Medicine Lake
NWR is on the edge of what is commonly
referred to as the Prairie Pothole Region. The Prairie Pothole Region is an area of grasslands that is filled with many small depressions, or potholes, which were left as the glaciers receded across North America 45 million years ago. In the spring these potholes form ponds and wetlands when they fill with run off from the melting winter snow. These shallow wetlands are perfect
habitat for millions of dabbling ducks as well as shorebirds.
With the area being dryer this year, then it was last year, there were not only less waterfowl around to photograph, but we also saw less shorebirds then last year.
We did find a few killdeer, both in the fields and on the shoreline of some of the lakes.
The killdeer is one of the most widespread and successful shorebirds around. This is probably due to its willingness to share habitat with man and nest close to people. The nest is typically just a scrape in the ground and the killdeer will often defend the nest from predators by faking a wing injury and luring the predator away from the nest.
There were also a good number of Wilson's and red-necked
phalarope. It was fun to watch them fly together. The way that they seemed to move in
unison, all changing direction together in what appeared as one motion, made the 50 to 100 birds appear almost like a single entity.
The Wilson's
phalarope breeds across the west and central portions of North America and winters in South America. During migration between the wintering and breeding grounds they gather at staging areas like the Great Salt Lake and Mono Lake. Declining numbers at these staging areas, over the past 20 years have prompted the Audubon Society to put the species on their watch list.
There are basically 2 different populations of
willets in North America. The eastern
willet are smaller with stouter bills and are strictly coastal all year long. Western birds are larger. They breed in freshwater in the west central United States and southern Canada. During the winter months they will migrate to their wintering grounds on the east or west coast.
Long-billed
dowitchers can often be seen in the western portions of the US during migration. They migrate from their wintering grounds in the southern coastal regions of the US and in Mexico to their breeding grounds in northern Canada and Alaska. At the breeding grounds it is the male, and not the female, who takes care of the chicks after they hatch. Now there is someone who really deserves a Father's Day card.
Marbled godwits breed in Montana, North and South Dakota and southern Canada. They spend their winters in the coastal US and Mexico.
Later this year, in August, I will return to the Prairie Pothole Region, this time South Dakota, to do an intense shorebird identification workshop. As always I will have a camera with me and hopefully I will bring back a lot more shorebird photos to share from that trip.
I am not really great with my sparrow identification so someone please correct me if I get one of the sparrows wrong. I believe that the one above is a vesper sparrow.
I think that this one is a clay-colored sparrow. Sparrows are the hardest type of birds for me to ID. They are all small and mostly brown with very subtle differences. Maybe after shorebird class later this summer I can find a class to help me better ID sparrows.
We have horned lark here in MN but mostly I see them from a distance on the side of roads during the winter. This horned lark let me get some nice shots.
Brown thrashers are a bit more common in the eastern US. The 3 or 4 that we spotted at Medicine Lake were in the western part of their typical range.
Once in a while we will spot a yellow-headed blackbird mixed in with red-winged black birds in the eastern portion of Minnesota but they are more common in the western half of the state. Out in Montana there were more yellow-heads then there were redwings.
The western kingbird is the cousin of the eastern kingbird that we typically see in Minnesota. However the range of the western kingbird has been moving east and now includes parts of western Minnesota.
We saw, and heard, quite a few western meadowlarks in the park and most of the places which we traveled through in Montana. In eastern Minnesota we can see either the eastern or western meadowlark, but these days, with most of the large open field being devoured for development, I rarely see either type. It is too bad because it was really nice to hear them singing as we were driving down the road. 
