Tag Archives: Thrashers

Chihuahuan Raven: Bird #12 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown, April 10th, 2026

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In the past few months, Braden has been on a roll finding his last couple of dozen Lower 48 ABA life birds. Today, he takes a deep dive into a bird few of us know much about and even fewer of us encounter. Remember, FatherSonBirding is written and photographed by REAL PEOPLE. If you want to support our work, please consider buying some of Sneed’s books by clicking on images to the right. Better yet, invite one or both of us to headline your next birding festival! While you’re at it, be sure to check out Sneed’s new-and-improved website at www.sneedbcollardiii.com. Thanks!

It had been years since I’d watched a pair of ravens for so long. I’d just finished birding Hanover Road, a dusty track through a habitat I’d never seen before; dry grasslands covered in large cholla cacti. Hanover Road hosted a few strange migrants, including Rock Wrens and Sage Thrashers, but I hadn’t seen either of my main targets for the area, Cassin’s Sparrow or Chihuahuan Raven. Then, just before I was about to pull onto the main highway heading back west towards Colorado Springs, I spotted them: two large, black corvids investigating a smushed prairie dog on the road. I parked my car, got my camera out, and started snapping pictures.

The “raven neighborhood” on my recent trip through Colorado.

This certainly wasn’t the first time I’d attempted to see Chihuahuan Ravens. On every birding trip I’d taken to Arizona I had spent increasingly more and more time looking for the large, dark birds out in the desert. Most recently, in August of 2025, I’d pulled over to look at every raven in the vicinity of the Chiricahua Mountains, coming up short over and over as I realized each and every one was a Common. Finding Chihuahuan Ravens in Texas is far easier, for no Commons occur there, but on my dad’s and my one trip to South Texas we hadn’t seen a single corvid.

On recent trips through the Southwest, I had been frustrated several times in my search for Chihuahuan Ravens.

The bird hadn’t even been particularly on my radar for this road trip home. After bidding the Gunnison Sage-grouse goodbye (click here) earlier that morning, I’d routed east, over the continental divide and out into the open prairie. I knew that southeastern Colorado had desert habitat, or at least desert-adjacent habitat, and had several species that I wanted to find. So, upon my arrival in the Colorado Springs area, I started driving roads through neighborhoods where my target birds had been reported. Curve-billed Thrasher and Canyon Towhee I found with ease. Finding Scaled Quail took significantly more effort, but eventually I lucked into one perched in someone’s driveway, calling loudly and attempting to jump onto a nearby truck. None of these birds were lifers but I’d never seen them in this context before, and the towhee and thrasher were new subspecies and did look notably different from the ones I’d seen in Arizona. 

While I searched for CHRAs with few expectations, I was fortunate to stumble upon a Scaled Quail.

After texting a few friends about my finds, it dawned on me: here were species native to the Chihuahuan Desert, species I’d seen in southeast Arizona. So, if Scaled Quail, Curve-billed Thrasher and Canyon Towhee lived here, what about Chihuahuan Raven? I jumped on eBird and quickly learned the answer—this marked the northern edge of the ravens’ range, and a few individuals had been reported in the area recently. So, I kept my eyes peeled as I drove further out into the cholla-covered grassland. Sure enough, an hour later, here I was, staring down two ravens.

Cholla cactuses were part of the interesting ecology of this unusual southern Colorado landscape—but would ravens be here?

In all my time hunting down this species, I’d learned a lot about the identification of ravens. For one, Chihuahuan Ravens generally had longer nasal bristles, meaning that feathers covered more than half of the upper bill. The birds poking the dead prairie dog definitely had long nasal bristles compared to a Common Raven. Unfortunately, this field mark can be quite variable, so I had to look harder. Another feature of Chihuahuans is the flat head with its peak near the crown, unlike that of a Common which has a peak near the front. Again, these birds were looking more like Chihuahuans in this regard, but this field mark also could be quite variable, especially in the wind. And the wind was definitely blowing!

