May – so far!

Numbers of new species for the year seen in May: 50 birds, 39 wildflowers, 11 butterflies.

That’s over 100 new species seen in the last 25 days alone—accounting for about 35% of the 291 species we’ve documented so far this year. I beat this drum often, but living in Montana just east of the Continental Divide is a dream come true for a naturalist.

 Over Memorial Day weekend, we logged some serious miles across the Helena Valley. We managed to identify nearly 90 bird species without wandering too far out of bounds, covering everything from Sieben to East Helena, and the Spokane Hills to Mullan Pass. All of this follows a great day trip last weekend up to Benton Lake, First Peoples’ Buffalo Jump, and Freezout Lake, which added 12 new species to the May tally.

The proverbial white whale of the weekend was the Yellow-breasted Chat. We’ve only seen this bird once in years of looking. We made two trips to a known habitat northwest of Helena, spending hours walking the creek. We got dozens of positive audio IDs, but zero visible proof. We’re counting it – we know what we heard – but a glimpse would have been nice.

This got my middle daughter and me talking about how the *real* cryptozoology doesn’t revolve around Nessie or Sasquatch. It’s birds. More on that in a future post.

All in all, a spectacular weekend in our beautiful corner of the world.