, known as the Ducharme Fishing Access, also reliably held uncommon arctic and seafaring gulls like Iceland, Herring and Mew. In fact, due to the lake’s size, seabirds showed up on an annual basis, confusing it with an inland sea. The Ivory Gull was just the most recent, and possibly rarest, of these visitors. Today, however, we glimpsed only a few Ringed-billeds in the distance.
When the gull took flight, we thought it might be leaving. Instead it landed on a dock only about fifteen feet from us. Wish we’d had some krill in our pockets!
Normally, my dad and I don’t have the best luck chasing rarities. We’ve successfully found a few, usually by accident or thanks to excessive diligence of Nick Ramsey. Last summer, for instance, we chased an Indigo Bunting, Virginia’s Warbler, Black-throated Gray Warblers and Blue-gray Gnatcatchers in central Montana, only finding the bunting, which was difficult to miss in its neon blue plumage. When we pulled up to Blue Bay, though, we found two birders and one bird. That bird was the Ivory Gull, dressed in blank plumage dotted with black. At first we thought it was a plastic bag, due to its immobility, and proceeded to freak out immediately after raising our binoculars. The other birders, who had travelled from Washington to see this bird that normally dwells among the pack ice with polar bears, left fairly quickly after our arrival, leaving us alone on the beach to bask in the bird’s rarity and fill up our camera memory cards. The gull was incredibly tame, at one point landing five feet from us on a dry dock!
Strike a pose! This gull is obviously a huge Madonna fan!
After our success with the gull, we decided to drive north, then east, to Swan River in hopes of finding the owl. The location had been given to us by Nick, and it was much less direct and accessible than the gull had been. First we pulled off the highway at a makeshift parking lot, far from civilization, then trudged a mile through snow to a huge, open field. We proceeded to check and double-check the top of every pine, fir, larch and spruce in the area, searching for the diurnal bog-dweller. After searching the entire south end of the field, where the owl was supposed to be, we took a quick glance across the other side of the field. On a particular conifer far from us, a gray smudge caught the edge of my vision. I took a distant photo, confirming that it indeed was a gray smudge, and we continued to walk towards it. Once we got close enough to determine that it was at least bird-shaped, it disappeared!
If this isn’t an imposing, regal look, we don’t know what is. Good thing the owl couldn’t shoot lightning bolts down at us!
We frantically began re-checking every tree in the area, eventually relocating it again and—it was the owl! This time we didn’t take our eyes off it, eventually getting to about twenty feet from the tree that it perched on top of, like a star on a Christmas Tree. It glared at us, and we stared back, taking in its broad shoulders, square head and beautifully-patterned plumage. In an attempt to get better photos, my dad crossed a ditch, filling his rain boots with ice-cold water, and after the owl got bored with us, everyone departed. We had set out and seen every bird we’d wanted to, including three rarities, one of which (the gull) would quickly become at least nationally famous! To seal the deal, on the way home we glimpsed a Northern Shrike, another uncommon winter species that we hadn’t seen in a while. All in all, an incredible bird-filled birthday!
Me with my Birthday Gull perched behind me. Best Gift Ever!
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When you’re a birder, nothing ever goes according to plan. For example, if you slog through a draw to find a Long-eared Owl, you’re more likely to see a flock of Bohemian Waxwings, or your state’s first record of a Red-flanked Bluetail, or a moose, or anything that is not a Long-eared Owl.
The plan on Sunday, February 10th was to sleep in. Instead, my dad shook me awake at seven in the morning (which I guess is technically sleeping in, but still).
“Nick found a Great Gray and a Barred at Maclay Flats! We have to go!”
Only an owl can get me out of bed early on a weekend!
I groaned and rolled out of bed, and within minutes we rumbled down the road in my dad’s Forerunner, dodging the potholes who tried to swallow us. The plan was to go the speed limit, but as I said earlier, things never go according to plan.
We reached Maclay in record time, and I texted Nick, asking for details. He responded quickly, providing great photos of both owls, and we trekked through the snow-blanketed forest, accompanied only by the occasional chirps of Red Crossbills flying over. As we passed the fields where we had spotted the Northern Pygmy-Owls two years prior, we scanned the bare trees. Nothing.
Then we hit the huge field in the center of Maclay, where Nick had said the Great Gray was hunting. We followed a trail of footsteps around the edge of it, running into another man that my dad knew, and we asked him if he’d had any luck.
When owls prove hard to find, Red-breasted Nuthatches provide entertaining diversion.
“None yet—but I’ve seen owls here before.”
