West Trip part 2

Where was I....

After my conference in Rapid City , SD, I again met up with the leader from the bird field trip and he graciously offered to chauffeur me around for another day of birding.  While in the field trip we were limited by the preset route; now we could go anywhere and had already done the Black Hills before.  So, this time we set out to do the lowlands with a quick stop at the base of some hills where Pinyon Jay had been seen before.  We lucked out for Pinyon Jay but did have a nice bit of activity.  Black-billed Magpie, House Finch, and Cedar Waxwings were all moving around the pines. 

My bird host Gene at our first stop

From there we headed out into the agricultural areas and to a seasonal pond.  We got lucky with water and birds. 

Seasonal pond- American Avocets and such..

The most important for me was Wilson's Phalarope (lifer)!  Not a great picture but it will work. 

Wilson's Phalarope

While staring at the pond there were a couple of Upland Sandpipers that let me know, they would rather I got back into the car and leave them ALONE!

Upland Sandpiper

While distracted by me the Uppies didn't pay attention to the real threats and one almost 'bought the farm' when this guy showed up....

Red-tailed Hawk

Fly away Upland Sandpiper!!!

Luckily, the Red-winged Blackbirds were there to help chase the Red-tailed Hawk away. 

 

Call me weird but I did get a couple of life birds on my trip that I didn't want.  (What????).  Not being a huge 'lister' I'm not compelled to see every bird possible at every spot.  And the truth is there are just some birds I want to see at home!  These are the few that aren't everywhere in CT but can be found on random occasions.  And they are birds that seem to be avoiding me.  One of these species flew across our path while heading through a little wooded area near a farm.  It was a Red-headed Woodpecker (lifer).  But since we saw another one too I guess I can't complain too much.  No picture because they really are bad.

We decided to head east a bit but on the way this eagle caught our eye.  We never got close enough for good looks or photos and this is about the best.  We called it a Bald Eagle but now I begin to wonder....  What do you think?

The eagle:  Bald?  Golden?

Once we made it out to the east of Rapid City, we poked along in some more fields and enjoyed quite a bit of nature, not all birdy either.

Thanks to the fences and fence posts, we did get some fantastic views of Horned Larks...

Horned Lark

Lark Buntings (lifer).....

Lark Bunting

and Grasshopper Sparrows!

Grasshopper Sparrow

Probably the cutest stop of the day was as we headed back into town, right after we almost made a Gray Partridge (lifer) road kill around a bend in the road; we found a nice colony of prairie dogs (awww)

Black-tailed prairie dog

Do you kow what will reuse prairie dog holes?  That's right Burrowing Owls. (awww how cute!)

Burrowing Owl

And what trip to South Dakota would be complete without a picture of pronghorn antelopes. (ps... they aren't really antelopes) 

The un-antelope antelope..  Antilocapra americana 

West Trip part 1

I recently ran into a birder friend who quickly chastised me for not having blogged in awhile.  (Thanks Jeff!)  And it inspired me to pull out the keyboard, dust off my thumb drive, and see what I could come up with.  As of late, I haven't been doing a whole lot of birding around town and had no idea what to even blog about.  Then I had an epiphany (more like I had a moment of stupidity before becoming normal again), I just went birding out West!!

So without further ado, here is the first installment of a likely three part series of blog posts on birding the middle of the country.  To be more precise, it will cover two days of birding in South Dakota outside of Rapid City and then a few random shots from travels through North Dakota and Montana. (Ok it was a little more ado).

Mid-June I set out for a day on a birding field trip with other conference attendees.  One of the perks in working in natural history is that you do fun field trips at conferences like that.  We headed into the Black Hills-

That's what a trail looks like in the Black Hills.  I have previously mentioned to the leader, one of my target birds, and we spent substantial time trying to chase it down.  Here's what the nest looks like-

Know what the bird is yet?  Welllllll it's gray and brown and likes to hang out in streams.....

It's an American Dipper!  We found a few adults although none were willing to let us get close enough for a good shot.  I'll take it all the same.  I did get a couple of other life birds as well..  Here's one of those-

This male Black-headed Grosbeak was standing guard over his lady as she sat on a nest a few feet off of a well travelled path.  Almost every stop we made had either Black-headed Grosbeak or Red-eyed Vireo singing.  Luckily, even the vireos cooperated with an ok picture-

Probably my favorite stop of the day was up on top of a hill on the side of a dirt road.  There wasn't a huge showing of spectacular birds or anything it just had a cool feel to the place.  I think it has something to do with the pine trees.  We did see some Chipping Sparrows and an American Crow but they aren't in this picture-

Let's see, life birds on the day for me included:  American Dipper, Black-headed Grosbeak, Red-naped Sapsucker, Mountain Bluebird, and Western Wood-Pewee.  I really wanted Pinyon Jay and Lark Bunting but we got skunked.  Check in for the next installment to see if we found them on a day of birding post-conference.   Here's a cute little Veery that popped out to say 'Hi!' to us. 

Ooops almost forgot about the FUNNEST part of the day.  A thunderstorm came through but instead of soaking us with water, it covered everything in a layer of hail!.

And one other lesson I learned... when trying to decide where to go, just ask the Western Meadowlarks.