by Shannon and Bridger Donaldson The 25th Annual Kalispell Christmas Bird Count took place on Sunday, December 31, 2023. It was New Year’s Eve and most everything on the valley floor was cloaked in an amazing amount of hoar frost. Very low visibility was the theme for the day, as it was incredibly foggy, especially…
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by Darcy Thomas Downy Woodpeckers have always captured my attention with their striking black and white feathers and industrious energy, as they go about nimbly foraging for insects along tree branches. They often flock with other birds so I can usually count on enjoying a lovely array of birds when Downys are present. Of the…
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The 24th Kalispell Christmas Bird Count was held on Sunday, January 1, 2023. A total of 75 species was recorded, a number which is about average for this count. Highlights included the 2nd ever Yellow-headed Blackbird (Craig Hohenberger et. al.), the 2nd ever Pied-billed Grebe (Elaine Snyder et al.), the 3rd ever Northern Saw-whet Owl…
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by Lisa Bate Glacier National Park (GNP) held its annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC) on Sunday, December 19, 2021. Twenty-two participants contributed to this event by covering 10 different routes in Glacier. Participants spent the day counting all bird species and individuals detected. The weather was overcast with light winds, and temperatures ranged between 29…
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by Denny Olson On September 14th, our crew did it again! The weather was great, as always, Lone Pine staff had the venue set, and from the time I led 12 rookie birders on a how-to-use-binoculars-and-spot-birds-field trip at 7:30 AM until our 1 PM closing, another 800 citizens had walked into our venue and learned,…
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by Mary Nelesen As you may know, 2018 has been declared the “Year of the Bird”, by National Geographic, along with the National Audubon Society, BirdLife International and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Its purpose is to celebrate the centennial of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act passed in 1918 to protect birds from wanton killing….
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by Lisa Bate There’s an easy answer to the question: how many toes does an American Three-toed Woodpecker (Picoides dorsalis) have? They have three! So why give this birds such an obvious name? It turns out that having three toes in the woodpecker world is unusual; most woodpeckers have four toes. The only other woodpecker…
Read MoreHAIRY OR DOWNY? By Jeannie Marcure This month’s feature birds are two of my favorites—partly I suspect, because like many of us, they are yearlong residents in the Flathead. Their frequent appearance at my suet feeders has brightened many cold, snowy days and in March their persistent drumming as they search for mates is often…
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By Lewis Young Named for Captain Meriwether Lewis, who first scientifically described them during the 1804-1806 Lewis & Clark Expedition, Lewis’s woodpeckers are unusual in that much of the year they feed mostly by catching insects in acrobatic flight. They swoop out from a perch like a flycatcher or circle in the air like a…
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