Birds, Birds and More Birds

We see an Osprey land in a nest some 50 feet above our heads.  Behind us are dozens of specimens we've never seen before -- Yellow-headed Blackbirds, perched on the stems of fluffy-headed cattails. They look totally tropical. And in a pond nearby is a male Bufflehead, a duck of such black-and-white magnificence that it's surprising it survives at all in a green-and-brown world.

We are at Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge, named after the U.S. Representative, then U.S. Senator from Montana (1961-1978). It's located in Stevensville, MT, about 25 miles north of where we're staying in Hamilton. And it is a quite wonderful place to view nature and birds.

Marshy wetlands surround the roads we drive on.  Blue-gray mountains loom to the west and south. Clouds of every shade of white and gray puff overhead under otherwise pristine blue skies. And the birds keep on coming...

...I realize that, unfortunately, I don't have a long enough lens to capture them well. But then, I also don't keep a "life list" of bird sightings either (I find those to be competitive and obnoxious).  We add to our short list of "Birds of the Bitterroot" the Yellow-headed, above, plus a Great Blue Heron, an American Wigeon, a Common Goldeneye, Wild Turkeys and two gorgeous Sandhill Cranes.

Just before we leave Lee Metcalf...

 ...we ditch the Subaru for a final walk down the refuge's main road. Its side trails are still flooded from the overflow of Bitterroot River and tributaries. Perhaps flooding has kept people away. This is as quiet and peaceful and beautiful a place as you're likely to come by on a late-spring afternoon.


Much closer to Hamilton and to the Bitterroot Mountains is the city's Hieronymus Park & Trail, similar to Lee Metcalf but seemingly less full of wildlife. Still, it's a nice place to walk, away from the busy main Highway 93.

We meet a fisherman along the way. He's looking for brown trout. He hasn't caught one yet on this cool, cloudy day. Then we spy another sky-high nest -- this one easily twice, maybe three times as tall as Lee Metcalf's. It's built on a cell phone tower.  And it appears to be empty. But, never mind. My lens won't capture that elevation anyway.

We don't give up.  At sunset on this, the eve of the longest day of the year, we head out at 9 p.m. for Calf Creek Wildlife Management Area -- 2,000-plus acres about 8 miles east of Hamilton that aims "primarily to provide winter range for elk and compatible recreational opportunities for the public." We see no elk. But in the warm evening light, we catch a tiny streak of turquoise flying by.

We find it in binoculars. It has stopped for just a moment. It is stunning. Again, my camera will never capture something this small, this far-away. It's a Lazuli Bunting (we identify it later), so I'm borrowing an image that's Copyrighted © Arlene Ripley...

It flits away. As we continue our walk, we see lots more beauty in sunset-tinted pastures and golden rock. Birds, we decide, don't have a lock on color and form.