Falling from the Sky

Today I watched flocks of Canada Geese coming back to the Missouri River after feeding in the wheat fields. One of my favorite sights is to watch geese coming in to land. When they need to loose altitude quickly they just turn their bodies sideways or completely over and slip down through the air like leaves falling from the sky, only to right themselves after 20 or 30 feet and continue to glide in to their landing spot.

There's one in every crowd!

I also got a few photos of the resident Bald Eagle pair again.

And a Northern Shrike I was able to pish a bit closer.

New Bird for Montana

On March 6th Jim and Lark Greaves stopped along the Bull River in northwestern Montana and took a few photos of the Greater Scaup, Redheads, and Ring-necked Ducks. That night while reviewing his photos Jim noticed that one of the "scaup" looked different and thought it might be a Tufted Duck. It was. The next day a number of birders made their way to the spot and found this distinctive looking bird, Montana's first documented Tufted Duck (pending acceptance from the Montana Bird Records Committee).


Tufted Duck - photo by Dan Casey (thanks Dan).

This species was ranked as the 2nd species to be found next in Montana in a 2003 exercises Dan Casey pulled together with input from a number of birders familiar with birds on the state. Number one was the Lesser Black-backed Gull which still has yet to be definitively documented in the state.

Canada Goose day

If March is waterfowl month then today was Canada Goose day. I took the back roads home from work this afternoon and this road traverses a low long ridge between the Milk River and the Missouri River. As I got closer to the Missouri River I could see long skeins of geese rising from the river and heading northwest up the Milk River valley. As I drove closer it became apparent that there were very many geese leaving the Missouri River. I stopped and watched wave after wave of geese leaving and heading north. Here are a few shots from this afternoon.

Note the size difference in these birds. The smaller birds in the back may be Cackling Geese judging from the short neck and smaller bills.

Rough-legged Hawk

Sunset and an wink.

I am working on a much bigger post on grasslands, birds, and conservation right now but it just isn't going to get done today. Instead I am going to fall back on pulling a few photos from the Antarctica file and leave you with a wink from my oldest son.

Sunset on the Weddell Sea

Adelie Penguins basking in the sunset.

A wink from Benton and a promise of more to come from me.

March - the month of waterfowl

March in Montana is waterfowl month. First to arrive are the Northern Pintails, almost as soon as the ice begins to melt these sleek speedsters begin to show up. I found my first bunch today (Dad found them yesterday). Soon the rest of the group will begin to show up and the seasonal changes will begin again. The rather large flocks of Canada Geese have begun to pair off and squabble and Dad and I have been working on documenting the Cackling Geese mixed in with these flocks. A couple of weeks ago we even found one bird that appeared to be a Snow Goose/Canada or Cackling Goose hybrid.



I took this photo of Northern Pintails a few years ago and it is one of my favorites because of the second bird from the right who is completely inverted while participating in a courtship flight.

Today I went along the Missouri River below Fort Peck Dam to get recharged after being in the office all week and taking care of the boys last night. I found a nice spot on the bank where I could lean back into the bank and watch what was going on for a while. I had hoped to get some photos of Buffleheads or Common Goldeneyes flying upriver but they did not cooperate. I did hear a Ring-necked Pheasant's coughing hiccup upstream and then watched the rooster fly across the river and he crowed all the way across.



The best part of the morning was hearing my first bird song of the spring. Much like hearing the first penguin chick chirping after several weeks of monotonous adult penguin brays, the song of the American Tree Sparrows in the gray March light was uplifting in it's novelty and promise.

Our resident pair of Bald Eagles was perched together near their nest. After many years with no breeding Bald Eagles in this part of the state and a few more years with suspected breeding in a few places, this is the first year where we actually have a nest (and a quite accessible nest too) and what appears to be a pretty well established pair along the Missouri River near Fort Peck.

A walk amongst the buffaloberry shrubs, willows and cottonwoods along the river also produced a few other species like this White-breasted Nuthatch and a Townsend's Solitaire. The nuthatches will stay and breed but the solitaire will go somewhere else to breed.

More Gorbatov

Here is a link to the next installment of the Fidget series, Fidget's Folly.
The book centers around the excellent illustrations by Vadim Gorbatov. The first in this series, Fidget's Freedom, is one of my boys favorite books (and I have to confess, one of my favorites too).

Here is one of the illustrations from the new book.

More Gorbatov prints can be seen here.

More about the partial amelanistic Great Gray Owl

Here is another photo of this bird thanks to Cheryl Farmer again. In this photo you can see there are patches of feathers lacking melanin as well as normally pigmented feather patches. The photo in the previous post shows the face of the owl and you can see the bill and eyes appear pale as well. I have followed the terminology proposed by Jeff Davis in the Sept/Oct 2007 Birding magazine to describe this plumage because I agree that it does a much better job than some of the other terms previously used (ie. partial albinism).
A recent post to the Montana Outdoor Birding Group by Chad Adams provided a link to an article on albinism in Great Gray Owls. In this article the authors Pentti Alaja and Heimo Mikkola describe a number of Great Grays with abnormal pigments in Yellowstone National Park and in nearby Idaho. Bozeman is not that far (as the owl flies) from these observations.

This is a striking bird and apparently many birders went to find it today. Unfortunately some of them trespassed into private property to "get a better look" at this bird and then the neighbor who originally reported the bird to Cheryl was verbally abused by some of the birders when she told them they were trespassing. The original observer unfortunately now regrets telling anyone about the owl and Cheryl, who was very careful not to disturb this bird when she took these photos, is rightly upset that she led to these transgressions by alerting the general birding public to the location of the owl. This is a shame and I guess I expected better of my fellow birders there (I was formerly the president of the Sacajawea Audubon Society in Bozeman). The result will probably be that observers who care about the birds they see will not report interesting birds they see to protect the birds and avoid rude and inconsiderate behavior. We all lose then.


References:

Alaja, P. and H. Mikkola. 1997. Albinism in the Great Gray Owl (Strix nebulosa) and Other Owls in Biology and Conservation of Owls of the Northern Hemisphere, Second International Symposium. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report NC-190. http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/epubs/owl/


Davis, J. N. 2007. Color Abnormalities in Birds: A Proposed Nomenclature for Birders. Birding 39(5)36-46