Left at 5.30am on our Sprague’s Pipit hunt. Had some recent info from a friend and headed off in search of the correct site, and after a slight error caused by Google Maps taking us 14 miles the wrong way we eventually arrived a little later than we should have! This section of shortgrass prairie looked perfect but I was a little worried we couldn’t hear any pipits singing when we pulled up. So we decided to split up and walk across the prairie in search of this ever-elusive pipit , as this was one of the few areas that we had come across that wasn’t fenced off. Within a few minutes a pipit began songflighting and it proceeded to fly right overhead before dropping like a stone into the grass in front of us. We had pretty decent views of it skulking in the grass before it flew around us twice and then rose high overhead for another songflighting session. Wow what a result!
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| Sprague's Pipit songflighting right over our heads |
During the morning we were amazed at the sheer number of ponds and lakes out here in the prairies where we saw good numbers of all the usual wildfowl, as well as an American Bittern, Great Egret, a late lingering Snow Goose, with another in a northbound migrating flock of Canada Geese flying overhead. So we then drove to a Nelson’s Sparrow site but drew a blank, although our second American Bittern of the morning was seen feeding right out in the open. We had thoroughly enjoyed driving round the prairies seeing numerous species on the multitude of lakes and ponds that dominate the prairie landscape here.
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| American Bittern |
We then drove a couple of hours to Grand Forks for the night and headed out into the prairie in search of Nelson’s Sparrow once again, but this time we had much more success and finally tracked down a singing bird at 9pm with the sun just about to set below the horizon to round off a good day.
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