Coots, creepers and kinglets, oh my

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 Audubon Christmas Bird Count. We had been assigned to the Bigfork area, and we decided 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 canvasbacks or common mergansers. 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 destination 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 Bigfork 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 identification. 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 Wayfarers, 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 spotted 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 conductor 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 northern 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 tripod occasionally squeaked and sounded just like the little birds. I started to wonder if I was hearing birds or her tripod.

Kuropat stopped and

pointed to a tree. We all stared. All I saw was bark.

Then it moved.

A brown creeper was flitting up the trunk.

The tiny creeper is nearly impossible to see unless it moves. With its brown-streaked plumage providing incredible camouflage, the creeper spirals up tree trunks and then dives down to a lower spot on another tree to repeat the process. Their curved bills dig insects and larvae from the bark, and their long stiff tails serve as props against the tree.

After Wayfarers, we drove down to Beach Road below the Bigfork Water and Sewer facilities and tried our best not to freeze to death in the bitter wind. Flathead Lake looked like a massive gray storm cloud. There wasn't a bird in sight except for a lone gull struggling in the wind, and all I saw was a collapsed Santa in someone's front yard.

"There's a bunch of geese out there, but I keep losing them in the waves," Smith said.

We decided to walk through the neighborhood and check for birds gathering at feeders. Along the way we spotted a downy woodpecker, a dove and a great blue heron.

The herron is one of my favorite birds. I grew up next to the Creston Mill Pond and I watched a nesting pair for years. They are fierce-looking giants.

At one house we spotted a pileated woodpecker attacking a feeder filled with suet cakes. The pileated is a huge woodpecker made famous by the "Woody Woodpecker" cartoons. I took some photos of the bird, but photographing a bird on a feeder feels like cheating on a test. Still, they are fun to watch.

I spent my last two hours with the group traveling through downtown Bigfork. We watched a beautiful hooded merganser catch and eat a large fish in Bigfork Bay, and we spotted a juvenile bald eagle watching us at the Bridge Street bridge. We thought for sure we'd spot some waxwings feasting on mountain ash berries, but we didn't see so much as a feather.

The final birds I spot are a couple of stellars jays. They are covered with blue feathers that fade to almost black on their heads. They are a pretty bird, but they are a nightmare if you're trying to sleep in. Stellars jays do not have a subtle or pleasant call, and if one went on "American Idol," Simon Cowell would mercilessly belittle it for having the worst voice ever.

In spite of the weather and lack of any earth-shattering sightings, the bird count was once again a good experience, and working on the count helps the Audubon Society gather bird data across the nation.

The Christmas Bird Count first started on Christmas Day in 1900 as an alternative to the annual "side hunt" where people went out and shot as many birds as they could. The group with the most dead birds won the event. Frank Champan, an ornithologist at the American Museum of Natural History proposed the count.

The data collected by observers help determine the long-term health and status of bird populations in North America.

For more information or to participate in the Kalispell Christmas Bird Count on Dec. 30, visit www.flatheadaudubon.org or the national site at www.audubon.org.

Reporter Michael Richeson may be reached at 758-4459 or by E-mail at mricheson@dailyinterlake.com.