We’re back from a week of birding in North and South Dakota. We began at Devil’s Lake, working our way south through Jamestown and down to Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota. The amount of water on the ground is overwhelming. Every refuge or game preserve we tried to visit was unreachable because of flooded roads. Sand Lake NWR is pretty much under water. The lake is a wide spot in the James River, which begins north of Jamestown. Most of the water we saw in ND will have to flow through the Sand Lake refuge before it can return to normal. Staff there says that could be this fall. High water did not stop Western Grebes from courting, however. At the SD Highway 10 bridge over the James River at the north end of the refuge, a couple of dozen pair of grebes were courting. This was the first time ever that I’ve seen the water dance these birds do, the rush across the top of the surface. Time and location finally coincided. We parked at the bridge (truck traffic is terrible on this road), and watched the show from our vehicle. The birds danced not more than 50 feet from us. It was worth the trip. There is a lot of calling and posturing that precedes the dance. Then, boom, they jump up and run across the water for two or three seconds. Here are shots of preliminaries and the main event. Â

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 9th, 2009 at 10:39 am and is filed under Bird biology, Bird interactions, Bird travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.