Avian
Oasis
at Manning Lake
Tribal Wildlife Refuge
Gliding through a marsh as Franklin's Gulls fly overhead
By
Cathy
Moser
S
unrise casts golden light on Manning Lake in northeastern
Montana. The hush within green bulrush and cattails fronting
the lake gradually gives way to a cacophony of birdsong rising
and falling, fading out and lifting again, growing louder and more
Photos diverse. A joyful heralding of the golden light is how we bird lovers
by
would like to interpret the chorus. Science, however, upends such
Jeanne
poetic notions about birds: the throng of songs is actually individual
Spaur
declarations — "Hey, this is my territory!"
Every spring thousands of hungry, tired migrating birds wing their way to
Manning Lake. Here the birds loaf, claim their territories, breed, nest, and raise
their young. The three-foot-deep lake is the heart of the 4,137-acre Manning Lake
Tribal Wildlife Refuge tucked within a 22,000-acre wetlands and grasslands complex on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.
"The complex is rare in the sense that it is mostly undegraded by anthropological disturbances and relatively unfragmented," explains Jeanne Spaur, the wetlands program coordinator and wildlife biologist for the Fort Peck Tribal Office of
Environmental Protection.
The primitive Refuge has no paved roads, official parking area, interpretive kiosks, or walking trails. It's a distant drive for many birders, but it's worth the gas
and miles because the mixed habitats offer optimal birding opportunities. Prairie
Get a complete list of
Montana birds here:
DISTINCTLY MONTANA | DIGITAL
www.distinctlymontana.com/birds133
14
D I ST I NCT LY M ONTANA • SU M M E R 2013
