Subject: A week in the woods
Date: May 7 13:13:06 2001
From: Jack Kintner - kintner at nas.com


Jack Kintner <kintner at nas.com> Blaine, WA

Seen last week on a float trip down the isolated and wild Smith River in
Western Montana: many Kestrels, one Taiga Merlin, several Ospreys close
overhead, doing their hovering dance and plucking trout out of a river more
opaque with mud and run-off than either we or the birds would have
wished. Plus many Red Tail, Ferruginous and Rough Legged Hawks and Golden
Eagles soaring and some Bald Eagles nesting in Cottonwood trees or in big
broad niches in the limestone bluffs, along with Rock Doves (!) and Cliff
Swallows, Barn Swallows, Tree Swallows and Bank Swallows.

For Corvidae we had Ravens and Common Crows, Magpies and Clark's
Nutcrackers. On the river we saw solitary Dippers about every hundred feet
or so, Belted Kingfishers as well and many many nesting Canada Geese (incl.
a few Lesser Canada Geese), plus Brown Bears (three), antelope, otter,
muskrat, beaver and, on the last day as temperatures finally climbed above
freezing and into the 50's, a few Brown Trout (which we released).