Getting My Nemesis Bird

If you’ve spent time with me in person then you know that spruce grouse is a big nemesis bird for me. Big. Huge. GINORMOUS. 

For those new to birding, a “nemesis bird” is a bird that you try to see and never get. You’re always arriving as someone says, “It just flew off, like, five minutes ago…”

Spruce grouse is particularly galling since they breed in Minnesota and yet I still manage to miss them. Now, they are a good four to five hours from where I live so it’s not like I’m missing a bird one to two hours away. I had kind of given up ever searching for them since I wasn’t seeing them and figured like many birds, one would just happen in front of me. 

It was such a running gag at Birds and Beers that almost didn’t want to see one since people seemed to enjoy the joke so much. People loved to announcing their grouse find at Birds and Beers and looking pointedly at me. Or tagging me in photos on social media. Heck, even my boss came back from a weekend in northern Minnesota and told me that his brother served him freshly hunted spruce grouse.  

I half-heartedly joked that I’d offer sexual favors to the first person to get me a spruce grouse. 

And then I started dating a birder, someone with a cabin in northern Minnesota that was about halfway between where I lived in the Twin Cities and where spruce grouse hang out. When the pandemic hit, we kind of made it a pandemic project. Spruce grouse would be a lifer for them. I think we thought that maybe some “pandemic magic” would happen and all the time up north would get us the bird. But there was no pandemic magic. We went to areas where bird guides would say, “I had a group there today” and we’d go the following day and not get spruce grouse. We would see cool things like goshawks or pine martens hanging out, but no grouse. 

So when the Alaska gig presented itself, spruce grouse were firmly on the table. As I got to know staff at Denali National Park via Teams meetings before heading to live in Alaska for the summer, word spread of my desire to see one. People would tell when and where they saw them. I’d receive text messages from a staffer of spruce grouse right out their vehicle window on the Park Road. One day, someone tried to arrange their laptop camera to face out their windows so I could watch the spruce grouse in their yard. I have to say that the staff at Denali National Park and Preserver definitely know how to make a girl feel at home. Many staff truly took my nemesis bird more seriously than I did.

My bike, a Surly Straggler, loaded for birding.

My first morning waking up in Denali National Park, I loaded my bike and my birding equipment in my Prius and hit the Park Road. One of the first birds I got was the willow ptarmigans I already blogged about. But when I was there in early May, the buses hadn’t started running yet and a private vehicle could drive all the way to Teklanika Rest Area and then hike/bike more of the Park Road. 

I unloaded my bike from my car at Tek, got my trunk bag on, strapped in my scope and my binoculars and headed out. Yes. I also packed bear spray. I marveling at the beauty of the river and mountains around me, taking in the redpolls and crossbills, thinking how badass it is to be able to say, “Oh yeah, I biked in Alaska.”

And then the road curved into some spruce and WHAM! I knew the shape as soon as my eyes laid on it. The dark strutting blob was unmistakable. There he was, a displaying male spruce grouse! 

That dark lump up the road is my lifer spruce grouse. And yes, please note the bear spray next to my binoculars.

I pedaled as close as I dared and took the displaying male in. I was so grateful for my NL Pures, they truly are a spectacular piece of birding equipment and the clarity of this life bird was overwhelming. I pedaled a little closer, then got off and set up my spotting scope low to the ground to get video of the displaying male. Meanwhile a second male came in…and then a third appeared in the trees just to my right. It took off to chase the displaying male. It was quite a site. I took video and drank in the scene and until all three males chased each other off and headed into the woods. 

Warning: swearing. Also, the strut on this bird rivals Prince.

Portrait of a woman who has defeated. a decades long bird curse.

I was riding so high. The willow ptarmigan were one thing, but to just get spruce grouse while doing one of my favorite things (biking) was just too much. I rode the high as I continued to pedal the road. And then I noticed that I was going super slow. I made it all the way to Igloo Campground and was exhausted. My riding was not pretty, slow and quite a few stops. I figured I’d be a little off after driving nonstop for seven days and not being used the elevation, but I wasn’t prepared to be THAT sucky at bike riding. When I turned around to head back, I didn’t pedal for three miles. I’d been on a such a gradual incline and on a spruce grouse high that I didn’t even notice the incline. 

The next few days were settling into the job and establishing a routine. About a week into it, I was walking to my office in the Headquarters Building when BLAMMO there was a a female spruce grouse right outside my window. I got a couple of quick and dirty iPhone shots, but I also accepted a universal truth: after you have finally seen and experienced a life long nemesis bird, you will see then everywhere and all the time. 

Only I didn’t. 

I would’t see another spruce grouse again until almost two months later when the person I’ve been dating came to visit. Spruce grouse was still their nemesis but I wasn’t foolish enough to guarantee finding the bird. But one night we were out walking one of the sled dogs I was assigned to walk (her name is Party and she’s amazing). Party went on point and there was a spruce grouse next to the road! My friend went after it, got a terrible iPhone photo but got great looks. Party was very upset with how the whole situation was handled. She clearly wanted off leash and to follow my friend to get at the spruce grouse, but I think she thought our interest was in eating it, not just looking at it. I could tell from her tugs on the harness that she was thinking, “No, you’re doing it wrong, let me help you, I’ll totally kill it and we’ll all eat it!”

Afterwards as the two of us celebrated a much sought after lifer with whoops and maybe even a slap on the back, I got this photo of Party. She’s so proud that she found the grouse.

And then it was several weeks until I had my fourth and final spruce grouse encounter. I made a reputation for myself among staff that if you needed to leave town and you had indoor plumbing (especially a bath tub) I was happy to watch your place and feed your pets. 

One of my regulars had a cabin in the woods with a jacuzzi. One day, I noticed birds about the size of a thrush running in the grassy driveway. I was ready to dismiss them at Swainson’s thrushes, but the run was wrong and the shape…wait…that’s kind of a young pheasant shape…no pheasants in Alaska…wrong habitat for ptarmigan…what else…holy crap…SPRUCE GROUSE BABIES!

And there we were. All of us frozen. The grouse realizing something was moving in the driveway that hadn’t been moving before. Me, frozen hoping not to disturb them. Eventually the attention span of youth won and the chicks continued to forage while mom kept a watchful eye on me. I tried to play it cool and grab my scope from inside the cabin to get pictures and video. 

And there we have it, I had a perfect nemesis/life bird experience of the summer:

1. I found a displaying male bird on my own while doing something I love like bike riding.

2. I got a female outside my office.

3. I got to show someone else who needed spruce grouse (with the magic of a sled dog).

4. I got to see a female with chicks.

Who knows if I’ll ever see one in Minnesota. And goodness knows that I have received plenty of good natured ribbing that I can’t really count spruce grouse until I’ve seen them in Minnesota.

But the big takeaway that I have is that some birds just need to happen. You can chase them all you want, but at the end of the day, the only way to get them is to let go and just let them happen. And when the time is right, they eventually will happen for you.