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State Bird of Both Oregon and Montana

Do you like birds? Are you curious about state birds? This one is the state bird in both Montana and Oregon. Before much else, I should explain how we came about seeing him. (This is a male.)

Today was much cooler than yesterday. Yesterday got up to 98 F / 36.7 C, with no breeze. Today only got up to 86 F / 30 C, with a pleasant breeze. Since it was so nice, plus cool, my daughter talked me into going fishing down at the Clark Fork River at a place called “The Point”. Okay, I’ll admit that she didn’t have to do much to talk me into going out fishing. We didn’t so much as get a bite while we were out there, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway.

Driving back and only about a mile out of town, we caught sight of this beautiful male songbird. We are always looking for wildlife when we go out and my daughter saw the bird but didn’t know what it was. I’d seen just enough as we went by to know that it was a male Western Meadowlark. This is an American robin-sized bird with a bright yellow breast and a black “V” on the yellow. That black V is the distinguishing mark.

I drove up far enough to turn around, then drove back the way we came until I could again turn around, then drove back so we could get a closer look at him. He wasn’t at all shy and even posed for us, all the while he was singing his beautiful mating call. 

Facing us

Here is another zoomed in image of the meadowlark facing us. He is actually at a slight angle, so the V looks more like a necklace. Still, it can be seen that the black isn't just a dot.

How cool is that, to see such a beautiful songbird, just sitting there and singing to us while posing for his picture?

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Written by Rex Trulove

11 Comments

    • The blurriness is because the pictures were taken with my daughter’s cell phone, rather than a camera. The last couple of pictures are the blurriest because, in order to display the zoom, I had to use software to get the very close up pictures. I basically cropped a portion of the original image and then increased the dimensions of the cropped image.

    • We are far more likely to hear its song than to see the bird and it is a little rare to see it out in the open, apparently unconcerned about us being there and taking its picture.

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