I’m back in Pierre, South Dakota again. I picked up a few more birds in Nebraska but since I’ve been back in South Dakota, I have picked up 47 more species. Today, I got the 300th, a pair of Common Terns. Just a few minutes ago, 301 with a Common Nighthawk fly over. I missed a lot of migrants though, I found hardly any migrant warblers, vireos, and sparrows. I missed out on Harris’s Sparrows and others that I expected to get. I will have to try for some of those in the fall. But, I’m still doing pretty good, I have almost double the number of species I had this time last year.
By far the best bird I’ve seen since getting back to SD is this Red Knot. Dan Svingen found it on the Fort Pierre National Grassland and it stayed long enough for several local birders to see it. I have seen eight Red Knots in South Dakota in my lifetime. Also present were a good number of Short-billed Dowitchers. There were a lot of shorebirds present. Of the few migrant warblers I saw, I did manage a couple of Magnolia Warblers. I also got Blackpoll and Tennessee warblers. Then there are the local breeding warblers, like this American Redstart. On my way through Nebraska, I stopped at Valentine National Wildlife Refuge for a short walk. I saw these flowers along a trail, different than anything I’ve seen in the northern plains. This is Manystem Pea, Lathyrus polymorphus. It is a legume that is found in sandy soils of Nebraska, northeast Colorado and southwest South Dakota.
