Well, winter has come for a bit. Snow flurries, dumpings, maybe even a part of a blizzard struck us this last week and I am absolutely ecstatic about it. This is what we have needed, what I have been asking for, and hopefully the snow in the mountains sticks around for a bit longer than it will down here in the valley. Yet, the creeks are still high. The Kootenai is going up and down every day it seems. The Moyie is still the Moyie. And honestly, it takes a bit for me to get out to the water, tie a nymph or a streamer onto my tippet and actually want to cast it. I have the hankering only for the dry fly eat; the sip, the slurp, the take.

So what am I to do as a humble but stubborn dry fly fisher? Well, I could hope to make a rise out of some small trout on a bank curve of the Moyie, swing wets in the Kootenai, or go ice fishing on one of our lakes this year and nearly mess my pants every time I hear the ice crack. Or, I can enjoy some of my other favorite hobbies that excel during the snowy wintertime: birding and coffee.

(Note: I mean, it is still somewhat related to fly fishing. You watch some birds, walk around in the woods, and you can find feathers for fly tying. Just freeze them first, or else some sort of little bug will ruin your year. Trust me.)

Last week, the swans were out at the refuge and it is a shame that I didn’t stop to take a picture or two. They were out in the wetlands floating around with the Canadian geese and whatever else wanted to bear the cold on their bellies. Mergansers have been flying, swimming, diving, and eating on the Kootenai since the water lowered which has been a great thing to watch. The eagles, per usual, are up in their roost along Riverside Street, but you know what? Unlike the many cars I have to maneuver around each day of summer that I drive out there with drivers who act like they have never seen a bald eagle (haliaeetus leucocephalus) before and thus think they should clog up traffic, I don’t see the appeal. I mean, I do like them. Sure, it is a beautiful bird. It is ‘Murica’s bird, after all. However, one of my favorite fun facts about the bald eagle is that the sound that every single show and commercial puts in as their call is not an eagle at all but that of a red-tailed hawk, which is a much more great bird to see in my opinion anyway. And I feel like that is a fantastic example of most people’s experience with birds: they think certain ones are cool and rad and awesome, but (in my humble opinion) they are dead wrong in which birds they feel this way about.

You can always drive that road, 24/7 and 365 days a year, and see eagles up on that perch. A better way to see an eagle? Watch the river in the summer evenings around Cow Creek or even here in town in the section between the train bridge and Ambush Rock. I guarantee that you will see one or two of them fishing, and that is much more entertaining. But drive the loop at the refuge during certain times of year and catch a glimpse of the other eagle, the better eagle, the stunning golden eagle (aquila chrysaetos). Now that is a specimen. When the bald eagle flies, you look up at it and you see a white head, solid dark wings and belly, and a white tail behind the yellow feet and talons. You look up at a golden eagle flying in the sun, and you are rewarded with a wonderful array of coloring as the light shines through the feathers, illuminating the brilliant greys and browns of their primaries and secondaries with the splotches of white and lighter browns making a confident statement that they are better than the other raptors in the area.

It does seem like I like the golden eagle quite a bit, right? Maybe it is my favorite bird of prey? Perhaps, but also no. Very wrong. Let’s go back to the bald eagle and how most of America thinks it sounds like the red-tailed hawk (buteo jamaicensis). It is known colloquially around here as a chickenhawk, which that group of hawks also includes the Cooper’s hawk and the sharp-shinned hawk. They are common to see, fun to watch, and supposedly easily trainable which is why they are a great choice for the novice in falconry. Some fun facts is that while their normal flight can go up to about 40 miles per hour, their dive towards prey can exceed 120 miles per hour. A mouse rarely has a chance out in the fields. Like mentioned earlier, the red-tailed hawks have that iconic two or so second rasping scream of a TV eagle and it is a phenomenal experience when you are in ear shot of such a sound in person. When I was a youngin still, out watching wildlife at the refuge with my dad, a red-tailed hawk screamed and as I scanned the fields in the direction of it, but dad tapped my shoulder and pointed up. The hawk was in the middle of flying off with a chunky chickadee that it had caught mid-flight and I was able to watch it head off into the sunset through my spotting scope. Not even a week ago, I watched a red-tail hawk in its perch with that same spotting scope.

And that is where I sit today; back on my own perch, spotting scope on its tripod, my butt on a jacket laid out over the wet ground, drinking coffee and waiting to spot a hawk again. It had been a good day of birding so far. Lots of common birds like the american robin (turdus migratorius…you got to love the name as a 36 year old man with a brain that never matured past the age of 12), the black-capped chickadee (poecile atricapillus) with its “cheeseburger” call, a bluebird or two. I also had a really great experience where Ruby Creek meets Deep Creek with a pair of American dippers, one of my favorite birds to watch as they are so chunky and cute, but also because they were there diving into the water to eat whatever nymph or pupa they could find and they never once grabbed mine.

But I was here to find a hawk, and it didn’t matter which one I would be lucky enough to catch on the other side of my lens. Out at the refuge, I sat in the 25 degree air with an extra cool breeze passing over my body as I looked through the 60x towards what I have only known as the nesting trees. Every single person who has driven on the refuge’s loop should know which group of trees I am talking about here. I was not having luck seeing any birds of prey, but there were a whole lot of geese and a few fly bys by the beautiful Trumpeter swans that typically find themselves in the great wetlands out here. After my pot of coffee was reduced to only grounds and the snowmelt dampness was starting to creep past my long johns, I decided it was time to move on. I slapped my snowshoes back on, packed the bag up and made my way back to my car.

After nearly burning my hands against the heat vents in my old Subaru, I decided to make a quick detour over to the Chickadee Trail as I really wanted to catch some footage of some chickadees up close and hopefully record their song as well. But what I was met with was a few quite bulky Dark-Eyed Junco’s (junco hyemalis), a large pileated woodpecker high up in a tree, and I even caught two White-crowned sparrows fighting for territory on video after falling out of a tree into the pillowy snow that lined the trail. At the end of the trail, I finally got the video I wanted of a black-capped chickadee not five feet from me up in a ponderosa pine.

Back in the car again, and after a pretty great day of birding, I decided to pack it up and make my way back home. However, on the drive back I noticed something up in one of the eagle trees along the river. As I got closer, I used the 8x zoom on my phone to get a closer peak as my binoculars and my spotting scope were in the back and I did not want to risk spooking the bird. What I captured was a video of a rough-legged hawk (buteo lagopus) staring off into the farm fields before it performed its rousing. While it wasn’t a hawk I was out on the lookout for, I still managed to capture a great video of a wonderful bird of prey and I couldn’t be happier.

So while the water is rushing, the snow is falling, the days are slowly getting longer, get out there and do something while we still have it all around us. The birding is great, the snowshoeing is great, coffee never tastes better than when you make it out in the bright white snow of a beautiful day. Get out there and experience it all before it goes way.

Tight lines out there, friends.