Trout Creek raptor class

TROUT CREEK - Wednesday evening, the 9th, was the second to last of the Trout Creek Community Improvement Association’s (TCCIA) monthly Campfire Talks. Hosting the evening show was Brian Baxter, an Outdoor Educational Programs Coordinator And Instructor, of Silver Cloud Associates. For an hour and a half Baxter taught a small group of people at the Trout Creek Park stage about raptors in North West Montana.

Baxter, a seasoned outdoorsman and forester, comes from the Eastern part of the United States, but has called NW Montana home for many years.

“I went to school for Forestry in Pennsylvania and then Wildlife Management in Western North Carolina and then came out here,” Baxter said.

After moving across the U.S., Baxter worked for 20 years in Forestry and Wildlife management. In addition to working in NW Montana, he worked in Canada on projects to track lynx, wolverines, and grizzly bears, forest hawks and accipiters, and on owl calling studies.

In 2002, Baxter wrote an article about lynx studies for a Montanan based magazine and found in interest in working with the public. Since then, Baxter has been teaching, leading field groups, and going to public classes to inform people on wildlife in NW Montana.

He described his teaching career as, “... basically the most rewarding job I’ve ever had as far as working with adults and kids in outdoor education. It’s exciting, it’s beautiful, you learn something new every time you go out...”

The class Baxter taught Wednesday evening included a wide array of topics, while focusing on raptors of NW Montana.

To begin the class, Baxter described one of his latest projects, calling owls to estimate the population of owls throughout parts of NW Montana. He described the process of how to call owls and how to listen for them. A large piece of advice he imparted upon the campfire goers was the process of calling smaller owls in an area before calling large owls. This is done to insure that if a small owl type is in the area a large owl call won’t scare it away.

After campfire participant Fletcher Segura asked how a great horned owl got its name, Baxter transitioned to descriptions of characteristics of owls and raptors. He showed different feather types to the class and described how feather types helped different birds hunt.

Since many of the people who attended the campfire talk were avid birders themselves, Baxter gave tips on how to search for and find different types of raptors. He described how to find certain types of trees that would house owls, how to study beak types, scat and regurgitation, and the call types.

Terms were also a part of the class, and when the sun had set a bit, Baxter provided a slide show of different types of raptors in the area, ranging from the owls to accipiters, and eagles. The show also included prey types and some places to look for owls in the wild.

When Baxter’s show finished, he had laid out maps, skulls and regurgitations on the stage for people to view. The show lasted from 6:30 p.m. till 8:00 p.m., and many of the participants asked questions, showed their own photos and told stories at the end.