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The Cure for Binocular Neck: Birding in Montana

10,000 Birds

In the valley of the Yellowstone and Boulder Rivers, snuggled up against Rocky Mountain ranges, sits the little western town of Big Timber, Montana. The highest mountain in Montana, Granite Peak at 12,799 feet, is just south in the Absaroka Mountain Range. All of the neck-strain-free birds below breed in Montana. Ruffed Grouse.

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Serial Poachers Devastate Montana

Critter News

This article describes the devastation being inflicted on Montana's wildlife by serial poachers. Tags: wildlife crime fish and wildlife montana poaching us trophy hunting. It's also an insight into how serial poachers think.

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Horse Slaughterhouses Face Hurdles in Montana

Critter News

Looks like Montana's state government is heading towards the approval of horse slaughterhouses, but there are hurdles at the federal level. Tags: meat montana horses USDA Slaughterhouse us. The only real markets for horsemeat are overseas and product must be inspected by the USDA before it can be shipped outside the US.

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Montana is Owl Country

10,000 Birds

This year, that award was presented to Denver Holt , a Montana scientist and bird guide and thus, if I may be presumptuious, my homeboy. The ORI maintains a research station in the Mission Valley of Western Montana, neighboring the Ninepipes National Wildlife Refuge. but a particularly outstanding one here in western Montana.

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The Hummingbirds of Western Montana

10,000 Birds

The Montana Field Guide, a helpful online compendium provided by the state government, lists seven species. Are invisible. I mean, I know they’re out there. Three of those — the Black-chinned , Calliope , and Rufous Hummingbirds — breed in the Missoula area.

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The Amazing Exploding Dove Meets Montana

10,000 Birds

With a hardiness that belies their delicate looks (but helps explain their phenomenal success), these pioneering pigeons are already sitting on eggs at at least one location in Montana. Hochachka noted that one had spent the winter “as far north as eastern Montana&#. Whatever they used to be, they are now a bird of Montana.

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Montana Passes Horse Slaughterhouse Protection Measure

Critter News

Montana has passed a law making it difficult to challenge the building of a horse slaughtering facility in that state. The last such facility in the US closed in 2007. This bill specifically makes for groups that might oppose it to use the court system to do so. From the bill, which you can read here : Section 2.

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Viva Montana

10,000 Birds

New York has wonderful birds. I love New York’s birds with a passion, from the parti-colored pigeons to the spring warbler fiesta to Jamaica Bay’s herons and ibises (but not the sandpipers. Never the sandpipers.).

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Montana has made killing wolves easier. Some hunters are pushing back.

Reddit Animals

submitted by /u/standardworks [link] [comments].

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Montana Legislature Proposes Horse Slaughter Facility

Critter News

Great, just after we managed to get rid of the last one "It doesn't mean you have to do it.

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Bison coming "home" to Montana Indian reservation after 140 years

Reddit Animals

submitted by /u/Kunphen [link] [comments].

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The Berkeley Pit – An Overview

10,000 Birds

Last week many birders were shocked and saddened by the deaths of thousands of Snow Geese who, trapped by adverse weather conditions, landed at the Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana. As an Explainer of Montana, I am here to help. You may be curious about what exactly is the deal with that.

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Year of the Shrike

10,000 Birds

For some reason, this is the year that the masked butcherbirds have been around in my corners of Montana, with as many sightings for me in 2014 as in the rest of my life (including the other three years I lived in Montana) combined. Birding Montana New York Northern Shrike'

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Wolf Killing in Idaho Under Scrutiny

Critter News

Montana is another state where wolf killing is allowed. Tags: cull montana idaho wolves. The state government is as crazy about wolf killing as she is. But a US District Court Judge has granted a hearing on stopping the killing to wolf advocates represented by Earthjustice.

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Noxious: Montana’s Battle With Spotted Knapweed, and What Birders Can Do

10,000 Birds

The state of Montana is very firm on the subject of spotted knapweed, and the closely related diffuse knapweed and Russian knapweed. Spotted knapweed arrived in Montana in the 1920s, most likely in a batch of alfalfa seed or perhaps on the creep down from western Canada, where it may have come ashore in the ballast of ships.

