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The Hummingbirds of Western Montana

10,000 Birds

The Montana Field Guide, a helpful online compendium provided by the state government, lists seven species. That is, in extremely precise mathematical terms, three times more species of hummingbirds than breed near the Olde Homestead. I examine the species accounts in detail, searching for clues.

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Montana is Owl Country

10,000 Birds

This year, that award was presented to Denver Holt , a Montana scientist and bird guide and thus, if I may be presumptuious, my homeboy. Holt founded the Owl Research Institute , an organization that focuses on long-term studies of a variety of species of owls, as well as their prey species and environments. Why Ninepipes?

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The Cure for Binocular Neck: Birding in Montana

10,000 Birds

In the valley of the Yellowstone and Boulder Rivers, snuggled up against Rocky Mountain ranges, sits the little western town of Big Timber, Montana. The highest mountain in Montana, Granite Peak at 12,799 feet, is just south in the Absaroka Mountain Range. All of the neck-strain-free birds below breed in Montana. million acres.

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The Amazing Exploding Dove Meets Montana

10,000 Birds

With a hardiness that belies their delicate looks (but helps explain their phenomenal success), these pioneering pigeons are already sitting on eggs at at least one location in Montana. Hochachka noted that one had spent the winter “as far north as eastern Montana&#. Whatever they used to be, they are now a bird of Montana.

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Invasive Species Week Wrap-Up

10,000 Birds

Perhaps our outrage at invasive species can be a bit hypocritical at times. Listers are quick to put aside their condemnation of invasive species once they attain that coveted status of exotic: not native, not fully naturalized, but established well enough to be countable by the prevailing authority. That’s where we come in.

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Noxious: Montana’s Battle With Spotted Knapweed, and What Birders Can Do

10,000 Birds

It’s bad enough to be an invasive species — the term shows a major fall in public esteem from the days when acclimatization was the rage. But as a descriptor, ‘invasive species’ doesn’t have a patch on ‘noxious weed’ Call something a noxious weed and there’s no doubt where you stand on it.

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A Snowflake’s Chance

10,000 Birds

The species that calls western Montana home is the black cottonwood, while plains and narrowleaf cottonwood call the rest of the state home. They can grow large and magnificent, providing trunks large enough for dug-out canoes and building materials along with medicine and other practical uses from their buds and bark.