However, that was great news for me, because the wind gave me access to the largest, most reliable field mark—the raven’s neck feathers. Common Ravens have a gray color at the base of their neck feathers. Chihuahuans, meanwhile, have white. Thanks to the gusts rocketing over the desert landscape, the neck feathers on each bird were exposed every thirty seconds or so. After snapping some pictures and zooming in, I could clearly see that the birds in front of me had white neck feathers!

Thanks to the gusty wind, I was able to see the most reliable ID features of the Chihuahuan Ravens—the white base of the neck feathers (the “star” shape on the bird in the above photo).

Besides being a life bird, my experience with the pair of Chihuahuan Ravens in Colorado taught me something. These days, sometimes it feels like birding is focused on maximizing species and numbers. Birders across the US submit thousands of eBird checklists per day, and the competitiveness can be overwhelming—everyone is always trying to see just one species to add to their list. So seldom, it seems, are birders focused on just watching the birds. My quest to identify those two ravens turned into just that: I got to watch these two animals for half an hour. They flew from telephone pole to telephone pole; they hopped around on the ground; they called, foraged, shifted their weight and interacted with the world around them. Slowing down to be with these two creatures was an important reminder that birds are not numbers on lists, but real, wild animals with personalities and habits. We should all slow down and watch ravens more often.

My time with the Chihuahuan Ravens offered an important reminder to slow down and really pay attention to the wonderful world and creatures around us.

For more information on corvids, or the crow family of birds, check out Sneed’s recent Montana Outdoors cover story, “Corvids to Crow Over.”

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 3rd 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.

The Beeline Highway

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.

Sycamore Canyon

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. 

Phainopepla

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!”

Scott’s Oriole

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.

Common Black Hawk

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.

Black-chinned Sparrow

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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Gray Flycatcher Science

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One of our goals at FatherSonBirding is to encourage support of scientists and nonprofits working to protect our planet’s many imperiled bird species. We hope that you will consider sending a donation to Montana Bird Advocacy, whose work is featured in today’s blog. You can do this by clicking here. It will be money well spent!

Late July often ushers in the birding doldrums. Having finished courtship and breeding, most birds get super quiet. They often disperse from their breeding territories, too, making them more difficult—or at least unpredictable—to find. But this year I was in luck: I had a writing assignment that would guarantee I see at least a few very cool birds.

My best look yet at a stunning Ferruginous Hawk proved a delightful bonus to my day near Bannack.

You may recall my unsuccessful June trip down to Beaverhead County (see post In Search of the Green-tailed Towhee) to visit with biologist Jeff Marks, founder of the nonprofit scientific research group Montana Bird Advocacy.  There, Jeff and colleague Paul Hendricks are performing a long-term study on one of Montana’s little-known birds, the Gray Flycatcher. When I visited, Paul wasn’t there, but I also got to meet biologist and research assistant Nate Kohler, who has been playing a pivotal role in the study.

The word “gulch” conjured up a much more verdant image to my mind, but as you can see it takes some pretty special adaptations to survive in this rugged country.

Although my June trip allowed me to see many wonderful birds and interview Jeff and Nate, my intention to see the Gray Flycatchers got squashed by a freak winter storm. Worse, the storm wiped out a whole crop of nestling Gray Flycatchers. The good news? The adults had laid second clutches of eggs, and the babies were getting ready to fledge as I again headed down there the last week of July. This time, the weather would be ideal for seeing them.

Jeff and I headed out at 8:00 a.m. and made our way up Bannack Bench Road, which borders the study area. This was the third season of the study, and its purpose is to figure out some of the basic biology of a bird that scientists know very little about. To do that, Jeff, Paul, and Nate have been banding adult flycatchers with color bands that allow field identification and observation of individual birds.  The birds have been a challenge to catch, but the biologists have managed to band about a dozen each year—and with fascinating results. I won’t reveal too much about those results here since I’m also writing an article for Montana Outdoors magazine that will be out next year. However, I will tell you that seeing where these birds nest and what they are doing was a thrill.

