A collection of thoughts and photos of my life and work in the northern Great Plains of North America (and occasionally other places in the world).
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Prairie Birding
This morning Dad and I took a visiting birder from Australia out to find a few birds that he came to Fort Peck to find. Phil and Dad had tried yesterday to find Sprague's Pipits, Baird's Sparrows and Chestnut-collared Longspurs but didn't have much luck in the BLIZZARD that struck yesterday morning (honest, it was a white-out with about four inches of slush on the road - mostly gone by the afternoon). They managed to find only the Chestnut-collared Longspur.
This morning we tried again and had much better luck. We found a number of Sprague's Pipits singing right away, including one that showed up on a rock right next to us and sang a bit. I was pretty sure we could find the pipits, but I was less sure about the Baird's Sparrow because I had yet to find one this year, but at least they were due. We lucked out just a bit further down the road and had a gorgeous bird singing a little bit away. That was all within the first 15 minutes of arriving at the site. We decided to head south (and I took a bit more time off from work because it is addictive showing people new birds that they would really like to see) to find three other species Phil was looking for - Mountain Plover, McCown's Longspur, and Lark Bunting.
We found the Lark Bunting right away, right next to the road and then headed out to the plover and longspur spot. I predicted we would find a McCown's right away but instead we found a Mountain Plover first. Right after that came our first of many McCowns, which we were able to spend quite a bit of time watching foraging in the road. We headed down the road a couple more miles and found another Mountain Plover. We turned around and headed back to town and spotted two more Mountain Plovers. All before 10:00 am. And most of our time was spent driving from on site to the other! I think that Phil and Dad had a good morning. I know I did.
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