Nesting Brewer’s sparrows are rare in the Helena Valley of west-central Montana. But five years ago, I found four of them singing from a small patch of sagebrush near Devil’s Elbow Campground, along the eastern edge of the Valley. In June 2022, I went back for another look.

I didn’t find any Brewer’s sparrows, which raises some great questions about what makes good-quality sagebrush habitat. I did find many other creatures, though: mountain bluebirds feeding young, a violet-green swallow building a nest, desert evening-primrose flowering on the slopes…

This podcast is the story of that day.

The only way to understand a grassland is to get up close and personal with it. In June 2022, I did exactly that. Marisa Diaz-Waian invited me to take a look at a rocky hilltop near Marysville, Montana, where she hopes to boost native plant diversity and create excellent habitat for lots of insects and other critters. This is a story about the beginning phases of a restoration project - and learning from what's already there. It's a sketch of the plant community on a single hilltop, from the thrips on the woolly groundsel (Senecio canus) flowers to the mystery of the glandular hairs on the fuzzytongue penstemon (Penstemon eriantherus).

Many of our insect-eating birds love to forage in chokecherries. But what are they catching? In June of 2022, I took a close look and tried to find out. This is a story about the remarkable hunting abilities of birds, my own not-so-remarkable insect-hunting abilities, and some of the surprising diversity of insects that can be found on chokecherry bushes (Prunus virginiana). This outdoor adventure took place at Kennedy Park in East Helena, Montana, USA.