Blog #5. North Dakota and Minnesota Prairies

18-20 May 2020

I rose early at the Green Valley campsite in Glendive, Montana, and broke camp and drove east to Theodore Roosevelt National Park (south unit), adjacent to the tourist town of Medora, ND. I was here last year and much enjoyed the stay. 

This morning I found that the Cottonwood Campground was closed, but part of the road system was open. So I drove the roads in search of wildlife. The deciduous trees still have that wintery look—no bud break! This is because of elevation. Higher and colder... I did find Mule Deer and Bison, but no Sprague’s Pipit, a species that has haunted me (I had had a single glimpse of a flying bird on the Bentonite Road).

The two Black-tailed Prairie-Dog colonies in the Park were busy with spring activity, so I spent most of my time there, hoping for other creatures attracted to the activity. Black-billed Magpies and a Western Kingbirds were about all...

I left the Park and drove east on I-94 to Bismarck, where I stopped for lunch and some trip planning. The wind on the prairie was ripping this morning. I stopped for gasoline at Richarton and the wind pulled the door out of my hand as I opened it and nearly ripped it off the frame—gusting to some 40 mph...

    American Bittern

Searching online, and making some calls, I found an open state park 6 miles south Mandan, just to the southwest of Bismarck. This is where I will spend the evening tent-camping. Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park is the site of a former US Army Fort, and before that a Mandan Indian village, right on the west bank of the Missouri River. The first post commander of the expanded fort in 1876 was Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer. It was from this base that he launched the Great Sioux War of 1876-77, which led to his death at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

    which cottontail? 

The Park is nicely situated and there are some nice Cottonwood stands that attract migrant songbirds. The river itself was pretty quiet, bird-wise. I spent the afternoon and evening bicycling around the park in search of birdlife. The wind continued...the mortal enemy of bird-watchers!

    White-faced Ibis flock

The next morning I broke camp and set out to the eastward to visit three sites where Sprague’s Pipit had been reported this spring. These sites produced none of the desired pipits.

    Ring-necked Pheasant cock

I also visited an eBird site near Bismarck that had reported Hudsonian Godwit, but, again, no luck. Then I drove east to Fargo, ND, and visited another eBird site for HUGO, and again, no luck.

    Western Meadowlark

I spent the night camping in urban Lindenwood Park in downtown Fargo, right next to I-94. My tent was set within 75 meters of the busy highway. Thank heavens the sound of rushing cars became white noise in the night. I used my time in Fargo to wash clothes in a laundromat and also to scout out sites that had reported Greater Prairie-Chicken, a bird I wanted to photograph in display.

    Trumpeter Swans

Early the next morning I broke camp in the dark in Fargo and drove east to Felton Prairie, Shrike Unit, in the prairie of western Minnesota. This is a pretty site, with some nice habitat.

     Bobolinks (male above, female below)

No sign of Prairie-Chickens, but I did spend time communing with a breeding pair of Marbled Godwits, and also Sedge Wrens, Bobolinks, Western Meadowlarks, Trumpeter Swans, and winnowing Wilson’s Snipes. No sign of the Le Conte’s Sparrows that had also been reported on eBird. In late May, the prairie is bursting with bird song in the early morning, and is a lovely place to be.

    Marbled Godwit at Felton Prairie

Next, I head east into the boreal forests of Minnesota, to witness the arrival of the migrant songbirds at Greenwood Lake and Sax-Zim Bog. This will be reported in my next Blog.

      Spotted Towhee in Makoshika State Park, Glendive, MT

Blog #4. Glendive, Montana. 17 May 2020

The Hell Creek Formation, Dinos, and the K-T Boundary

    Adult male Lazuli Bunting, common the the dry lands of Glendive, MT

I had made an arrangement with Shana Baisch to visit her ranch to have a look at her rich fossil-bearing badlands just east of the town of Glendive. Most (all?) of her ranch lies in the Hell Creek Formation—mainly terrestrial and subtropical upper Cretaceous and lower Paleogene sediments famous for their dinosaur fossils: T. rex, Triceratops, Edmontosaurus, and more. On my 2019 field trip I had tried to visit Shana’s dig site but got rained out. This year the weather was favorable and she took off a Sunday morning to show me one of her nearby badland sites.

