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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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When you move on to Montana, you discover that there are worse things that one species of tiny screaming mammal tricking you each year as you try to cope with an influx of songbirds and a winterized memory bank that contains only Black-capped Chickadees and Dark-eyed Juncos (and only about half their calls at that.)
I also ran into a local birder who was unimpressed when I gushed about how much I was enjoying my morning — until I explained that I was from Montana. Well, I am sort of am from Montana now, I guess. My last species in the park was Wood Duck , which we have in Montana too but which is always fun to see.
Besides the owls themselves, I promised them the best pie in Montana, which is to be found in the Ronan Cafe. None of these people were birdwatchers, as such, before coming to Montana, although one of the poets was outdoorsy in a hiking and skiing way. If you are ever in Ronan, Montana, try the pie. And the pie.
Still, it was an occasion worthy of more note than it has received, and true to tradition I have seen the species again several times since then, mostly notably during my float down the North Fork of the Flathead River in July. I’ve also failed to designate a new nemesis.
As of mid-November 2021, the Collaborative had submitted more than 4,200 checklists (up from 1,700 in 2018) and has observed 691 species in the United States (up from 618). Thus, there are now seven states with 200+ observed species. The state with the largest increase was Arizona , with 139 species added.
Like several of my favorite NWRs, this one was established as a haven for migratory birds, most notably waterfowl, during the bad old days when uncontrolled hunting and habitat loss had put the future of even species we now think of as common in doubt. As a result, early migration season is an excellent time to visit.
And yet, perhaps ironically, the biggest sign of spring in a Montana March is when the skies fill with white. Snow Geese overgrazing their breeding grounds, displacing other Arctic-breeding species and setting themselves up for a fall. The result?
Female White-browed Shortwing ( Brachypteryx montana ) at nest with two nestlings. Heading down to a lower region of Doi Inthanon, we took a forest track in the hope of turning up a parrotbill that had been seen in the area that morning (one of my target species).
Since I moved to Montana I’ve been updating it sporadically at best, and over the past year or so, not at all. Perhaps, too, it doesn’t hurt that the number of lists from Montana is large enough to create meaningful pictures in the data, but small enough that I feel like I’m really contributing in some way.
A week ago today, the federal government proposed a “threatened” listing for the Greater Sage Grouse in Nevada and California , as part of a larger study considering whether the species as a whole should be listed. Conservation Endangered Species Act Greater Sage Grouse sage-grouse'
There is also a research institute dedicated to wilderness: the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute is an interagency facility located at the University of Montana. For example, hunting is not permitted in most NPS wilderness areas, but it is often allowed in wilderness areas managed by the other agencies.
The swallows here in Montana have an admirable ability to assort themselves into nesting niches. I had always seen them well over my head, in rocky canyons, and given that they are an exclusively Western species, I assumed this is why. Bank Swallows live in our many sandy banks. Tree Swallows live in trees — and nest boxes.
It was the most of either species I can remember seeing in one place, and they were hyped about the berries that the mountain ash still bore. I haven’t lived in Montana long enough to feel jaded about Bohemian Waxwings, so I concentrated on them at first. Definitely not spring. I was told there’d be worms.
With all my traipsing about this year I’ve actually been shamefully lax on birding Montana. Montana offers little in the way of flamingos, generally speaking. No Snow Geese or swans yet, and no Sandhill Cranes , but it did renew my taste for some of the simpler, homier pleasures of birding.
Moreover, at the time I had no inkling that I’d be moving to Montana in two and a half years – in fact, it would be nearly a year before I decided to go to grad school and entertained the notion of leaving New York at all. In Central Park , to be exact. It was exciting — to a degree. And every time, it was exciting.
Though hardly common, Great Gray sightings are a yearly occurrence in Western Montana, and it is one of the twelve species of owl known to breed in the state. As a result, its territory in the Rocky Mountains extends far south of the bulk of its range. Photos courtesy of Asta So. *I Birding Great Gray Owl owls'
It wasn’t until I noticed the “locusts” here in Montana that I got curious about them. Surely they couldn’t be the same species, across a continent. Dear readers, spill – have you ever seen birds preying on Carolina grasshoppers, and if so, what species? But they are.
I just chalked this up to my friends being weird, until I took the Master Naturalist Class at the Montana Natural History this fall. And apparently, non-birders are more apt to divide birds into general kinds than species lists. Way, way back, during our inuagural game of Gone Birding , my friend Molly developed a theory of birds.
Last week was spring break at the University of Montana, and so, for me, a chance for a brief flying visit back east. Yesterday, there were none. Today, Tree Swallows are here, flashing light and dark above the river. Now, let’s back up. Though spring migration is only just starting to ramp up there, of course I had to visit the Ramble.
