I met Jackie and Eric at their campsite on the east side of Glacier National Park at 6:00 am for a full day of birding around the park. Being birders from Ohio, they wanted to see a lot of the Rocky Mountain species unique to the western part of the continent.
Our first stop was Logan Pass at about 6:30am. We had a number of American Pipits and Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches all around the boardwalk during this beautiful morning. After a short while of walking and scanning the hillside, I spotted 3 White-tailed Ptarmigan among the rocks! Although they were fairly distant, we enjoyed our scope-views of these hard to find birds before walking back to the parking lot.
Next on our list was birding along the Inside North Fork road. Along the road at a spot I had marked the day before, we had got great looks at 4 Black-backed Woodpeckers and an American Three-toed Woodpecker, not to mention a few Canada Jays.
Along the Howe Lake trail, we enjoyed listening to a few Olive-sided Flycatchers singing and watch flocks of Red Crossbills fly overhead. We did eventually find a late-singing MacGillivray’s Warbler, another good western species. A little further down the inside road, we found a single Boreal Chickadee in the flock of Mountain and Black-capped Chickadees. The Boreal came in close and allowed for great looks and photos.
At the Camas Creek trail we got brief looks at 4 Black Swifts as they flew over the treetops! Another Glacier National Park specialty down!
After Glacier NP, made a few stops outside the national park around Columbia Falls and picked up Pygmy Nuthatch, Calliope and Rufous Hummingbirds, and Western Bluebird.
I dropped Jackie and Eric off at the Glacier park shuttle in Apgar around 5:00pm where they took the free shuttle up over Logan Pass and back to their campground.
We totaled 44 species for the late-summer day, and both Eric and Jackie got quite a few new birds!