Biologist Jeff Marks takes notes on a Gray Flycatcher nest in his Beaverhead County study area.

When Jeff first told me they were working in a place called Sheep Corral Gulch, I imagined sagebrush plants bordering some kind of verdant riparian zone, perhaps lined with aspens or junipers. Imagine my surprise to see nothing but sagebrush in every direction! Gray Flycatchers breed throughout the Great Basin, but one of the fascinating things about them is that they choose different habitats in different places. In other states, they nest in juniper, pinyon pine, and even ponderosa pine, but in this part of Montana the birds breed almost exclusively in sagebrush plants along dry washes. One thing that these places share in common is that they have open ground for foraging.

Color-banded adults allow Jeff and the Montana Bird Advocacy team to make detailed observations about mating and behavior of these little-known birds.

In Beaverhead County, though, not just any sagebrush will do. The birds nest only in taller plants four to eight feet high—plants that can mainly be found growing in the (usually) dry main stream channels of gulches. This year, Jeff and his colleagues located about a dozen nests, one to two hundred meters apart, and as Jeff and I began hiking, it wasn’t long before we spotted an adult bird up ahead. Using GPS coordinates, it took only minutes for Jeff to locate the bird’s nest—a nest with babies!

“They will fledge any day now,” Jeff told me, “and it looks like both parents are feeding them.” Having two involved parents gives the nestlings a huge survival advantage, and as we watched, we saw a parent deliver a juicy grasshopper to its ravenous chicks.

Most of the Gray Flycatcher nests were bursting with babies itching to head out on their own—after a few more meals from Mom and Dad!

For the next three hours, I followed Jeff as we visited one nest after another, and most were jam-packed with two or three babies champing at the bit to head out on their own. We, of course, made sure to stay well back so as not to spook them out of the nests before they were ready.

An unbanded adult Gray Flycatcher keeps watch on us as we move through its territory: “Move on. Nothing to see here, folks.”

I thought we would see a lot of other birds as we hiked, but especially this time of year, the birds stayed out of sight. We saw a couple of Brewer’s and Vesper sparrows, and a single Sage Thrasher and Northern Harrier. What a contrast from a month earlier when I spotted Sage Thrashers and Brewer’s Sparrows almost everywhere I looked! Nonetheless, I couldn’t have been more thrilled to get these up-close-and-personal looks at one of Montana’s most uncommon species.

Sage Thrashers were noticeably more elusive than only a month earlier, but this one did pose nicely on a fencepost along Bannack Bench Road.

You may be wondering just where Gray Flycatchers can be found in Montana. That itself is a fascinating story, because they apparently arrived in our state only recently. The first official record occurred in 1999, and Jeff believes that the birds may only have reached the Treasure State as part of an expansion northward from the Great Basin that occurred in the 1970s. Their Montana strongholds are in Beaverhead and Carbon counties (see post Bear Canyon—Montana’s “Tropical Birding” Paradise), but it takes careful observation and listening to distinguish the birds from almost identical-looking Dusky Flycatchers. The fact that the birds are so restricted here in Montana, though, points out how important it is that we protect our fragile sagebrush communities. It also underscores the great value of the work that Montana Bird Advocacy is conducting, because only by understanding the biology of the Gray Flycatcher and other sagebrush species can we know how to protect them.

Please consider supporting the ongoing work of MBA by clicking here and making a donation. The flycatchers will thank you—as will generations of future birders!

While getting ready for the next day at the study site, MBA’s rental cabin offered an idyllic view of pastureland, complete with deer, coyotes, and gobs of Common Nighthawks. Donate to Montana Bird Advocacy by clicking on this picture.

In Search of the Green-tailed Towhee

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Please support our efforts at FatherSonBirding by buying a *New* copy of Birding for Boomers or one of Sneed’s other books shown to the right—and by donating to Montana Bird Advocacy, a wonderful grassroots scientific organization doing novel and unique research on Montana birds.

