I’m still here in the Black Hills. It is has been pretty cool and also quite a bit of rain, one afternoon I got hailed on, lots of hail but it was small. I’m up to 332 species of birds for the year. At my campsite, the pine cone crop is nonexistent, but I can drive about 5 miles north and there are lots of cones, and that is where I got my latest species, a Red Crossbill. The weather looks suitable for some astrophotography for the next few nights, so if that works out I will be staying up late.
I was at Mud Springs when I got this male Red Crossbill. At first it stayed high in the trees, as I was about to leave it flew down low and landed on a short pine. It actually let me walk up pretty close to it. I went to Newcastle for groceries and on the way drove up to the Elk Mountain Lookout. In past years, I’ve found nesting Lewis’s Woodpeckers up there and this year was no exception. By the 4th of July they are always feeding young. At my favorite bird photography spot, an Ovenbird posing on a lichen covered log. Western Tanagers are easy at my photo spot, this female came in very close, the male is out of focus behind her. And here is the male. While hiking out from the photo spot, I got this Juniper Hairstreak on a coneflower.
I left the Slim Buttes on Wednesday and headed for Spearfish Canyon. I got a campsite at Rod and Gun Campground. It has been a few years since I’ve in this part of the hills and it didn’t take long to remember why. There are ATV’s and people everywhere. The development of Roughlock Falls has done nothing but attract more people. Anyone who wants some quiet must be there at sunrise, then one can have a couple of hours of quiet for some birding. At any rate, I was glad to leave. I am back at my quiet spot in the southern Black Hills. It is free (Rod and Gun is $21.50 a night) and quiet. The logging is pretty much over or has moved far to the south. This morning I hiked up Hell Canyon and picked up a Lewis’s Woodpecker for my year list. At Jumpoff Spring I added a Townsend’s Solitaire. I’m up to 330 species now for my year list.
One of my target birds at Roughlock Falls was a Veery, which had been reported on eBird. It didn’t take long to find it early Thursday morning. American Dippers have nested at the falls for many years, probably centuries. I found this one roosting over the waterfall and caught it winking its white eyelid. It is thought that dippers use the white eyelid to signal each other. In their noisy environment, visual signals work better than calls. I also visited Ward Draw, hoping for some other birds I needed and got several Golden-crowned Kinglets. Ward Draw was a pleasant change from Roughlock Falls, no one else was there. In Ward Draw I saw lots of Twinflower, a common flower in spruce forest of the Black Hills. On the Rimrock Trail above Rod and Gun Campground I came across a few Wood Lily. A Bee-mimic Robber Fly. I don’t think I have ever seen one before. This was in Ward Draw.
I’ve been checking out the area, picking up a few more new birds. Yesterday there was an eBird alert on a Cassin’s Kingbird just 20 miles away, so I went to look for it this morning. I did not find it and neither did another birder who came to look for it. Cassin’s Kingbird is quite rare in South Dakota but I saw lots of them in Arizona and New Mexico this spring. I did finally find a Mountain Bluebird though, which brought me up to 324 species.
I found a pair of Long-billed Curlews on the Park Road, they must have had young ones hidden in the grass as they kept harassing me. This may be the best flight shot I’ve ever got of a Long-billed Curlew. A mother Pronghorn with her twins. There are lots of Pronghorns around, this just happened to be close to the road and in nice light!I was at the pond in Deer Draw this morning, when I heard a slurping sound. I crept up to the pond and saw this cow Elk in the water, as soon as she saw me she took off. Photo in bad light. Yellow Avens (Geum aleppicum) with a visiting Nomad Bee. Yellow Avens is a common flower that is native across temperate North America, Europe and Asia. A Badger I saw way out on the prairie, I could not get closer. Weidemeyer’s Admiral on Woodbine. Wilson’s Snipe on a post by a small wetland. The 324th species for my year list, a Mountain Bluebird.
I’m currently in the Slim Buttes of Harding County. I spent a few days at a Shadehill Reservoir campground, near Lemmon, South Dakota. The Grand River National Grassland is in this area and is a good place to get Baird’s Sparrow. I left there this morning and its a good thing as that campground just got hit by a severe thunderstorm, with large hail and strong wind. It is nice here. So far no mosquitoes. I’m up to 322 species of birds for the year now. It is getting harder to find new ones, but I seem to get one or two every day since I left Pierre.