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Mountain Goats Accidentally Killed in Study

Critter News

The University of Montana study, aimed at exploring the effects of climate change on mountain goats, got under way this month with preliminary field work in the Many Glacier Valley. Tags: animal research montana. From the Daily Interlake. However, a second male goat died after it was darted on Thursday.

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The Story of Russell A. Crow

10,000 Birds

This story comes from Emily Johnson, who is a sub-permittee for a licensed wildlife rehabilitator in Helena, Montana. Grace’s high school is in Bozeman, Montana, next to a McDonald’s. Some, however, decide that captivity isn’t so bad, and can adjust to a new life. Such was the case with Russell A.

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A Snowflake’s Chance

10,000 Birds

The species that calls western Montana home is the black cottonwood, while plains and narrowleaf cottonwood call the rest of the state home. Each of the seeds that blows by me, in short, has not much more of a chance than an actual snowflake. Humans have not helped.

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The Once and Future Oriole

10,000 Birds

Moving to Montana was not even exotic – it was a non-possibility. I didn’t go to grad school or move to Montana until my 30s, and I didn’t see the Bullock’s Oriole until I had been in Montana almost four years. It was not mine, and I couldn’t miss what I had never had.

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10,000 Birds goes eBirding – Part II

10,000 Birds

The Collective added six new states in the past three years, but none have eclipsed the century mark: Wisconsin ( 74 ), Utah (55), Hawaii (38), Oklahoma (18), Rhode Island (9), and Connecticut (5).

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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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Beartooth Humane Alliance

4 The Love Of Animals

I love this promotional video from the folks at Beartooth Humane Alliance in Montana! A great sense of humor, and a good cause too! If you live in that area, be sure to visit their spay and neuter clinic. Beartooth Humane Alliance originally appeared on 4 The Love of Animals on September 9, 2010.

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Nat Geo WILD!

4 The Love Of Animals

Talking Hot Dog Ranch, Livingston, Montana: Casey Anderson tosses Brutus the grizzly bears a fish at homemade “falls.&# (Photo Credit: © Grizzly Creek Films). Casey then returns to Montana to see if he can teach a bear raised in captivity to fish for himself, in an aquarium designed for that purpose.

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A Birder’s Guide to The Wilderness Act

10,000 Birds

There is also a research institute dedicated to wilderness: the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute is an interagency facility located at the University of Montana. For example, hunting is not permitted in most NPS wilderness areas, but it is often allowed in wilderness areas managed by the other agencies.

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Light Warbler Action in Central Park

10,000 Birds

I also ran into a local birder who was unimpressed when I gushed about how much I was enjoying my morning — until I explained that I was from Montana. Well, I am sort of am from Montana now, I guess. My last species in the park was Wood Duck , which we have in Montana too but which is always fun to see.

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Car Birding with the Literary Set: Or, How to Succeed, though Failing

10,000 Birds

Besides the owls themselves, I promised them the best pie in Montana, which is to be found in the Ronan Cafe. None of these people were birdwatchers, as such, before coming to Montana, although one of the poets was outdoorsy in a hiking and skiing way. If you are ever in Ronan, Montana, try the pie. And the pie.

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Redpolls Run Rampant

10,000 Birds

It’s been beautiful here in Montana lately. By beautiful, I mean too cold, too gray, and as always too dry, but full of birds.

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Night Moves

10,000 Birds

Or at least the four dogs in the house I’m staying at in Montana showed no particular reaction to the 5.8 So it turns out dogs are useless. earthquake and series of aftershocks that made the state wobbly in the early hours of Thursday morning.

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Trumpeter Swans: Don’t Shoot Them

10,000 Birds

Many years ago, back in the 1970s, I visited my sister, who lived in West Yellowstone, Montana, in the dead of winter. We rented snow mobiles and drove into Yellowstone. That was the only way to get into Yellowstone in the winter (other than walking). My sister told me they were Trumpeter Swans ( Cygnus buccinator ). All of them.

