OUTDOORS REPORT
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Percentage of Montana hunters who are female (the U.S. average is 9 percent).
Bird ID books, like The Sibley Guide to Birds, are great for helping differentiate one species from another. Equally valuable for birders are maps showing if the species they think they see is in fact one that occurs in that part of Montana.
Making life easier for birders is the newly revised 7th edition of P. D. Skaar’s Montana Bird Distribution. The book contains maps for all species observed in Montana, showing both breeding and wintering range. The book is a cooperative project among Montana Audubon, the Montana Natural Heritage Program, FWP, and the Montana Bird Records Committee. Donations to Montana’s nongame wildlife tax form checkoff helped fund the project. Buy the book ($15 plus shipping) from Montana Audubon at mtaudubon.org. n
FISHERIES
SURVEY FINDINGS
The eggs of autumn Deer, elk, and moose aren’t the only ones with the fry of rainbows and cutthroats for food and mating on their minds this time of year. Though other resources.” Of course, there’s some risk with autumn most people consider fish to be spring spawners, many species in Montana reproduce anywhere spawning, notes Vashro. “Rain can fall on snow, from September through early December. Bull which often happens up here in January and Febtrout, for instance, lay eggs from mid-September ruary, and cause flooding that washes eggs out of through early October, and peak spawning for cis- the redds,” he says. “Or it can get so cold that shelf coes (close relatives of lake whitefish) occurs right ice forms on stream bottoms and freezes the eggs.” Why don’t any warmwater fish spawn in fall? around Thanksgiving. Brook trout, brown trout, Vashro can only speculate. and lake trout also spawn “Salmonid fry eat insects at while the aspen and tamaMontana’s Fall Spawners a young age, and insects are rack are turning golden. Bull trout in the water year- round, Notice any similarities mid-September–early October so that’s a food source among those species? Brook trout available in early spring All are salmonids. Jim October–November when they hatch,” he says. Vashro, FWP regional Brown trout “Warmwater fry eat mainly fisheries manager in October–November plankton, and that food reKalispell, says he doesn’t Mountain whitefish quires lots of sunlight and know why, of all fish famNovember–early December warm water, and you don’t ilies, only the salmonids Lake whitefish see those conditions until spawn in fall. But he does October–December late spring. So there doesn’t know that fall spawning Pygmy whitefish seem to be any biological can give those fish a comlate November–December advantage for a perch or a petitive advantage over Cisco bass to spawn in October rainbow and cutthroat late November–early December or November.” trout, which spawn in Kokanee salmon A side note to all this is spring. “When eggs are late October–November the burbot, a coldwater laid in fall, they incubate Chinook salmon Montana native that is a over winter in gravel and October–November member of the cod family. then hatch one to two Lake trout Burbot spawn in January months earlier than eggs late October–November and February. That’s the laid in spring,” he says. Spawning times can vary slightly based same time Atlantic cod “That gives those fry a on location, seasonal water temperature, spawn, thousands of miles chance to get a bit bigger and weather. away in the ocean. n so they can outcompete
8 SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2013 FWP.MT.GOV/MTOUTDOORS
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE MORAN; JOEL SARTORE/USFWS; TOM DICKSON; SWEETWATER RODS; SHUTTERSTOCK
Where the wild birds are
The eggs of fall-spawning female bull trout, like those accompanying the males pictured here, hatch a few months earlier in spring than those of spring-spawning rainbow and cutthroat trout.
