Day 165: June 13th – Glacier National Park

       Not the best day for birding as the weather is quickly taking a turn for the worse.  We did manage to get an early morning hike up to the Pine Butte overlook which looks out over the Pine Butte Swamp.  The swamp is a prime location for grizzlies and moose.  We hiked up the quarter of a mile trail to the ridge, and with the help of the scope we were able to watch a sow and her cub hunting along the edge of the fen.  While the bear moved in and out of the sage, we watched a moose cow and her calf cautiously skulking along in the swamp, alternately running, stopping and scanning the horizon and then quickly moving on once again.  There was an air of tension among the eight moose we saw while we kept an eye on the bear. 


      After about a half hour of observation, we moved on back to the valley floor and moved on towards Browning.  Along the way, we saw a number of new birds for the trip including a Wilson’s snipe sitting on a fence post and several Bobolinks.


As we travelled along the valley, we passed “Egg Mountain”, site of the discovery of a quantity of dinosaur eggs.  Paleontologist Jack Horner studied this site extensively and postulated that a dinosaur he named Maiasaurus (Good Mother Lizard) laid eggs from which baby dinosaurs hatched and which she cared for as infants.  We visited the rock shop where Horner first stumbled across the first dinosaur eggs collected by the shop’s proprietors.


       Before we ended the day’s journey in Glacier National Park, we passed through the Blackfeet Reservation.  At the entrance to the land of the Blackfeet tribe is a sculpture created by an Native American artist and constructed completely of old car parts.  Quite a piece of art!

       The rains began to fall to the extent that birding was pretty futile and we decided to take a break for lunch.  After eating, the rain abated enough so that we could visit Trick Falls (aka Running Eagle Falls) where we found two American dippers flying back and forth from their nest behind the falls to points further down the river where they were hunting.

       Try as we may, they were too fast for us to capture on film.  We did manage to get pretty nice looks and rainy images of the Swainson’s thrush which was found along the river’s edge.

       Our last major find of the day was a trio of Big Horned Sheep wandering through the Two Medicine Campgrounds of East Glacier Park.  We had nice opportunities to photograph this beautiful mammals. 

       Tomorrow, it’s back out into the park under hopefully more hospitable conditions.