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The “Birds” in the Brush

10,000 Birds

When you move on to Montana, you discover that there are worse things that one species of tiny screaming mammal tricking you each year as you try to cope with an influx of songbirds and a winterized memory bank that contains only Black-capped Chickadees and Dark-eyed Juncos (and only about half their calls at that.) You sigh and move on.

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Clark’s Nutcrackers at the Top of Rocky Mountain National Park

10,000 Birds

In the fall of 2017, my mother and favorite birding buddy visited the mountains of Montana for a fishing trip. My husband and I had limited time to see the massive park, and, like my parents in Montana, a good portion of that would be devoted to fly-fishing. I’ve been dying to see one ever since.

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Spotted: Sandpipers

10,000 Birds

As I’ve noted before, floating is not ideal for birding, but sometimes it’s all you’ve got and if so, it’s time to learn to appreciate the Spotted Sandpiper — along with the Bald Eagle , the Common Merganser , and other commonplace water birds of Montana.

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Nemesis Bird: The Ongoing Saga

10,000 Birds

Of last round’s candidates, the Gallinaceous Bird TBD is now out, as I’ve since seen both Greater Sage and Ruffed Grouse , stolid Montana natives of good repute. And the Golden-winged Warbler still presents logistical difficulties.

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An Osprey is an Osprey is an Osprey

10,000 Birds

Birds Montana names Ospreys web cams' Fortunately, I can now put my irrational fears aside, because one of my favorite sets of names won. Introducing this year’s Dunrovin osprey chicks – Lunar, Sol, and Shadow, named for the eclipse that took place the night the first egg was laid.

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Birding By the Way

10,000 Birds

Because they are near the still, stocked waters of McCormick Park Fishing Pond, this pair of Osprey often do well in years when high, turbid waters result in nest failures for other Montana Osprey – and this year has been such a year.

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Animal Legal Defense Fund Ranks States on Animal Protection

Critter News

And the worst: Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arkansas, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, South Dakota, Wyoming You can check out the whole report on their web site. Among the best: California, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Oregon.

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A Most Remarkable Book

10,000 Birds

As to the caracara’s plans for the future: they have been seen, in the last twenty years, in Maine, Montana, and Washington State. (The Well, I know of one such guy, anyway. The Northern crested caracara, below, was photographed in Skycomish, Washington, 45 miles east of Seattle, in 2014.) With abundant roadkill (1.3

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Just call him Dr. Dolittle

10,000 Birds

If you’ve ever wanted to understand why warning calls by one bird species seem to spread rapidly, like an avian version of the Wave , to birds of other species, Professor Erick Greene from the University of Montana is your man.

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Saving the Sage Grouse in Alberta

10,000 Birds

The Sage Grouse is getting a boost in Alberta with the work of The Sage Grouse Recovery Group , which is seeking to augment the dwindling population in Alberta with birds from Montana.

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What Winter Wonders Wait?

10,000 Birds

With all my traipsing about this year I’ve actually been shamefully lax on birding Montana. Montana offers little in the way of flamingos, generally speaking. No Snow Geese or swans yet, and no Sandhill Cranes , but it did renew my taste for some of the simpler, homier pleasures of birding.

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Beats the Beltway: a review of Bruce Beehler’s book “Natural Encounters”

10,000 Birds

Lately (in the last month or so) he’s been through the Dakotas, Montana, and Canada, up to the Northwest Territories. In his blog, Birds and Nature North America, the peripatetic Bruce Beehler professes to cover not just what the title says, but also American culture, American history, and “stories of back-roads travel and camping.”

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The Flight of the Vultures

10,000 Birds

But the turkey vultures would certainly leave the places we saw them – Montana, North Dakota, Illinois and Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio and eventually New York – and head south. The only bird we saw in every state was the Turkey Vulture. No vast kettles, yet, only ones and twos.

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Obama's Rules Freeze May Help Wolves

Critter News

Wildlife conservationists say the freeze will delay and possibly prevent the removal of gray wolves from the federal endangered species list in Montana, Idaho, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, and also in portions of Washington, Oregon, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

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