“You heard about the Great Gray and the Barred here, though, right?”
“What? No, I just came out here today.”
Soon, we spotted two other birders on the edge of the field ahead of us, pointing cameras at the top of a Ponderosa.
“That’s a good sign,” said my dad.
We quickened our pace towards them, and I suddenly glanced up to see something I hadn’t seen in four years: a Great Gray Owl. The magnificent predator of the night’s eyes glowed with yellow fire, staring down at all of the peasants who had dared enter its domain. It wasn’t quite as large as I remembered, but then again it perched high on a pine bough.
Politicians spend a lifetime trying to master a Great Gray Owl’s stare!
As we snapped hundreds of photos, Nick suddenly joined us, accompanied by his stepmom and his dad, Phil.
“Nick!” I said, “How do you manage to find all these owls!?”
“Well, we came out looking for the Great Gray and just walked past the tree that the Barred was in. Do you want to see it?”
“Sure!”
Re-locating the Barred proved easier said than done. Nick had discovered the Barred in a spruce, but we trudged through deep snow, unable to find it. After half an hour, Nick finally stopped and pointed into the shaded interior of a tree. The Barred was smaller than the Great Gray, and much less active, as if trying to merge with its dark surroundings. After spending more time watching both owls, we returned to the car, tired, cold and fulfilled. Things definitely hadn’t gone according to plan!
“Just let me sleep!” this Barred was probably thinking, but he didn’t budge from his cozy roost.
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At 9 a.m. on December 15th, my dad and I sat in his truck in the parking lot of DeSmet School. It was the morning of our first Christmas Bird Count of the year, and we were wondering if we had the place and time right. My dad pointed to a blue Prius driving towards us.
“Those look like birders.”
“Yeah, right.” I said as they turned and drove past us.
How many birders can fit into a Subaru? Turns out, the answer is six!
A minute later, though, the Prius reappeared and pulled into our parking lot—I guess they were birders! In a few minutes, four more cars pulled up, and we all got out and introduced ourselves. The leader of the count, Debbie Leick, whose name my dad and I recognized from eBird, was a cheerful and optimistic woman. We quickly divided into two groups—the harder but possibly more rewarding forest group, and the slightly easier lower Butler and LaValle Creek group. My dad and I joined the latter, along with Debbie and three excited women from Northwestern Montana: Madeline, Laura, and Heidi. Only Madeline was an experienced birder, but they all showed true birding spirit!
We took a quick check for birds around the school, then drove to the bottom of the canyon and parked our cars at a barn, where we picked up magpies, ravens, Red-tailed Hawk, Bald Eagle, pigeons and a Song Sparrow. We then shuttled up to the top of our route and hopped two fences and a creek, before slowly making our way back down the canyon.
The Christmas Bird Count just seems to bring out the birder in everyone! (Photo by Madeline Finley).
The walk, though cold, was fun. It took about two hours to get to the bottom, and birds were sparse. We were in great company, though, and everyone was enthusiastic—maybe too enthusiastic. One woman forgot we were birding a few times and just randomly burst into song or started yelling with unprompted glee. My dad designated himself as our owl-finder—we had done this area four years ago on our very first CBC, and been lucky enough to spot a Western Screech-Owl wintering in an old woodpecker hole in the cottonwood draw. Unfortunately, during our whole walk today we did not see a single owl.
We did see some great birds, however. I spotted a large flock of winter-plumaged American Goldfinches that seemed to follow us, and we added Black-capped Chickadees, Townsend’s Solitaires, and a White-breasted Nuthatch to the tally. We also picked up House Finch and Red-breasted Nuthatch at feeders near the end of the route. Once we got back to the barn, my dad called out a group of eight Gray Partridges flying by!
We said goodbye to the other women, then took one last short drive with Debbie up Butler Creek Road. On the way up we tallied a few Wild Turkeys, hawks, magpies and flickers, but nothing to write home about. On the way down, though, I glimpsed a round shape perched high in a deciduous tree next to a house.
No matter how much you want to see them, owls are always an unexpected delight. This guy was only Braden’s and my third NOPO ever!
“Stop!” I said. The bird looked like a fat Northern Shrike, which would be a great addition to our list.
When I raised my binoculars, though, I was greeted with black false eye-spots.
“Northern Pygmy-Owl!” I yelled.
“What!?” was the reaction from the front of the car.
Suddenly, the bird flew—into a convenient tree right next to our car!
Just like the last time we’d birded here, we ended our CBC with a great, tiny owl!
One great thing about owls is that they are generally more tolerant of human observers than many other species.
