New Years Birding - 2017!!

New Years Day! It's a magical day where the birding clock resets, and old becomes new!  Every bird is new again.  Excitedly, we rush around noting the chickadees, woodpeckers, waterfowl and sparrows as they are the first, the first of the year!

     This year, the Kalispell Christmas Bird Count fell on the 1st of the year! I meet with Denny Olson and Gail Bissel and we conducted the count in our section of the count circle. Our area is generally a good one, including a spring creek with waterfowl, a section of town with feeders and fruiting trees, and some natural river bottoms for many other species!

     This winter was been colder and snowier than the last several.  With that, the American Robins have infiltrated the town and are abundant anywhere there are berries to be eaten!  We arrived at the Treasure Lane access point to the Owen Sowerwine Natural Area (an IBA) in Kalispell. Here, we stumbled upon dozens of robins! As we got out of the car, I counted the robins and neared 40 birds! 

     Looking over the robins, a small brown blob in the foreground caught my attention. just 10 yards in front of me was a perched Northern Saw-whet Owl!!!

Northern Saw-whet Owl

     We gawked over this bird for a minute or two before it flew deeper into the thickets. What a great bird to add to the Christmas Bird Count! Turns out, this was only the second time this species has been seen on the count.

     We continued to bird our section, finding some good birds like White-breasted Nuthatch, Merlin, Pileated Woodpecker, and Townsend's Solitare.

     The intersection of 6th and 6th East in Kalispell is a good spot for finding birds, as the many Mountain Ash trees attract berry-eaters. We had over 40 American Robins there as well as several Cedar Waxwings! 

American Robin

American Robin

Cedar Waxwing

     I ended the Christmas Bird Count with 37 species, and just enough daylight for a quick run to see my resident Harris's Sparrow in the west valley.
American Tree Sparrow - #38
Harris's Sparrow - #39

Now I just needed one more bird to have an even 40 species for the 1st of the year. Just then, a Rough-legged Hawk flew over me as I was departing the sparrow spot! #40!

     The Harris's didn't offer a chance for photos, but I did get an American Tree Sparrow and one of the many Song Sparrows there, this one with some white feathers on its forehead! 

American Tree Sparrow

'whitehead' the Song Sparrow!

A good day of birding, and a great start to the New Year!

A rainy-day surprise!

     After much procrastination, I will be making a few blog posts to catch up to present time, starting with this one about my day birding on October 8th, 2016.

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     It has been a busy autumn, and I have not had many days of just leisurely birding to myself.  Most days I check a few locales on my way to work or in-between errands, and although I am birding, it always feels rushed. So Saturday, October 8th, I made no plans or commitments other than to spend the day birding.
     The birding was slow, constant drizzling rain was uncomfortable, and the heavy cloud cover made it feel dark all day. Nothing surprising on the water as I checked for loons and scoters in the north bays of Flathead Lake.

     Checking the Flathead River near where it pours into the Flathead Lake, I heard a group of Black-capped Chickadees start to get worked up and loud. I walked over to the thicket where they seemed to be mobbing and looked for an owl. A few seconds pass as I strain my eyes to see into the dense tangle, and then my eyes adjust and MUCH closer to me than I was looking, the shape of an owl appears! Right in front of me! It's a NORTHERN SAW-WHET OWL! My first ever! I'm shaking I run to the car only a few meters away and grab my camera!  The bird was calm and allowed me to get a few good shots of it before I left it in peace.

     What a wonderful surprise! A day I will not forget. This Northern Saw-whet Owl is my 462nd bird species I've ever seen, and my 297th bird for Montana.

An Owl in the Cemetery

     On thrusday, August 4th, I stopped at the Spring Creek Cemetery along West Valley Road.  I have driven by numerous times and always thought it looked like it may be a good spot for resident and migrating birds.

the Spring Creek Cemetery

     It was a beautiful and cool morning, and I walked around the cemetery looking for small birds.  I was surprised to look up and see a Great Horned Owl sitting 8 feet up in a mature tree, just staring at me. My first thought was "great! what a cool place to find an owl!", then I wondered about the correlation between a cemetery and an owl.

Great Horned Owl - Spring Creek Cemetery

Great Horned Owl - Spring Creek Cemetery

Great Horned Owl - Spring Creek Cemetery

     Here is a passage I found on owls in North American Tribal culture.

"In most Native American tribes, owls are a symbol of death. Hearing owls hooting is considered an unlucky omen, and they are the subject of numerous 'bogeyman' stories told to warn children to stay inside at night or not cry too much, otherwise the owl may carry them away. In some tribes, owls are associated with ghosts, and the bony circles around an owl's eyes are said to be made up of the fingernails of ghosts. Sometimes owls are said to carry messages from beyond the grave or deliver supernatural warnings to people who have broken tribal taboos. And in the Aztec and Mayan religions of Mexico, owls served as the messengers and companions of the gods of death."**

Interesting...

     My belief of the symbol of an owl is nearly the opposite.  I see it as a good omen, a blessing on the day.  To see an otherwise nocturnal bird with quiet and secretive habits, I believe, is great!  The owl makes its living trying to not be detected, so finding one, especially in the day, is a good blessing. Maybe it has to do with the owl being outsides its relm, and into one we have dominated, that makes it seem special to me.  It feels like a visitor, and if I were to spot an owl at night, I sure would feel like the outsider then!

     I hope anyone who is reading this can appreciate what it takes to find and see an owl during the day, and make your own idea of what it means to you to see an owl.

**Source of the above quote:
http://www.native-languages.org/legends-owl.htm