    Shana Baisch on pasture leading to badlands (in background)

For several generations, the Baisch’s have run several hundred head of cattle on some 13,000 acres of upland prairie and badlands. Shana’s mother-in-law Marge, got the fossil bug decades ago, and her interest and dedication led the family into some serious fossil exploration and excavation. This is permissible because the sites where they collect are privately-owned land.

    female Bullock's Oriole

Shana has taken the lead on the fossil work for the last five or so years. Each summer and fall the family hosts a stream of visitors to their badland collecting field trips. I was experiencing that special experience (to learn more or plan a visit, visit her website at: http://www.dailydinosaurdigs.com/). Sadly, the 2020 summer season has had to be cancelled because of the COVID-19 threat.

    We could drive right up to the fossil-rich badlands

After I arrived at her ranch from my campsite at Green Valley Campground, just off I-94, Shana and I drove up through a winding prairie trace of a ranch track to a low mound that featured a long-term dig they were carrying out. 

    Triceratops excavation site

Here was the skeleton of a Triceratops just below the surface of this low hilltop. Baisch and her team were patiently extracting the skeleton from the Hell Creek sediments. It is painstaking work, to say the least. They have been working on this dig for more than a year.

    Mandible of the Triceratops

Here (above) one sees a mandible of the Triceratops still needing to be fully extracted from the sediments. This is a multi-season effort, involving various players—both volunteers and experts.

                            rib bone of the Triceratops

Here (above) is another bone of the Triceratops. Several years ago Shana and her team needed heavy equipment to extract the giant skull of a Triceratops from another site on the ranch. That skull is still under meticulous preparation in a ranch work building.

    Shana, near where she recently found the T. rex tooth

After examining the Triceratops skeleton excavation site, we drove up into the badlands and had a look around. We searched for fossils eroding from the cliffs or hilltops. It is not uncommon to come upon fossil dinosaur bone or turtle shell right on the surface, ready to pick up and admire. 

    Fossil dino bone right on the surface of the bare ground

Shana pointed out various dinosaur and other vertebrate fossils that were weathering out of the matrix. It was amazing to see these 66-million-year-old remnants of past life. Also we encountered agatized wood and petrified wood.

    agatized wood

We hiked up to a dark band in the sediments that apparently is the K-T Boundary (the sediment layer memorializing the great asteroid strike that ended the Cretaceous and ushered in the Paleogene (=Tertiary) Era. It was remarkable to be digging into the narrow carbon-black layer exhibiting what looked like sparkly coal-black fragments, perhaps caused by the great fireball. The April 2019 New Yorker story entitled “The Day the Dinosaurs Died” provides a bone-chilling account of what exactly transpired when the asteroid struck. It’s worth a read!

    dark layer is apparently the K-T boundary, marking the moment when the asteroid struck

    close-up of the K-T boundary - everything burned up and carbonized

Just two weeks before my visit, Shana had found a large tooth of a T. rex in the very cliff where we were clambering about. The tooth had just worked its way out of a cliff (this reminded me of finding large Megalodon shark teeth that erode out of the sediments of Calvert Cliffs in Maryland. Holding that T. rex tooth is something else! What a find!

    tooth of a T. rex

I end with a series of additional images of the unforgettable field experience for those who love birds and their close relatives, the dinosaurs.

     dino bone, picked up off the surface

    long bone of a dinosaur, again, weathering out of the surface sediments

     colorful sediments stacked up -- the Hell Creek Formation!

    fossil turtle shell

    a whole small fossil turtle, weathering out of the surface sediments

     another long bone of a dino, weathering out of the sediments

Blog #3. Montana – Bentonite Road

14-16 May 2020

I drove from Lake City, South Dakota, northward into North Dakota, searching and finding wetlands with Hudsonian Godwit flocks. The highlight was a flock of 35 HUGOs west of Verona, ND. The wetland also included nesting Avocets, as well as Black Terns and Stilt Sandpipers. After getting my fill of Hudsonian Godwits, I decided to make a break for eastern Montana, where I would spend a couple of mornings driving the Bentonite Road, famous for its high prairie birdlife, and that other godwit of interest--the Marbled. Also there are two other special shorebirds out there that I wanted to spend time with.

I called ahead to the Trails West Campground in Glasgow, Montana, and booked the only available tent site. The Campground is mainly long-term RV residents (very common for private sites that combine trailers with camping). Many Americans live essentially off the grid by inhabiting trailer parks permanently, because this is the cheapest way to live.

I saw this throughout my trip, because for me staying in private campground/RV sites offered the best of services (the state and national parks were either closed or their amenities were shut down—no hot shower, not much of anything). The virus shut down most of camping across my route, so I spent a lot of timing trying to figure where I could camp near to the birds.

