Top 100 Birding Sites of the World

RANK SITE

HABITAT Forest (mainly coniferous) at various altitudes; meadows; sagebrush; lakes and rivers

KEY SPECIES Trumpeter Swan, Great Grey Owl, American White Pelican, Bald Eagle, Black Rosy Finch, woodpeckers

TIME OF YEAR Best in June and July; many roads in the park are closed from October to April

A scene from America’s past in its oldest national park; Buffalo graze the plains.

Yellowstone may well be the most famous national park in the world; it is certainly the oldest, having been declared on 1 March 1872. That date should be remembered gratefully by every birdwatcher and conservationist the world over. What began here affects us all and has safeguarded thousands of natural places worldwide.

To most people, Yellowstone National Park conjures up images of big landscapes, large roaming wild animals, and geysers. All of these impressions are accurate. The park is certainly huge, no less than 8,987 sq km in extent, and these days scientists tend to expand the definition and talk about the ‘Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’, a network of national parks and national forests centred on north-west Wyoming and contiguous to Yellowstone. If you take in Grand Teton National Park and neighbouring national forests you have about 80,000 sq km of wilderness, roughly delineated by the distribution of Grizzly Bears, which constitutes what is one of the largest areas of pristine habitat in the temperate Northern Hemisphere. On the whole, the area is so undisturbed that scientists use it as a control for studies of how wildlife is affected by human land use.

There are plenty of large animals in the park: Elk, Moose, Bison and Grizzly Bears roam everywhere and, since the 1990s, reintroductions have established a new population of Wolves. The geysers are just a part of an impressive range of geothermal features – the 10,000 here constitute half the number recorded in the world. Yellowstone lies on top of what is succinctly described as a ‘supervolcano’. It is still active and is due to blow ‘soon’, a catastrophe that could well spell the end of human life on earth.

You can take your mind off such cataclysms, however, while observing the ecological differences between American Three-toed and Black-backed Woodpeckers (the former likes denser forests) or Red-naped and Williamson’s Sapsuckers (the two prefer subtly different mixes of trees, with the latter more closely tied to conifers). Despite being famous for its vistas and scenery, 80 per cent of the national park area is covered by forest, mainly conifers such as Lodgepole Pine. Birders should not come here expecting to swell their life-lists so much as appreciate some great birds in as natural a setting as you can find anywhere.

There are plenty of birds here – 320 species have been recorded – but you will have to work hard for them, and cover a considerable sweep of area and habitats in doing so, sometimes hiking on trails away from the crowds. If you do this, you will soon gain a very good idea of the avifauna of these Rocky Mountain forests. This is one of the best places in North America to see the Great Grey Owl, while the Nearctic race of Tengmalm’s Owl, known as Boreal Owl, being more nocturnal, is a trickier task. The conifers hold Blue Grouse, Northern Goshawk, Grey and Steller’s Jays, Mountain Chickadee, Swainson’s Thrush, Olive-sided and Hammond’s Flycatchers, Pine Grosbeak, Cassin’s Finch and Red Crossbill, while other types of forest and forest glade provide habitat for Broad-tailed and Calliope Hummingbirds, Dusky Flycatcher, MacGillivray’s Warbler and Western Tanager. It will take you quite some time to find them all.

Another key habitat, although accounting for only 5 per cent of the national park area, is wetland. There are plenty of rivers in the park, many of them rushing downhill at high speed, providing habitat for the American Dipper and Harlequin Duck (the Harlequin Duck maintains a population of between 16 and 24 pairs). The park has 290 waterfalls, the highest being 94 m, and the fast-flowing water has cut a number of canyons (including that of the Yellowstone River, which is the park’s own version of the Grand Canyon) which provide good breeding habitat for the White-throated Swift and raptors such as the Peregrine Falcon. Yellowstone Lake is the largest high-altitude lake in North America, with an area of 352 sq km, and there are numerous other lakes and pools, supporting strong populations of Barrow’s Goldeneye and Great Northern Diver. One of the area’s most famous bird inhabitants is the rare Trumpeter Swan, which often nests in the area of Seven Mile Bridge. From 30 pairs in the late 1990s recent years have seen a decline to two or three pairs; this superb swan, the largest native flying bird of North America, is only just clinging on. Flocks do still pass through on migration; 700 were once recorded.

The Molly Islands in Yellowstone Lake are an important breeding area for waterbirds, especially the American White Pelican. Counts in 2005 amassed 219 successful nests of this species on the two islands, one rocky and one sandy, together with 69 pairs of Double-crested Cormorant and 31 pairs of California Gull. These nests are sometimes raided by Bald Eagles, which thrive here; there were 34 active nests of these predators in 2005, along with 50 or so Osprey nests.

The remaining habitats of the area include meadows, which support a population of Sandhill Cranes, plus large acreages of montane sagebrush, home of such specialists as Sage Grouse, Sage Thrasher and Brewer’s Sparrow (all of which easiest to find in Grand Teton National Park). Since the area encompasses altitudes ranging up to 3,462 m, there are some ‘islands’ of montane tundra. These are limited in their avifauna, but support a strong population of the rare North American endemic Black Rosy Finch. This species, which is found only in isolated pockets within the central Rocky Mountains, spends much time around the edges of ice-patches, feeding on insects that have been blown up from lower altitudes and have become disabled by the cold substrate.

The Black Rosy Finch could one day become the rarest bird in the whole area. Its mountaintop populations, with no refuge in the northern taiga, are exceptionally vulnerable to the global rise in temperature that is predicted in the coming years, and could be prone to extinction.

Yellowstone is home to a healthy population of Bald Eagles.

Male Williamson’s Sapsucker has a uniform black back. This species is more closely associated with conifer forests than its relative the Red-naped Sapsucker.

Trumpeter Swan is a scarce bird at Yellowstone.