Thursday, December 20, 2007 ■ Page C1

OUTDOORSTHE DAILY INTER LAKE

Michael Richeson photos/Daily Inter Lake

A BLACK-CAPPED chickadee briefly pauses near Kehoe’s Agate Shop in Bigfork. The little birds grew active as the day wore on and the sun warmed the frigid morning air.

By MICHAEL RICHESON The Daily Inter Lake

As we trudged to the east bank of the Flathead River, Paula Smith had a simple question: “We’re not going to get skunked out here, are we?”

The wind had picked up, the snow was falling steadily in Bigfork and the area seemed vacant of birds.

Smith, Betty Kuropat, Michelle Cadotte and I met up at 8 a.m. on Saturday for the annual Flathead Audu-bon Christmas Bird Count. We had been assigned to the Bigfork area, and we decid-ed to begin along the river near Harbor Village.

We grabbed spotting scopes, cameras, tripods, checklists and bird books and crept along the frozen shore. Smith was in the lead, and she stopped and pointed to a group of Canada geese huddled up together just a dozen yards out from shore. The birds looked a little stiff and lifeless.

Decoys.In our first half hour we

had managed to spot fake birds and ruin some poor guy’s hunt.

Finally we spotted a few different flocks out on the river.

SMITH AND KUROPAT peered through their scopes and tried to figure out if

they were looking at can-vasbacks or common mer-gansers. Male canvasbacks and female mergansers each have chestnut-colored heads, and they can be difficult to distinguish at a distance.

Both ducks are divers, but mergansers are sleeker and have lower profiles in the water. They use their long, serrated bills to grab fish before gulping them down.

Eventually they decide that the distant birds were goldeneyes and write down the count on our checklist.

After spotting four bald eagles, we decide it’s time to move on. Our next destina-tion is Wayfarers State Park on Flathead Lake. There have got to be birds there.

As we walked back to Kuropat’s Ford Explorer, a male pheasant swooped

overhead and glided into a nearby wetland area.

Mark it down.Kuropat has been involved

in the bird count since the early 1990s, and she has had the same territory in Big-fork every year. Smith has joined her each of the last three years.

“The weather has been different every time,” Smith said. “The first year I went

it was 6 below zero.”Last year was my first

time participating in the bird count, and the weather was perfect. The experience got me hooked on being a better birder, but I’m still not very good at identifi-cation. I’ve always loved birds, and I’ve been jealous of their ability to fly since I was a kid. I’d grow feathers if I could.

While driving to Wayfar-ers, I asked Kuropat if there were any trophy birds that the veterans hoped for each count.

“Definitely,” she said. A FEW YEARS ago she

spotted a northern shrike, which vaguely resembles a blue jay but has gray, black and white markings. The shrike has a long tail with white trim and prefers forest edges and brush-bordered swamps where it hunts insects, small birds and mammals.

“It’s not too uncommon, but it was cool for me,” Kuropat said.

Five years ago, she spot-ted a long-tailed duck, which was quite a coup. The long-tailed duck is a medium-sized diver with black and white plumage. The male of the species looks like vanilla ice cream with patches of fudge and has long, skinny tail feathers.

The long-tailed duck breeds in the Arctic and

typically winters along North American coasts, which makes its foray into Montana a special event for birders.

We drove down to the parking lot at Wayfarers and found that it was deserted. Six coots swam by as we stood on the snow-covered shore. They dove down and then popped back up like little black bobbers. All I could think about was how cold the water looked — and these birds are swimming around like it’s the middle of July.

Coots have several layers of feathers that trap pockets of air. Air is a poor conduc-tor of heat, which keeps the duck’s body warmth trapped in and the cold water kept out.

SMITH AND KUROPAT scanned the lake while Cadotte and I searched the treetops. We spotted a north-ern flicker sitting high on a barren branch. We could all hear the chirps and trills of golden-crowned kinglets and chickadees, but we couldn’t for the life of us spot them.

It didn’t help when Kuropat told us that her tri-pod occasionally squeaked and sounded just like the little birds. I started to won-der if I was hearing birds or her tripod.

Kuropat stopped and

Coots, creepers and kinglets, oh my

BETTY KUROPAT, left, and Paula Smith discuss what type of ducks they see on the Flat-head River during Saturday’s Christmas Bird Count in Bigfork. Every bird the observers see is carefully marked down on a checklist and turned in to the Audubon Society to track bird data throughout North America.

Flathead Audubon Bird Count

See KINGLETS on Page C3