Destination Circle: Day 5

May 18, 2016

Next to the motel parking lot in Williston, ND

Breakfast at the motel was a made-to-order omelet, good bacon, muffins, etc. Better than dinner...

Meadowlarks had been singing constantly as I drove through ND, and their melodious singing was the first sound I heard this morning. (I totally tuned out the trucks.) Sometimes while driving with the window open, it would happen that I would suddenly hear a meadowlark so loud and clearly, I felt the bird was in the car. They are usually visible also, perched low on fancies or shrubs with a characteristic slightly hunched posture and a wide black V on a deep yellow breast. There are both Eastern and Western Meadowlarks (and a lot of bird arcana about the differences and how to tell them apart) but I just do it geographically for now. DHC would concentrate more on their vocalizations, as that separates them, and she has a good ear for bird music, which all good birders have innately or try to develop.

After Williston, the Missouri River runs very close to the south of Hwy 2 for hundreds of miles but the potholes are mostly gone. Still, the long rolling hills with horizons 40 or 50 miles distant, the lack of traffic, the straight two-lane highway, the big sky, the wide-open topography....these things always, always make me fall in love with the west again. At this time of year, many fields are still brown but often plowed and probably planted. Black cows and little calves munch away. An occasional hawk flies overhead or is perched on a telephone pole. I slowed way down (25 mph) through Indian reservation towns having learned that lesson years ago when I got a speeding ticket from the tribal police. Otherwise, the speed limit is 70. In these towns, dogs move slowly across the highway and the gas station / casino / general stores are busy places.

American Avocet at Bowdoin

I decided to go to Bowdoin NWR just east of Malta. It was at least my 5th time here and was absolutely incredible, with birds abundant. The auto route is 15 miles and the attraction is Lake Bowdoin, along with many seasonally flooded fields in the general area. I tried to access the refuge the "back way" from Hwy 2, but eventually had to turn around because the road was closed due to high water. It really didn't matter as I saw all kinds of birds with the best being Chestnut-collared Longspurs and Upland Sandpipers, Lark Buntings and Vesper Sparrows....

And the actual auto route was also spectacular. I so wished DHC were in the car with me as this was easy birding. Now consider this: Amtrak stops in Malta. We should do a quick trip next May if you could get a long weekend. One night on the train, getting to Malta before noon the next, birding all afternoon and the following morning, get back on the train in the afternoon (one night) back to Chicago. It might be doable; it's worth it this time of year.

Yellow-Heads Blackbird at Bowdoin

Lots of phalaropes, avocets, stilts, dowitchers, pelicans, wrens, plovers, sparrows, swallows, ducks, grebes, terns and on and on. The mosquitoes were a nuisance but, again, so it goes in the world of birding. At least I wasn't out hiking through mosquito mini clouds. I saw only one other car in the 2 hours I was there.

It was hot and I had decided earlier in the day to stay in Malta so made a Priceline reservation. The clues I picked up online were that this was a new motel. Malta is small and a ranching / farming community in north-central Montana and isn't close enough to Glacier to attract tourists overnight, so motel options are a bit limited. What they do have, though, are two nice little museums, the newest being a dinosaur museum. Just yesterday I read in the local papers all about a new dinosaur species discovered in Montana. This happened a decade ago but the whole story was just published. If you google "dinosaur Shipp Judith" you can read all about it. The Washington Post (on May 18) has a picture with the headline: "This dinosaur had a heartbreaking life; now she's famous - and an inspiration."

back road into Bowdoin NWR

There is a Dinosaur Trail all through central Montana, and Malta at least has that for an attraction.

Anyway, I did find the motel south of town, or at least I THOUGHT I was in the right place. Siri was a bit confused and wanted me to continue on down the road a bit, but she was wrong as it turned out. The place looked like a large house. A sign said the office was in the back. Not a soul was in sight. I walked into a big room with couch, TV, tables, a popcorn machine, sort of motel stuff and then found an older model phone on a counter with a note to call such and such a number "if you want a room." I barely know how to push the right buttons on anything but a cell phone so tried with my cell and got voice mail. Then I tried the counter phone and "Duane" answered. He apologized that he hadn't checked any online reservations that had come in, admitted hat he was out "shooting gophers" with a friend who unexpectedly came to town and that I could take room #8 ("it's unlocked") and that he would be back shortly.

I was in the country, a mile from town and the milieu as serene and peaceful as anywhere I've ever stayed. At first I was a bit miffed as this was supposed to be a 3-star motel, but then I got my stuff, walked around, wondered what exactly this was all about and finally settled on the couch, read a little and did some computer work.

Duane showed up and told me all about the deal. He built this 20 years ago as an assisted living facility, sold the business, and he and his granddaughter ("I gave her the day off and she went to Great Falls") run it now as a motel. We talked about the problems in such a venture, the main one being updating sewage and septic to meet current code. Not that there were problems, but the DEQ are very strict and, since this is a NEW use of an existing structure, all has to be up to current code. One example of a small business struggling...

He was talkative and pleasant, a Montanan who grew up in Canada, now raising grandchildren, helping with the motel....His mother lives in town after moving back from Canada a few years ago when his dad died, and he has goes in and has coffee with her every morning.

He told me he has all the rooms booked this coming weekend for "the Flathead Audubon Society" who were coming to check out a big prairie conservancy project 50 miles south of town. We talked about the issues with the local farmers/ranchers not being able to compete with federal conservancy funds and some of the back stories involved in these projects, another being the eradication of invasive Russian olive trees to which which some locals object as they are cover for upland birds. Politically, he is probably Republican but not rabid or ignorant. Bison are being introduced at this prairie restoration site also.

Marsh Wren at Bowdoin

After he got me checked in (and another online reservation guy from Seattle who was coming to bury an elderly grandmother who had died in the winter when the ground was too frozen for interment), Duane walked across to a golf course club house to continue his day with his out-of-town friend. There was a little pond outside my window. I kept thinking about how people live their lives out here. Like most small towns almost everywhere, there are fewer and fewer reasons for kids to stay and raise families, so they are slowly losing population and businesses. The high school will graduate 25 kids, Duane's grandson one of them. I had popcorn for dinner as I didn't want to go into town.