Finding a Caspian Tern was surprisingly difficult but I finally got one on Discovery Island while I was still in Pierre. A wet Baird’s Sparrow. I only saw three and heard several, the Merlin app picked up more but I couldn’t hear them. A very secretive bird that usually hides in the grass, on this morning I found this one on the road, I assume it was avoiding the wet grass. My 322nd species for the year, Trumpeter Swans at the JB Pond. They have nested there for several years now. A fledgling Chestnut-collared Longspur in the rain. I suspect these young birds were having a hard time staying warm. Some seemed quite lethargic. There were lots of them on the road and I saw some dead ones. A distant shot of a Short-eared Owl. This is another species that I haven’t seen for a long time. I’m hoping for some better opportunities!A Wolf Spider carrying her young. A Silvery Blue butterfly, one of the few butterflies I’ve been able to photograph recently. The Grand River National Grassland has an abundance of wild flowers, I selected this one to show, Yellow Sundrops, Oenothera serrulata.A female Lazuli Bunting that posed nicely for me.
My 2024 year bird list keeps growing, but more slowly. I’m up to 310 species now. Perhaps the most exciting was a Scarlet Tanager on LaFramboise Island. Scarlet Tanagers are not very common in this part of the world. A Dunlin was another good find but I had already seen one in Arizona this year so it didn’t add to my species list.
I got this male Scarlet Tanager yesterday. This morning, Rick and Susan went back with me and we found the male and this time a female. I didn’t get any photos better than this one though. Susan spotted a patch of Meadow Anemones, I haven’t seen this plant in flower for a long time so I had to take a photo. A Blue Grosbeak in the shelterbelt behind the house. I had spotted this bird a few days before but this is the first chance I’ve had to photograph it. I made another trip to the Fort Pierre National Grasslands to pick up a few new species. I got some Greater Prairie Chickens and some Chestnut-collared Longspurs. I found a pair of longspurs that were on a prairie dog mound, this female was preening and fluffing out enough to reveal a brood patch. Here’s the male in flight, not the best photo but not too bad either. In the same area, I got 5 Greater Prairie Chickens but they all flushed at a distance so no photos. An Upland Sandpiper walking through the grass, the yellow flowers are buttercups. Another nice find, a Dunlin at the same wetland the Red Knot was found at a couple of weeks ago. There are only two other records in eBird of a Dunlin on the FPNG. Another first for the year, a Field Sparrow. Here’s a Prairie Rattlesnake I came across in the prairie dog colony. I wanted to get it in better light but it went down a hole before I could get it to move. Nothing special, a Common Yellowthroat, but I really like this sharp image as it clings sideways on a cattail stalk.
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.
I left Bosque del Apache yesterday morning and drove straight through to Timpas, near La Junta, CO. I’ve stayed at Timpas before, it is a Forest Service picnic area/campsite in the Comanche National Grassland, no cell phone service and therefore no internet for me. There is usually no one there and that’s what I found when I got there last night. It was windy and cloudy, but I was still able to find a Cassin’s Sparrow. This morning, the weather was much better, the Cassin’s Sparrows were easy and I got some nice photos. That accomplished, I drove north to Rocky Ford where I picked up a Mississippi Kite (I saw them there last spring too), then north to the Pawnee National Grassland where I was hoping for Thick-billed Longspur (McCown’s Longspur) and Mountain Plover. I got the longspurs but saw no plovers. With a few other new birds for the year, I’m now up to 250 species. Tonight, I’m in the Cabelas RV park in Sidney, NE.
Cassin’s Sparrow on cholla. Early morning light and a nice background, I like it!A closer look at a Cassin’s Sparrow. They aren’t much to look at but they make up for it with their song, given in flight. Timpas is right by a railroad, but there are few trains. The only trains I’ve seen are the Amtrak. One went by last night and another this morning. I was out birding when this one came by so I got a photo with the Scamp in front.
I’m in the Bosque del Apache Birders RV park again. I paid for two nights. I’m doing pretty good on the birds I wanted to get here. I investigated a new place, Water Canyon in the Cibola National Forest about 15 miles west of Socorro. I’ve always wanted to check it out but I’m always towing the camper when I go by and I never want to explore strange Forest Service roads with the Scamp following me. It is actually OK for small campers, there is a campground and there are several dispersed camping sites. Located fairly high in the Magdalena Mountains (almost 7000 ft. elevation), it would be cool place to spend the summer sometime. It is pine forest with some spruce, and lower down juniper and pinyon pine. A small stream runs in the canyon.