Confession: Despite the title of this blog, the the main purpose of last weekend was not to find Green-tailed Towhees; it was to learn about a wonderful study of Gray Flycatchers with biologists Jeff Marks and Nate Kohler. However, as I set out Saturday morning, defiant of the grim weather forecast for the next day, I did have a secondary mission in mind—to find and visit with some of the birds in the arid southwest corner of the state. Over the years, these sagebrush areas, from Bear Canyon (see Bear Canyon—Montana’s “Tropical Birding” Paradise) all the way west to Beaverhead County, had become some of my favorite parts of Montana. I credit that partly to my own childhood living in the dry chaparral country of southern California, but I also just love the ecosystems and birds in this part of Montana. I’d have trouble calling myself a real birder if I didn’t get down there at least once each year.

Since you’re pressing me on the issue, I also had a third objective for this trip—to move closer to breaking my all-time one-year species record. The record belonged to 2017, when our family traveled to Ecuador and Peru and I recorded a total of 527 species for the year. This year, thanks to last-minute invitations to Colombia (see THIS POST) and Texas (see THAT POST) I unexpectedly found myself at 498 species—perilously close to setting a new record. That task loomed more difficult than it might appear since once spring migration has passed and breeding season gets underway, it becomes much more difficult to find new species. Still, a trip to the southwest part of Montana promised to nudge me closer to this new goal, and my first target was one of the state’s coolest birds: Green-tailed Towhee.

On Braden’s advice, my first real birding stops of the trip were along the Jefferson River before Lewis & Clark Caverns.

Green-tailed Towhees winter in the American Southwest and Mexico, but generally breed in the the Great Basin region of the West, including southern Montana. Though the birds are not strictly rare, I could count the number of times I had ever seen one, and I felt eager for another GTTO encounter. To find this bizarre, poorly understood beauty, I hit I-90 at dawn and steered toward Lewis and Clark Caverns, two-and-a-half hours to the east. To entertain me along the way, I had checked out an audio version of Eat, Pray, Love, a book that invites all kinds of snarky comments but, I found, actually proved moderately amusing. On Braden’s advice, I pulled over alongside the road leading to the caverns and was rewarded with a wonderful assortment of river and cliff birds including Rock Wren, Lazuli Buntings, and White-throated Swifts. Once inside Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park itself, I focused on finding Green-tailed Towhees.

While Lewis & Clark Caverns did not give up its Green-tailed Towhees, I did get nice looks at a Rock Wren and Lark Sparrow.
A Lark Sparrow in the campground of L&C Caverns State Park.

I struck out. I spent a good hour and a half checking along the road, up around the main parking area, and in the campground. Merlin’s Sound ID picked up a putative GTTO song at one point, but I neither heard nor saw a trace of the bird.

I have to admit that this made me feel like a total failure. I mean, here was my first target bird of the trip, and one that shouldn’t be that hard to find, and I totally “whiffed” on it, as Braden might say. I didn’t plunge into despair exactly, but it definitely put a damper on my mood as I began questioning just what I thought I was doing out here pretending to be a birder! Well, I thought, maybe I’ll have better luck at my next destination.

Which happened to be Birch Creek Road north of Dillon in Beaverhead County. Several years before, Braden and I had found our lifer Thick-billed (formerly McCown’s) Longspur on this road, and once again, the road delivered. I’d driven only a mile before I saw a suspicious dark shape on a fence. I actually didn’t think it was a Thick-billed, but my binoculars revealed otherwise. “Yay!” I exclaimed, feeling the weight of my earlier “whiff” lifting slightly. A few minutes later, I was examining another TBLO when I noticed a large shape sitting in a field about one hundred yards away. “Clearly a hawk,” I thought, “but what kind?” The answer: the best kind, at least for my goals for the trip—a ferruginous hawk. This was another bird I needed for the year and one that isn’t always easy to find in the state.

A desperate flight photo of the Ferruginous Hawk as it flew away.
One of Montana’s coolest and most handsome songbirds, Thick-billed Longspur.