I arrived in Glasgow at 7:30PM and set up camp and made a late dinner as the sky darkened. I was now in Mountain Time. Glasgow is west of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and north of the Fort Peck Reservoir of the Missouri. This is high plains.

    Shoveler drake

The next morning I rose before dawn and headed out on the gravel Bentonite Road, which travels west and south into a mass of dry upland prairie, mainly BLM land. It is well-featured on eBird—that’s how I found out about it. The road is named for a now-defunct plant that extracted bentonite from a deposit here. Bentonite is essentially a type of clay that has many industrial and agricultural and food-product uses. Go figure!

    Western Meadowlark

The Western Meadowlarks sang lustily from every corner of the prairie and the Horned Larks danced on the gravel road. 

I was here for three shorebirds—Long-billed Curlew, Marbled Godwit, and Mountain Plover. All three breed in the spare and dry habitat transected by the road. 

There also were quite a few prairie ponds along the way, which hosted Wilson’s Phalaropes and many ducks.

    Lek display of Sharp-tailed Grouse

I stopped periodically to listen for the sounds of curlews or Sprague’s Pipits. At one stop I glassed the grassland and I came upon a roadside lek of Sharp-tailed Grouse. What a surprise. I had forgotten this species was here. 

There were fourteen birds at the lek (mainly males?). I watched the males do their dance and occasionally do battle with each other.

At one point a single curious individual came over to check me out. That was a surprise for these wary birds.

    Marbled Godwit    

Next I came upon a pair of Marbled Godwits in a wet meadow in a low spot in the prairie. These are the larger cousin of the Hudsonian, and they breed here rather than in the tundra. They are a big handsome bird with plumage much like that of the Long-billed Curlew—the main bird I was here to encounter.

In another twenty minutes I was out of the car photographing a Curlew. This is a grand bird, with a bill that challenges reality. Pairs of these birds breed across the high plains where the prairie is intact.

    Long-billed Curlew checking out my wheels

The loss of original habitat has substantially impacted the species across its breeding zone in the western US. The American Bird Conservancy is working on the species with private ranchers to counter the decline of the species.

For birders who like shorebirds, the Long-billed Curlew sits at the top of the list (along with Hudsonian Godwit) for desirability. I never tire of seeing the species. It is most easily seen while it winters along the Western and Gulf Coasts of the US. Seeing the bird on the breeding habitat was one of the objectives of this field trip.

Mountain Plover was the next treat of the morning. I glimpsed a pair of birds up a dry wash behind where I had been studying a Curlew. They disappeared as I hiked up to see them. They are both shy and difficult to pick out of the habitat.

Over the two mornings out on the Road, I encounter the Plover five times. It was initially a will-o-the-wisp but once I got the hang of the species’ habits I had more luck finding them. I was surprised to find that both Mountain Plovers and Killdeers were scattered up and down the road. 

Of course, the Killdeer also occurs in just about every open habitat in the US, whereas the Mountain Plover’s range is highly restricted to very dry plains from Montana and Colorado southward to northern Mexico in the winter.

    Brewer's Sparrow

Songbirds are featured along the Bentonite Road… Many sparrows are here during spring: Chipping, Clay-colored, Brewer’s, Lark, and more. Brewer’s was a species of the far west that I had not seen since 1975, so I was pleased to reacquaint myself with this retiring little creature of the sagebrush.

    Lark Bunting male

Lark Buntings were in full force, the black males with their white wing patch were doing their display flights and singing their rollicking songs.

    Chestnut-collared Longspur male

Chestnut-collared Longspurs were quite common, but difficult to photograph. I never really got close to this species.

    McCown's Longspur male (this and following)

I was eager to photograph the Chestnut-collared’s cousin—McCown’s Longspur. This is another dry plains specialist, found in the same places where one finds Mountain Plover.

McCown’s started showing up by Mile 15 on the long and winding road. I found them in clusters, and the males liked to spend time on the roadbed itself, for some reason (not so for the Chestnut-collared). I saw males displaying on the ground to females and also doing song flights.

Yes, the high plains is also a place for Pronghorn, which were rather commonplace here.

I also encountered a few Mule Deer. But the Horned Larks (below) were everywhere...

I drove out 24 miles into the heart of this vast rolling prairie landscape. It was awe-inspiring. Difficult to capture in a photograph—truly Big Sky Country.