Birds of Montana

A while back I mentioned that I had some exciting news concerning Montana birds and a project I am working on. I can now let you know that the project is a book on the Birds of Montana. Jeff Marks, senior author of the project, invited Paul Hendricks, Dan Casey and myself to co-author this work he has been trying to get underway for a while. We are currently seeking funds to help support research and writing time, pay for illustrations and travel to museums and libraries, and defray printing costs to reduce the retail price of the book. All royalties from book sales will go to Montana Audubon.
In addition to soliciting foundations, businesses, and government agencies, we are requesting support from individuals who have an interest in birds and conservation in Montana. One way individuals can participate is through sponsorship of species accounts. Individuals can sponsor one or more accounts, with the sponsor's name appearing at the end of each account and in the acknowledgments (see Barn Owl and Mountain Plover accounts). The donation amount for sponsoring an account ranges from $100-300, depending on the conservation status of the species. The rate for agencies and corporations is $1,000 per species independent of conservation priority. Donations are fully tax deductible.
I am really excited to be part of this project and I am looking forward to letting you know more about it as it grows.

More bird festival photos

Here are a few more photos from the Montana Audubon Bird Festival in Ennis, MT from this past weekend. I really enjoyed being in Ennis and seeing places I haven't been for a while. I lived in Ennis for a few months many years ago. I was trapping and tracking eagles in the valley to assess their use of a proposed wind power project in the area and I have a lot of memories of my time there. I was also able to take my Mom to a couple of areas looking for some birds she wanted to see, primarily a Dipper. She also wanted to find a Red-naped Sapsucker, and we were able to find two males and one female at a nest site right in town just before we started home.

This coming weekend I am really looking forward to the Glasgow Bird Festival. This is the third year of our local festival and we continue to get better at it. In addition, my good friend Dr. Nina Karnovski and her son Max will be visiting. Nina is the advisor of my summer volunteer, Sabrina McNew, and we will be working together on a project for Sabrina, centered on a MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Success) station I am initiating here this year. It has been a long time since I have been able to visit with Nina and I am really looking forward to her visit. She is responsible for getting me on the best field research trip I have ever been on - a voyage to northern Baffin Bay with stops in Greenland and Nunavut, Canada aboard the Canadian Coast Guard ship the Pierre Radisson as part of the NOW research program. We also worked at the same location in Antarctica. We first met at a party in the hold of the Antarctic research vessel Polar Duke in the middle of the Drake Passage. Nina did a great rendition of "Me and Bobby McGee" at that party and after visiting a bit we decided that we would go birding together when we got back to Punta Arenas, Chile. We had a good time birding and better yet we enjoyed a nice lunch with Chilean red wine and chocolate where we both discovered that birding is good, but birding with good food and wine is even better. We also went on a small expedition on Greenland near the community of Qaanaaq. We were looking for a Rock Ptarmigan (a bird I have yet to see). We dipped on the ptarmigan but did have a good lunch of Danish beer, bread and caviar. We have been good friends since although we have rarely had time to bird together since then. We will certainly fix that this weekend. Our sons appear to have the same interests as well (Cars and Thomas the Train) so they should keep each other entertained too.

Montana Bird Festival Season

Fort Peck, MT - Field season is upon me and so the blog posts are probably going to be farther apart, at least until the beginning of July. It is also bird festival season and two that I am particularly fond of are the Glasgow FeatherFest, our small, local festival with great birds, and the Montana Audubon annual festival, an event that annually moves around Montana, providing local communities across Montana with an economic boost from birds and also provides participants with the opportunity to observe a wide variety of bird species across Montana.

The Glasgow FeatherFest has been going on for 3 years now (last year it was held in conjunction with the Montana Audubon annual bird festival). We have a small group of people working to put this on so we have decided to alternate our efforts each year. This year we are focusing on getting local individuals who may be interested in birds, but may feel overwhelmed to attend a larger function, to attend. We are having an orientation talk and field trips this year, including a Missouri River canoe float, but no lectures or keynote addresses. Next year we will again be looking for lecturers and a keynote speaker that we hope will help draw in more people from around the country. I am hoping that our bird list will help draw in those speakers too! (more on birding in Northeastern Montana later). I would provide a link for more information about the FeatherFest but that is something we currently lack and I am hoping to correct soon.

I will also be attending the Montana Audubon Festival in Ennis, MT next weekend. I am giving a talk on grassland birds and also providing the keynote address where I will talk about Antarctica and Antarctic birds. I am looking forward to seeing a number of friends I haven't visited with in a long time as well as hopefully observing a few species I haven't seen in Montana before. More information on this festival can be found here.

Black-headed Grosbeak