20090612 – Medicine Lake

20090612 – Medicine Lake

Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge was our goal for today. We accessed this from MT16 ~30 miles North from Culbertson. We were greeted by two very helpful staff. One, Jerry, spent 15 minutes with us describing the refuge programs, how they are maintaining the native prairie by various methods, including prescribed burning and grazing, some restoration projects they are doing, and many birding highlights on the refuge and in the vicinity. He also gave some instruction on the behavior of the various sparrows that we hoped to see.

We spent the day driving the roads through the refuge, stopping often to identify new birds, going through an ID process, then moving on a few yards to start that all over again. We used the spotting scope a lot.

Perhaps 75% of the refuge is water and wetlands, and contains an important nesting place for American White Pelicans-Jerry said there were ~1000 nests there last year. The whole area is very quiet and there were some extended periods during which we heard only ourselves and the natural sounds of the place—birds, water, insects and wind. Visually, the refuge is open grasslands. Excluding some fences and informational signs and the roads themselves, there was often little evidence of human intervention. Power lines and trash thrown from cars and dropped by visitors was virtually non-existent. We left the refuge around 5:00, picked up a few groceries, did laundry, ate green salad and potato soup in the RV, reviewed the day's birds and at 10:15 have closed down except for this blog writing.

Birds: Chestnut-collared Longspur, Upland Sandpiper, Canada Goose, Western Meadowlark, Northern Harrier, Northern Shoveler, Wilson's Phalarope, Killdeer, Tree Swallow, Red-winged Blackbird, Western Grebe, Barn Swallow, Western Kingbird, Eastern Kingbird, Clay-colored Sparrow, Ring-necked Pheasant, Baird's Sparrow, LaConte's Sparrow, Bobolink, Redhead, Lesser Scaup, Pied-billed Grebe, American Wigeon, Starling, Brewer's Blackbird, Eared Grebe, Gadwall, Yellow-headed Blackbird, Song Sparrow, Marsh Wren, Brown-headed Cowbird, American Bittern, Grasshopper Sparrow, American Avocet, Blue-winged Teal, Spotted Sandpiper, Wilson's Snipe, Mourning Dove, Lark Sparrow, Least Flycatcher, Chipping Sparrow, Yellow Warbler, Horned Lark.