Digging out the peanut butter sandwich I’d made earlier, I tooled down I-15 for my next destination, Clark Canyon Reservoir. Braden and I had only ever birded here once before, and as near as I recall, we hadn’t found much, so I kept my expectations low. I stopped at one overlook and was surprised to see a Common Loon on the water below, along with a Double-crested Cormorant and a couple of Ring-billed Gulls. Violet-green swallows swirled around me and, as always, they brought a smile.

Snaking around the reservoir, I approached a sign for Horse Prairie Campground and spontaneously swerved left onto a dirt access road. The reason? Tall, healthy-looking sagebrush! Hm, this just might have one of my other target birds for the day. Almost immediately, I saw a really cool bird that had not been on my target list—a Common Nighthawk peacefully chillin’ on the split-rail fence. The bird barely blinked as I fired away with my camera through the car window from only thirty feet away.

The first of three Common Nighthawks I spotted chilling on the wooden fence leading down to Horse Prairie Campground.

Creeping slowly forward, I heard a song I didn’t recognize—which was no great surprise in itself, but I did have a guess of what it was. Sound ID confirmed it: Brewer’s Sparrow! This bird loves healthy sagebrush and makes up for the world’s dullest plumage with a vigorous song that bewitches any birdwatcher who hears it. A few moments later, one even sat still long enough for a decent photo. Check. Another target bird—but not the one I expected to find here!

One of Montana’s drabbest birds, the Brewer’s Sparrow has an enchanting song.

I kept driving slowly toward the campground and spotted a medium-sized, slender bird up ahead. Wishfully, I thought it might be a Say’s Phoebe—another bird I happened to need for my year list—but it flew off before I got close. As I pulled into the campground, though, two brownish birds were chasing each other around. I assumed they were robins, but when one landed on a “Day Use Only” sign, I realized with a start that it was exactly the bird I had hoped to find here—a Sage Thrasher!

Sage Thrashers are so flighty that seeing one on a sign was about the last thing I expected!

Braden and I have never met a thrasher we didn’t like, but Sage Thrashers hold a special place in our birding hearts. For one, they’re the world’s smallest thrashers—which is why I mistook them for robins or phoebes. For another, they are charismatic songsters and often are the most common bird you see in sage country. As I sat in the car, in fact, I counted three more Sage Thrashers around me. Whoo-Hoo!

One of our favorite Montana birds, Sage Thrashers seemed to be everywhere I looked this afternoon.

Later, on the road where I was to meet up with Jeff Marks and Nate Kohler, I encountered seven more Sage Thrashers! It was a veritable thrasher party—by far the best experience I had ever had with these good-looking birds.

Unfortunately, the next morning, heavy rain and spitting snow kept me from seeing Gray Flycatchers with Jeff and Nate. More on that in another post. Almost as bad, I began the drive home without a Green-tailed Towhee under my belt and no expectations of seeing one. But bless Nate Kohler’s heart. He told me about a canyon I should check out on the way home. It was still raining when I got there, but I drove slowly and stopped frequently, listening and watching. Lazuli Buntings chattered everywhere and I saw a good variety of birds—but no towhee. Finally, I put on my raincoat, got out of the car and played a Green-tailed Towhee song. Almost immediately, a small shape darted up out of the sagebrush—the bird I was looking for! Not only that, it held still long enough for a photo—but the story hadn’t quite finished.

I worked hard for this Green-tailed Towhee—only to find that it wasn’t a year bird after all!

Once I got home and posted all of my checklists for the trip, I was surprised that eBird hadn’t added GTTO to my year list. What’s going on? I thought, and did a quick search to see if I had somehow seen one down in Texas and forgotten about it. Nope. What I did forget was the rare vagrant GTTO I had seen in Victoria, BC during Amy’s and my January trip (see Birding Victoria, BC)! So this one was not a year bird after all, but still a lot of fun to see. Meanwhile, my year list swelled to 503 species thanks to the Thick-billed Longspur, Ferruginous Hawk, Brewer’s Sparrow, Sage Thrasher, and a Prairie Falcon I had spotted the afternoon before. Not exactly the trip I expected, but one I already cherished.