If you’ve ever wanted to understand why warning calls by one bird species seem to spread rapidly, like an avian version of the Wave , to birds of other species, Professor Erick Greene from the University of Montana is your man. (From the film version of Doctor Dolittle ).
Things hadn’t quite gotten to that point when my friends Asta and Isaac and I arrived at Freezeout, but there wasn’t much white to be seen – perhaps a hundred Snow Geese, mostly passing overhead, and twenty or so swans too far out on the water to identify as to species.
But some species remain elusive when they shouldn’t be. Even a big trip to Canada, though it turned up many other delightful species ( Boreal Owl , anyone?) Moving to Montana would surely make a difference, because Evening Grosbeaks aren’t “irruptive” here, they’re just birds, living their lives.
The landscape known as the Crown of the Continent extends from northern Idaho and Wyoming through Montana to the Canadian border, linking the Greater Yellowstone and Salmon-Selway ecosystems and including Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks.
I imagine these explorers had the same reaction as the Lewis and Clark expedition as they moved from the tallgrass prairies of North Dakota and Montana into the northern Rockies of western Montana. Views like this offer specialty niches for many high-altitude species. This species is an athletic and patient one.
On the first day, before the sun was even properly up, I already had one of my target species under my belt: the storied and spectacular White Stork. My travelling companion, also from the University of Montana creative writing program, was not a nature girl at all, but she could relate to birds that played a role in stories.
Lately (in the last month or so) he’s been through the Dakotas, Montana, and Canada, up to the Northwest Territories. And in April, he sees the return of the many species he has seen in that month in years past – but, also, weirdly, a Virginia Rail, a reclusive marsh bird, flopping around the sidewalk in downtown D.C. (the
Critically, NWRs preserve habitat and wildlife, often for endangered species. Lee Metcalf NWR (Montana): 178,000; $4.5 Of course, the study does not purport to rank refuges based on visitation-based economic output, as that is just one metric. John Heinz NWR (Pennsylvania): 358,000; $4.6 million; 35 jobs. million; 293 jobs.
Immediately at the start of the book, Meiburg infects the reader with his delight in one caracara species, the Striated, a resident of the Falkland Islands and Tierra del Fuego, and the southernmost bird of prey in the world. Well, I know of one such guy, anyway. With abundant roadkill (1.3
In each instance they start with a striking anecdote — my particular favorite took place on the University of Montana campus, where in 1964 an American Crow learned to call and taunt stray dogs into causing perhaps the most adorable college riots of the decade.
A long trip to a distant hot spot, a targeted species, the careful working of a patch, a heady plunge into the whirlpool of migration or a determined sifting of shorebirds, gulls, distant raptors – all these varieties of birding have their own pleasures and proponents. It’s one thing to go birding.
Wildlife conservationists say the freeze will delay and possibly prevent the removal of gray wolves from the federal endangered species list in Montana, Idaho, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, and also in portions of Washington, Oregon, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.
This year, a few months after my fortieth birthday, when I saw a Blue Jay in West Glacier Montana I felt only a small bit of surprise – it was an uncommon bird but no longer really extralimital as a wintering species. 1978, for reference, was the year of my birth.
” Not because there’s anything wrong with common or confiding species, but because depending on where you live and what you do with your habitat, darn near anything can be a backyard bird. Here in Montana I use an expansive definition of “yard” to put Barrow’s Goldeneye on my yard-list.
My best bird of the year is based on the sighting rather than the species. My best bird of the year was without a doubt the Montana Baikal Teal , a bird that combined rarity, beauty, and the good grace to stick around long enough for me to actually see it. Montana’s Baikal Teal by suneko. Rock Warbler by Clare Morton.
Last night I lay awake from 4 am til almost 5, worrying about the black-footed ferrets I met in Montana and the humans who had devoted their lives to helping them. As my fellow blogger Meredith Mann pointed out last summer, the Endangered Species Act in particular has been a massive success for birds.
I’ve only seen this handsome, copper-headed duck once before, years ago – being in Montana didn’t help on that front – and from all accounts this bird was showing well. Do I pursue the sporadic, maybe-not-really-a-species Common Teal ? Except when I looked for it the first time, and it didn’t show at all.
As of mid-October 2018, the Collaborative had submitted more than 1,700 checklists and observed 618 species in the United States. The heat map is revealing: Unsurprisingly for a site founded and run by two New Yorkers (one of whom literally wrote the book on birding New York), the Empire State boasts the highest number of species (316).
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