Tag: photography
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Winter Birding
Winter Birding It’s winter, and it’s been quite cold, but the birding has surprisingly good. The lack of leaves on the deciduous trees and bushes helps quite a bit. The warm fall allowed us to have open water will into January and that helped, too. Some birds are more visible in the Helena area in…
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Wing Marks
The Helena valley has been seeing temps dropping into the single digits overnight and struggling to rise to much more than mid-20’s (around -6c) during the day. That’s not overly cold, but we’ve also been seeing dips into the single digits below zero (around -20c) every 7-10 days as well. When the cold goes below…
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Pinyon Jays; Number 48 on the 2025 Year List
Poor quality image, but high-quality experience. At the end of a 2 mile (3.2k) morning walk in the Scratchgravels, I heard a few Pinyon Jays in the distance to the west of the parking area. Since I was certain they were Pinyon Jays, I could count them for the year list by sound only, but…
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First Day Birding 2025
Jan 1, 2025 What a wonderful 1/1 birding day. We had a couple of simply magical moments and ended the day with 43 species positively ID’ed- by far our best First Day. All told, we walked six miles in several different locations. Before I go into the magical, I want to share the oddities. We…
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Owls
It’s been a good monthlong stretch of owl sightings. We’ve seen 5 or 6 Northern Pygmy Owls, a stunning Long-eared Owl, and a seriously intimidating Great Grey. In each case, these were my first ever sightings in the wild. The Great Grey sighting was the most dramatic. Obi and I were on our monring walk…
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Birds
I love seeing and hearing birds when I am on a trail. Birds are typically the most common animal anyone ever sees, but most people take them for granted, don’t notice them at all, or curse them for making ‘deposits’ on their car. In my family, we make an effort to find them. Montana has…
Nature, every day. 