Trip to Miller Lake, Salt Lake and Big Stone NWR
Highlights include Semipalmated Plover, Western Meadowlarks, Marbled Godwit
My friends Herb Lindsay, Travis Bonovski and I took a trip yesterday
(Saturday)to western Minnesota to Miller Lake in Yellow Medicine County, Salt
Lake and Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge. I had never seen Western or
Clarks Grebes and I had heard that they were common out there. I realized that
it is a bit early the year but we were hopeful. Herb picked me up in Coon
Rapids at 4 a.m. and after picking up Travis we drove straight through to
Miller Lake arriving at about 7 a.m. We saw no other birders to our surprise.
The lake was filled with birds however. We immediately saw Northern Shovelers,
Lesser Scaup, a couple of Pied billed Grebes and a couple of Horned Grebes but
those were the only Grebes that we saw in that lake and we really searched. As
for shore birds we saw pectoral and least sandpipers killdeer and to our
surprise a semipalmated plover. We all took lots of photos of him. Also at the
lake were a couple of yellow headed blackbirds many green winged and blue
winged teal, bufflehead, coot by the hundreds,double crested cormorants,
northern flicker,mallard ducks, ruddy ducks,gadwall, wood duck and red heads.
Next we drove to Salt Lake. On the way there we saw and heard two
western meadowlarks along the road. We also saw what we think was a vesper
sparrow. When we arrived at Salt Lake we went out on the platform on the east
side of the lake and immediately saw a Savanna Sparrow. We had our scopes and
I immediately looked for grebes but again saw only pied billed and horned
grebes. We saw many northern shovelers bunched up on the shore, canvasback,
redheads and several northern harriers. Next we drove to the western side of
the lake, the South Dakota side, and hiked out into the peninsula that divides
the lake. We saw several hundred greater white fronted geese as well as five or
six snow geese and a couple of dark morphed snow geese. some tundra swans,
pintails, many green and blue winged teal, bonaparte’s gulls, wigeon, another
western meadowlark, ruddy ducks and the high point for me a Marbled Godwit. We
first saw him fly from the south east side of the lake towards the platform in
the east then to the north west side of the lake where he landed and was near a
lesser yellowlegs. He stayed there a few minutes then flew straight east and
we didn’t see him again. Thankfully we all got photos. I hadn’t seen one since
a Duluth trip four or five years ago. We then saw some pelicans,
From Salt Lake we went to Big Stone NWR and frankly did not see much.
We did see painted turtles a white throated sparrow and my friends saw an owl
possibly great horned but I did not. We saw an eastern phoebe there near a
pond where there was a platform and we saw northern shovelers and a snapping
turtle and a tree swallow and a cedar waxwing.
All in all we all felt that we had a great trip. Travis did a total count for
the day and came up with 62 then Herb added two with the pintail and brown
headed cowbird so that made 64. Below are some photos.
Ron Taube
Coon Rapids
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ronsthoughts/
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