Here’s a bird I’ve been hunting for, a Rufous-crowned Sparrow. I found two in The Box Recreation Area, west of Socorro. I got several Mountain Chickadees in Water Canyon.Also in The Box, a colorful Greater Earless Lizard. I haven’t seen one this vivid since my trip to Big Bend National Park. I got a Whimbrel at Bosque del Apache, along with a lot of other birds. Here’s my eBird checklist with more photos. I’ve added 13 species to my year list since arriving here. Now at 245, compared to 154 at this time last year. My best birds were White-tailed Kites and this Whimbrel, both are species I’m not too likely to see again this year. A 1st spring male Bullock’s Oriole at the visitor center. Also at the visitor center, a Twin-spotted Spiny Lizard. I saw one of these last spring at Valley of Fire, but this is a much better photo. I found this female Painted Bunting just across the highway from the visitor center. Not the best photo but good enough for eBird, which declares it rare here. A Black-bellied Plover at the refuge.A flock of Phalaropes, there are two Red-necked Phalarope in the bunch, can you pick them out? The answer is in my eBird checklist media notes.Here it is on the water.
I’m getting ready to head north today. I’m not sure how far I will get but I plan to be in South Dakota by the end of the week, or sooner. I suppose everyone reading this has seen the news coverage of the huge solar storm on Friday night and saw the outbreak of Northern Lights. I could even see it here at latitude 32 degrees. I took a few photos, it was not very spectacular but still, to be able to see it here was extraordinary. According to Spaceweather.com, it was one of the greatest solar storms in the last 500 years.
I drove north a few miles, because a mountain blocks my view of the north from camp. The lights on the horizon are from I-10, about 8 miles north. At times a few rays of the aurora were visible but mostly it was just a bright glow. The camera captures far more color than I could see. Another image, I watched for several hours, but this is about as good as it got. On my morning hike yesterday, I got quite close to this Olive-sided Flycatcher, in nice light. I really like this one! I saw quite a few migrating MacGillivray’s Warblers too. All of them were difficult to photograph, this is the best I got. A Common Ground Dove, the first one I’ve seen in the Granite Gap area. It is not a new bird for the year though, still at 234 species.
I got up at 4 AM, had my coffee and a sandwich and started the long, slow drive to Pinery Canyon, on the west side of the Chiricahua Mountains. A Crescent-chested Warbler had been seen and photographed yesterday, so I thought I better go look for it. I’ve seen this species before, also in the Chiricahua Mountains so I wasn’t too disappointed not to find it today. I had a great morning! Here’s my eBird checklist. I added seven species to my year list, now at 232 species.
My best bird of the day, a Mexican Spotted Owl. It has been many years since I’ve seen one. It won’t show up on my eBird list because it is considered a sensitive species. A pretty bad photo of a Hermit Warbler, but I was glad to see it!I finally caught up to some Red-faced Warblers too. Photography was not very good for most birds, this is the best I could get. Buff-breasted Flycatcher. Another species I haven’t seen for a long time. Here’s the astro project I’ve been working on. Abell 35 was thought to be an ancient planetary nebula, located about 500 light years away in the constellation Hydra. It was eventually determined that Abell 35 was formed from a binary pair of stars and that the wind from those stars formed the bow-shock feature that can be seen in this image. Abell 35 is moving through space at 10 times the speed of sound giving rise to a shock wave that created the nebula.
There were several things working against me, it is very faint, it stays low on the horizon, and it is small. The C8 would have worked better for size, but at f6.3 and with no duoband filter for that scope, it would haven take many more hours of exposure and even then I don’t think it would be very good. As it was, with the 500 f4 and the IDAS Nebula Booster filter, I have more then 6 hours on this. I think it turned out quite well. The night of May 9, I noticed a glow in a place where there should be no glow. In between Arcturus and Spica, I could see it with the unaided eye. I set up a tripod and camera (I wish I had taken the time to set up the tracker too but didn’t) and got this. I posted it on Spaceweather.com and it wasn’t long before other folks were posting it too. It turns out it was probably a satellite fuel dump, illuminated by the sun. If so, this was at very high altitude. Others who saw it reported from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, Missouri, and New York state. The sighting from Chile is pretty incredible, it must have been at a very high altitude.
