As a follow up to last week’s column, we had a wonderful road trip—we visited with four of our children and four of our grandchildren. We spent time in Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Colorado, before returning to Prescott, driving over 3,200 miles.
I had no problem seeing the state bird for Wyoming in Wyoming. It is the western meadowlark, and they were everywhere! However, I struck out in my effort to see the state bird of South Dakota in South Dakota—the ring-necked pheasant. I also missed out on seeing the state bird of Colorado in Colorado—the lark bunting. Interestingly, I saw lark buntings in both Wyoming and in South Dakota, just not in Colorado.
I have to say, I really enjoyed our time in the southwestern corner of South Dakota. The Black Hills region is absolutely beautiful! We spent a lot of time in Custer National Forest, taking in the scenery and wildlife, including mountain goats, bison, pronghorn, oh, and a few birds too!
One of my favorite birding experiences was finding an active golden eagle’s nest on a cliff face. There were two fledglings—one was out of the nest, and one was still in the nest. Using my Swarovski spotting scope, we were able to see the juvenile out of the nest when it dropped his food over the edge of the cliff on two different occasions, just like a baby throwing food off of his highchair tray onto the floor!
One aspect of birding in South Dakota that was so intriguing was the overlap of species considered to be western birds with species considered to be eastern birds. While we were geographically on the eastern side of the Continental Divide, I felt we were still technically in the west.
One of the “eastern” bird species I saw was the “classic” blue jay, the jay I saw as a young boy growing up in Massachusetts. The name blue jay is often used by non-birders to describe jays in general, kind of like saying “seagull” when in fact, there are many different gull species.
There are three jay species here in the Arizona Central Highlands area—western scrub jay, Steller’s jay, and pinyon jay. While they are all jays, and have an extensive amount of blue in their plumage, none of the jays in our area are “blue jays,” in the sense of the actual species name.
Some of the other common eastern species I saw were American robin, American goldfinch, black capped chickadees, gray catbird, great-crested flycatcher, eastern kingbird, eastern bluebird, orchard oriole, common grackles and downy woodpeckers.
Of course, many of the bird species I saw are birds typically found in the west, such as black-billed magpie, Lewis’s woodpecker, white-throated swift, red-naped sapsucker, western meadowlark, Bullock’s orioles, western wood pewee and Cordilleran flycatcher.
One of the things I really liked about birding in South Dakota was the diversity of habitats, which lends itself to a diversity of bird species. There are extensive grasslands (including the 600,000-acre Buffalo Gap National Grassland) abundant riparian areas, prairie potholes (small wetlands), and mountainous, forested habitats.
Birding in each habitat yielded a different species list. When I spent time in a grassland habitat, I saw things like burrowing owls, meadowlarks, sparrows, lark buntings, loggerhead shrike and common nighthawks.
When I spent time birding in Custer National Forest, which is high elevation forested mountains, I saw species such as Swainson’s thrush, red-naped sapsuckers, red crossbills, red-breasted nuthatches, house wrens and Townsend’s solitaire.
As any good birder knows, the key to seeing a wide variety of birds is to spend time in a variety of habitats.
Until next week, Happy Birding!
Eric Moore is the owner of The Lookout, in Prescott, where you will find a Hallmark Gold Crown Store, wild bird products, and Vortex and Swarovski optics. Eric has been an avid birder for over 55 years. Eric can be contacted at eric@thelookoutaz.com.
