Okay, so that joke isn't that funny... but we did discover quite a few unique birds this morning in North Dakota and then hit the road and found more interesting birds in Montana! Some of our best sightings in ND this morning, however, were NOT birds!! I spotted a moose at Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge and we saw Richardson's Ground Squirrels and Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrels! The moose was quite incredible and Lostwood also produced three more life birds for me: Willet, Baird's Sparrow, and Piping Plover.
Within two hours of crossing the border into Montana, I already had FOUR life birds!!! Chestnut-collared Longspurs and Lark Buntings were displaying in a field along the driveway of Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge. California Gulls breed there and I saw well over 100 of them along with American White Pelicans and plenty of Western Grebes! My fourth life bird was along US Route 2 and we turned around to see it! I never realized Black-billed Magpies were so big and had such a long tail! I didn't get a great look before/while it flew, but I was still amazed!!
As we were driving through Montana, I noticed that Cookie was lying in Chip's spot (Cookie and Chip are Margaret's dogs that are along on the trip!) I looked back to see where Chip was and it seemed that he was gone! We searched around and no Chip anywhere... I finally looked under the table that was folded down and there he was! It was pretty funny!!
In all it was a pretty great day!! I left North Dakota with 102 species of birds and a nice list of mammals as well! Margaret is up to 417 species for the year, and although I am not actively keeping a year list, my life list is continually growing with 29 new birds added since the start of the trip!!
