Birds

White-tailed ptarmigan

Institute for Bird Populations

Mountain ecosystems host a large diversity of bird species, from year-round residents, who may only move to slightly different elevations for breeding or wintering, to neotropical migrants who fly thousands of miles in latitude between breeding and wintering grounds. You may find the tiniest of birds, the calliope hummingbird, buzzing around you in the Rocky Mountains, or if you're lucky, you could spot the massive California condor soaring overhead in the Sierra Mountains. Whether it's an American dipper hunting for insects below the surface of a cascading mountain stream or a mountain bluebird hovering over a field searching for prey, birds delight in their wide array of behaviors, calls, and plummages.

Birds have adapted to mountain environments in an astounding variety of ways. Explore some of the interesting bird species found in mountain parks and learn more about these adapations below.

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  Chiricahua National Monument

  Acorn woodpecker

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  Denali National Park

  Common raven

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  Glacier National Park

  Harlequin duck

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  Mount Rainier National Park

  Northern spotted owl

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  Pinnacles National Park

  Spotted towhee

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  Rocky Mountain National Park

  Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)

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  Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

  Western tanager

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  Shenandoah National Park

  Blue-gray gnatcatcher

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  Yellowstone National Park

  American dipper

Clark's nutcracker in a whitebark pine

One iconic bird species of western mountain ranges is the Clark's nutcracker, which has a mutualistic relationship with a high elevation tree species, the whitebark pine. The whitebark pine is almost entirely dependent on nutcrackers for seed dispersal, and nutcrackers forage largely on the whitebark pine's large, nutritious seeds. Individual nutcrackers can also cache thousands of seeds, some of which they forget - those seeds may grow into new trees. However, whitebark pine trees are in a serious decline in recent years due to the combined effects of a non-native fungus and the native mountain pine beetle, both of which attack and can kill the trees. Additional environmental stress due to climate change makes the trees more vulnerable to these pests. While Clark's nutcrackers prefer whitebark pine seeds, they will travel to other areas to find seeds of other tree species. Researchers are studying how this bird-tree relationship will evolve as the whitebark pine continues to disappear across its range.