STEVENSVILLE - Winter's hush gives way to a nattering goose, skating and squawking across one last little island of ice.
On shore, a northern flicker surveys last year's nest holes for this year's utility, busy in its preparations for spring, oblivious to the trio of visitors watching nearby.
"It's almost spring," he says. "Everything is pairing up."
Anticipation is everywhere these days at the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge outside Stevensville.
Swans are starting to migrate through, two and 10 at a time. There'll be hundreds resting in the wetlands by month's end.
The osprey will be back in April, as will the great blue herons that make their nests in the pines along Wildfowl Lane.
Construction crews will have the new refuge headquarters - a refurbished warehouse - ready sometime this summer, and the staff will move onto the refuge for the first time in its 40-year history.
Then will come the Bitterroot Birding and Nature Trail and its collection of hiking, biking, canoeing and nature-loving venues polka-dotting the landscape between Lost Trail and Lolo passes.
"We're just sitting here grinning because we are so close to that trail and the refuge and the birds and everything," said Joan Prather, program manager for the Stevensville Main Street Association. "We are so fortunate."
To be unveiled at a series of community meetings this month, the Bitterroot Birding and Nature Trail will be the first - the pilot project - in a statewide network of such trails.
Between now and the end of the year, 25 sites will be selected in and above the valley that separates the Sapphire and Bitterroot mountains.
Community members will nominate sites known for their birds, wildlife and natural amenities. A steering committee of experts will evaluate the nominations and make the picks.
Then the public will have another chance to look at the list and help organizers connect the dots - suggesting the best existing land or water routes to take nature watchers from site to site.
The result, by year's end, will be a map feting the Bitterroot Valley and its best birding and nature-watching destinations - the Bitterroot Birding and Nature Trail.
"We already appreciate nature and birds," said Sue Reel, a wildlife biologist for the Lolo National Forest and coordinator of the statewide trail's steering committee. "It's a natural thing. It's there already.
"We're just making it become more of a system, and helping people understand what they can see and do."
It's not really even a trail in the traditional sense, said Deborah Richie Oberbillig, the Bitterroot trail's coordinator. "Really, what we're looking at is 25 or so sites scattered along the river or in the valley, or maybe all the way to the top of St. Mary's Peak."
It is, however, an idea previously tested and proven effective in other parts of the country.
Texas opened the nation's first driving-and-birding trail eight years ago. The Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail includes more than 300 birding sites along 700 miles of coastline from the Louisiana border to the Rio Grande River.
The Great Washington Birding Trail's first loop - the Cascade - covers most of northwestern and north-central Washington state, and takes visitors from farmlands to mountain peaks to beaches.
Virginia has designated 1,000 wildlife-watching sites. Twenty-five states, in fact, either have or are developing statewide nature and birding trails. Montana will be No. 26.
"There are a lot of benefits that come from doing a birding and nature trail for Montana," said Reel. "It's good for birds and nature and wildlife, and it's good for the communities."
Birders spend money, lots of it, she said. They learn about and appreciate the out-of-doors. And with awareness comes a conservation ethic.
"That's a lot to ask a trail to do," Reel said, "but not too much."
First called the Ravalli National Wildlife Refuge, then renamed for the Montana senator who championed its protection, the Lee Metcalf is an obvious and essential piece of the Bitterroot Birding and Nature Trail.
Even in this, the in-between season, the refuge's 13 manmade ponds and attendant riverside woodlands are abuzz.
A pair of great horned owls hold court from an aging pine. Flickers inspect tree-trunk nesting holes. A bald eagle watches the river for a fishy snack.
On Wildfowl Lane, the country road that runs through the refuge, the scene grows busier each day.
Common goldeneyes dive and disappear beneath the open - but nonetheless icy - water of the larger ponds, scavenging their morning meal.
Gadwalls and Canada geese explore the edge of the remaining ice sheet, snapping and quacking their hellos.
Sue McDonald watches from the road, her spotting scope trained on one and then another fluffy head.
"This refuge is already a magnet for birders," said McDonald, the Metcalf's outdoor recreation planner. "In April and May, we'll have tons of people parked along this loop, watching the waterfowl that migrate through."
Annual visits to the refuge number about 150,000, including more than 3,000 schoolchildren who come to learn about birds firsthand. More times than not, McDonald is the designated greeter.
"To have the birding trail in place and information in hand to give our visitors will be wonderful," she said. "Every time I'm out on the refuge, I meet people who want to know about other places to go and other things to do."
And the auxiliary questions are never far behind:
"Where's a good place to eat lunch?"
"Where can we stay the night?"
"Where can I get a bird book?"
