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Shifting Baselines and Sneaky Jays

10,000 Birds

This year, a few months after my fortieth birthday, when I saw a Blue Jay in West Glacier Montana I felt only a small bit of surprise – it was an uncommon bird but no longer really extralimital as a wintering species. There’s a certain suburbanization of the natural as well as the human world.

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Introducing the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge

10,000 Birds

One of the admirable things about Montana is how it contains prime examples of not one, but two iconic North American landscapes. But eastern Montana contains the equally though differently stunning high plains, a world unto itself with very different wildlife meeting very different challenges.

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