Birds, Hares, Turtles, and Badgers

My photographic record of our North Dakota trip is spotty. Upon returning to Ohio, I had a huuuge amount of trouble downloading my photos; in fact, trying to force-feed all the images to my overloaded laptop started a series of crashes that defined July for me as a month of extreme technofrustration. It's one of the side effects of becoming a blogger, I think, one of the hidden costs of taking photos of practically everything you do. That translates into a lot of memory, which translates into a smoking-hot laptop that is prone to crashes, which resulted in the loss of a good part of my summer photos. They just vanished, never made it to the hard drive or the backup. Believing I had them all finally shoehorned onto my hard drive and the backup, I deleted them from the camera. I didn't find out until last week that most of my North Dakota bird photos and all--all--of my wild horse photos were deleted. Arguing stallions, nursing foals...landscapes with paints and dapples... I can't think about it without getting teary.

A few remain, a hop-scotch across the prairies, disjointed and spotty. For someone who loves to tell stories with photos, that's a bummer.

As always in the prairie potholes, the birding was incredible. This one flooded field had so many duck and shorebird species we literally didn't know where to start, or where to stop. So we hung out and scoped until our eyes crossed, always finding something new. The field was chock-full of migrating shorebirds, white-rumped sandpipers chief among them.

There were some sanderlings still coming through in high breeding plumage. I wasn't sure whether they were headed north or south! It was a funny June--cold as heck. They might have gone up, seen the ice, and headed back south without even trying to nest.

Quite a different birdie from the white and gray ghost that runs on Carolina beaches in winter, huh?

I've posted lovely Baird's sparrow photos in past years. This is not one of them, but it's all I got in the rain. Baird's sparrow is a specialty of the Potholes festival, one many people travel to North Dakota to add to their life lists. On this day, walking through the sodden prairie vegetation was akin to wading in knee-deep water.


A black-tailed jackrabbit sits in the road, waiting to run.

And sproinks away, all four feet in the air.

A lovely painted turtle crosses a deserted road. How did she get here, in the middle of the prairie?


Her kind have always been here.

We moved her where no one would run over her, in the direction she was headed.

A sora waited to say hello to her on the other side. See its yellow bill?


The American badger is a quest animal for us each year. It's rare, getting rarer as agriculture and persecution crowd it out. Darned hard to find, even in the stronghold of its range, and spooky as heck. Large carnivores who dig huge holes are considered a nuisance in agricultural areas, whether they're rare or not. This is is not the way I had hoped to see a badger.

In seven Junes in North Dakota, Bill and I have yet to see more of a badger than its rear end disappearing into a ditch. And that, only once. Seeing this evidence of their cruel and senseless persecution makes it clear why. Humanity's sacred claim to dominion over the beasts and birds never made sense to me. It still doesn't. My father quoted Scripture to me whenever I argued or pled for the rights of animals. And even then, as a little child, the holy writ sounded like it was being twisted into a justification for behaving like a jerk. Drive-by shootings of mother badgers: do they fall under Acceptable Behavior for We Who Have Dominion? Let's see...

This from the North Dakota Game and Fish Department's "Furbearer Guide:"

18. Red Fox, Gray Fox, Coyote, Raccoon and Badger Hunting or Trapping

Open year-round (officially from April 1 - March 31)

Apparently so.

News flash to the North Dakota Game and Fish Department: There were about a hundred people who traveled from 14 states to attend the Potholes and Prairies Festival who were yearning to see a live badger in the wild. Many of us drove around specifically looking for badgers, and found little more than empty burrows. We were shocked, saddened and sickened to see graphic evidence of North Dakota's year-round open season on American Badgers. Is this scene the message you wish to send ecotourists about your vanishing native prairie wildlife?

The songs in my head: "Tell the Universe" and "Beautiful Creatures" by Bruce Cockburn.

A Living Building

The Lab of Ornithology appears to me to have been designed around two major aesthetic concerns. First, the trove of bird art, like that in the Fuertes library and the Fisher’s Island panel, which have been beautifully integrated into the space. A second goal was to showcase the natural wonders in the wetlands just outside, visible through huge windows all around. It’s like the biggest blind you’ve ever seen.

Though my time was limited, I was determined to take in just a bit of the gorgeous swampy bit of Sapsucker Woods immediately around the building. It’s truly another world, quiet, laced with mulched paths, swarming with birds. Canada geese were living their lives, getting it on, preening


and making a general honking ruckus. One pair has claimed ownership of a part of the path near the bird feeder, and challenges passersby in a quiet way. I saw several toddlers try to pet this bird. Not recommended.Does this goose look intelligent to you? It does to me. There's really something going on in those eyes. It hisses and intimidates people who come too close. You don’t want a bite from that bony, serrated bill. There were a couple of geese with permanently injured wings, making a good living, mates by their side, at the pond. One bird acts as an unofficial greeter, hanging out right by the entry. It's neat to see birds the second you pull into the parking lot of the Lab.

Mallards kept bombing over and dropping in, and I played at photographing them, with some pretty cool results.As a young bird painter, I devoured a book called Prairie Wings, by Edgar M. Queeney. Using the rudimentary black-and-white equipment of the time, he captured amazing photos of ducks in flight. If only I could go back in time and hand Mr. Queeney my little Digital Rebel. What fun he'd have.
A mushmouse swam by a resting hooded merganser (the white spot directly back of the rat).

A pair of common mergansers. When they hauled out on a log, I could see the bulk of their bodies. They’re like icebergs. Note the wood duck nesting boxes, which common and hooded mergansers may also use. The place is set up for birds, and the resident geese know and exploit that.

I had to chuckle when the black-capped chickadee I photographed turned out, on closer inspection, to be color-banded. This is the Lab of Ornithology, after all. Who knows what secrets these birds have revealed?

The incandescent glow of a mallard’s head. His mate hides in shadow.

I was stunned to see a big brown bat flying in daylight, dipping down to drink. I never thought my photos would be acceptable, but they aren’t bad, considering that I was focusing manually, and the bat was dipping and diving like, well, a bat. This is a really neat shot, and it's even, finally, in good focus.
I hoped he wasn’t ill; bats all over the Northeast are turning up with “white-nose syndrome,” a disease of apparently fungal origin that is killing them by the thousands, and sending them out of their hibernacula much too early. Please be well and travel safely, brown bat.
This ends my sojurn at the Lab. The "Letters from Eden" show hangs through mid-July. Please check it out if you're in the area.