Kootenai River Waterfowl Home and Highway

By editor

Near Libby, Lincoln County, Montana

The Kootenai is a home and a highway for birds. Mallards, Canada geese, and common mergansers nest along the edge year-round, working the shallows where food concentrates. When autumn cold locks Canadian lakes, hundreds more arrive—including common goldeneyes—and many winter on the river’s open water after smaller streams freeze.

The marker asks drivers to look and listen. Industrial Libby and the dammed river get most of the region’s headlines. The waterfowl get the quieter claim: that even a working river remains a migration corridor, and that the edge of the current is still a place where nests and wintering flocks negotiate with human traffic.