It doesn't take long on the refuge to get excited about birdwatching, McDonald said.
Over the course of the year, the refuge's 2,800 acres are home to 235 species of birds. Moose, white-tailed deer, black bears, muskrats, weasels and otters are the bonus.
Each spring, the nature trail that runs through the cottonwoods to the Bitterroot River - the refuge's western boundary - become a veritable "warbler walk," so heavily populated is the forest with songbirds.
A venue like the Lee Metcalf can provide everything the statewide trail system hopes to encourage, Reel said: drives, hikes, canoe trips, interpretive kiosks, boardwalks, bird blinds, education, recreation and conservation.
And economic development.
For years, Stevensville has joined with refuge managers in hosting a "migration mania" festival each spring, now called the Bitterroot Birding Festival.
This year, Montana Audubon will join the celebration by bringing its annual birding festival - and associated field trips and workshops - to Stevensville in May.
"We're even hoping to have Ollie Osprey in town - from the Missoula Osprey baseball team," said Prather, of Stevensville's Main Street Association.
"Certainly, we have a big advantage having the refuge out there," she said. "With the number of people they have visiting, we try to provide things that will draw them to town.
"The Bitterroot Birding and Nature Trail will be an incredible part of that."
Birdwatching is, in fact, the fastest growing form of outdoor recreation, said Oberbillig. Between 1982 and 2001, the number of birdwatchers grew from 21 million to 71 million, according to the National Survey on Recreation and the Environment.
In the Bitterroot Valley, the economic development potential is even greater because the area is also rich in cultural and historical sites related to its importance to the Salish Indians and its location on the Lewis and Clark Trail.
"This is one of the premiere Lewis and Clark destinations," Oberbillig said. "The rich cultural history of the Bitterroot combined with the wonderful birding and wildlife viewing opportunities should meet a pretty wide range of interests."
Most, if not all, of the viewing sites on the Bitterroot trail will come from established, public venues, she said. But private landowners can, if they wish, get involved.
The National Forest Foundation, a private nonprofit headquartered in Missoula, has provided a matching $55,000 grant for the Bitterroot project. Bitter Root Resource and Development Area Inc. is the nonprofit "hosting" the grant.
"This trail is a great example of a conservation project that heavily involves local communities and has tangible economic benefits," said Mary Mitsos, the foundation's executive director.
"The bottom line is: We make grants that involve and are supported by local people, and that improve the conservation of our national forests and grasslands," she said. "The Bitterroot Birding and Nature Trail will do exactly that.
"And I really like the idea that it will expand statewide."
Other communities are eager to follow the Bitterroot's lead. Reel has requests for help from the Mission Valley, the Flathead, Seeley Lake, communities along the Missouri River and Westby - one of the state's most remote northeastern communities.
"We have the birds and the wildlife," she said. "We have the scenery and the recreation. It's all here. We just have to let people know what we've got."
Wayne Tree spent about two hours one recent Sunday afternoon hunting for signs of spring on the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge. His resulting list, posted at the start of the refuge's nature trail, is proof positive.
Something's coming.
"I did find the American dipper cavorting around in the Bitterroot River down at the end of the trail," he reported. (Dippers are among the species that out-of-staters watch with wonder, as they bob up and down, up and down in the Bitterroot.)
"Also, I saw one of the two great horned owls perched in its usual tree alone," Tree wrote after his visit. "I very highly suspect its mate is incubating eggs."
A short while later, he found a pair of owls - also great horned - roosting in another pine.
Then came "three different pairs of white-breasted nuthatches at close range," Tree said. "They kept me entertained for 30 minutes or so, as I photographed them. I got several good pictures of these friendly nuthatches.
"On my way back to the car, I found two red-breasted nuthatches. So I had them entertain me as well."
In the parking lot, he recorded one final sighting: 20 cars.
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at sdevlin@missoulian.com
If you're interested
Community members can help develop plans for the Bitterroot Birding and Nature Trail at a series of meetings this month.
Here's the schedule:
Tuesday, March 9: Darby, Darby School cafeteria
Wednesday, March 10: Hamilton, Hamilton Public Library
Monday, March 15: Missoula, Missoula Public Library
Tuesday, March 16: Lolo, Travellers' Rest State Park
Thursday, March 18: Stevensville, North Valley Library
All meetings begin at 7 p.m. and are open to all comers.
The trail will be a network of 25 birding and nature viewing sites nominated and selected by people who live, work and recreate in the Bitterroot Valley.
For a nomination form, e-mail trail coordinator Deborah Richie Oberbillig at debrichi@montana.com. For more about the birding and nature trail, consult the Web site at http://biology.umt.edu/landbird/birdtrail.
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