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National Geographic : 1979 Mar
Contents
"But the special attractions here are the upland prairie birds," Ann said. "For exam ple, the Baird's sparrow" (page 371). On the road to Lostwood and a favored Baird's locale, Bob said: "We'll be greeted by a grasshopper sparrow singing from a stalk of dock. He's had so many birders look ing at him that when he sees a car he combs his hair." And there he was, his insect trill too high-pitched for me at my age. Before I had heard anything but the wind-borne fluting of a western meadowlark, Ann, with her acute hearing, had located several chippity-caroling Baird's sparrows. Three black-and-white songsters, whose prairie home lacks commanding perches for recitals, mounted on vibrant wings to pour out their ebullient melodies in flight. These were the lark bunting, the bobolink, and specialty of the area, exhibited by Ann with pride-the chestnut-collared longspur. The white-tailed deer we roused in the wooded coulees-flat-bottomed ravines were of polished mahogany. The winter coat, Bob said, is a grayer brown, of hollow hairs-for insulation. It is needed. Almost nothing in our climate exceeds the icy savagery of the prairie blizzard, to which even bison have sometimes succumbed. "T HE POINT is to find the cold exciting!" exclaimed Vincent Ames, a high-school biology teacher from Grand Forks who was taking his class on a five-day field trip. I hiked with some of the students and learned much, especially about the flowers that made the needlegrass prai rie a garden. Hapless avocet may pay for a perilous nest site with the loss of its eggs (right), as water released from a dam north of Bear River Refuge rises. Yet these fertile marshes face a water shortage; as the river is diverted for farms, brine invades from Great Salt Lake. A yellow headed blackbird flaunts its plumage (left) amid rushes where it nests. Goldenrod, prairie coneflowers, golden asters, gaillardias, and sow thistles flecked the land with yellow. Prairie roses with two inch blossoms added hues from white to deep pink. The spikes of pure silver, soft as kittens, were fringed sage. A badger waddled to within thirty feet of one of the boys, while a sound like the trun cated honking of a goose was identified by an assistant of Ames's, Terry Brokke, as the warning bark of a red fox. Terry showed me my first Sprague's pipit, a mote against the blue, holding its place in the wind. Another of Lostwood's drawing cards, the pipit sings at such a height as to be detected only by its strange voice, likened by Bob Gammell to the sound of a twirled lariat. Ames explained that his students were expected to know about two hundred birds and as many plants. "But above all we want them to feel at home in nature." It seemed to me a worthy use to make of a refuge. Ames believed that bison herds helped keep brush growth in check by trampling it. Now wolfberry and silverberry are spread ing, at the expense of grassland and wildlife. Not only bison but elk, wolves, and griz zlies are gone from this prairie. The plow, bulldozer, power shovel, and grader have succeeded them. Their unchecked reign, warns Robert E. Stewart, who writes of the state's birds, could turn North Dakota into "one of the most desolate, unattractive areas in the entire country." At least we may be grateful that 289,000 acres in North Dakota are safe within the national wildlife refuges, and that almost a million additional acres of waterfowl breeding grounds are under their protection. '' . ,iin : , «*r- -- - - g^ .* rte' ** .- . i- '** *'- ***"" .- - .. *'....i t'^ '.: ' : *' ' 1 :^ ^ ' ;:**"*'** * *^. *** * - **"' * XANTHOCEPHALUS XANTHOCEPHALUS(FACINGPAGE); RECURVIROSTRAAMERICANA(ABOVE) 373 ~ -- c I-; .. ~. x ~I~., -.~~1. ~ : ir ~- ~
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