By Ben Young And the winner for the North American “Bird of the Decade” award is . . . the Eurasian Collared-Dove (Streptopelia decaocto). That was my determination at the turn of the decade, and I’d make a case for it three years later. Likely no other bird species on record has stormed the North…
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Dusky Grouse
By Ben Long The official name of Montana’s “Blue Grouse” is now the “Dusky Grouse.” But I always think of them as Kamikaze Grouse. Here’s why. My family was driving a mountain road one May when we spied a male Dusky Grouse doing its spring mating dance along the barrow pit. The handsome fellow’s tail…
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Sora
By Gail Cleveland Even though I have been watching birds for more than 25 years, I can bring to mind most instances when I have seen the more elusive members of the family Rallidae (coots, rails, crakes and gallinules). I remember seeing my first Virginia Rail in a marshy area in the lower Flathead Valley….
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Hooded Merganser
By Gael Bissell Have you ever heard a deep rolling frog-like call “pahwawaa… pahwawaa,” or hoarse, raven-like repeated croaks or gacks coming from water birds? These are the rare and odd sounds of the breeding male and female Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus), a common yet shy woodland duck of North America. In Georgia, folks call…
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