With the temperature at 7:00 Am hovering at 74F we knew it would get hot, so we headed out to the grasslands, where it should be a bit cooler. It was, by 10 degrees. Lunch packed and away we went stopping near Stanley for gasoline ($2.84) and a clean windshield. Bug season ,eh?
Lostwood NWR is about 60 miles NW by road from Minot ND, and about 30 miles from the Canadian border. No, you "Cannot see Canada from there ".
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| We are there in Northern North Dakota |
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| Built in 1938 (CCC) it stands 100 feet tall but is not used for fire obs. anymore. Birding? Yes! Note platform 1/2 way up. |
The roads to the NWR are good especially with 16 miles of new asphalt that had been recently laid on ND 50. The Refuge Visitor Center (very small) was closed on weekends and we knew that ahead of time., but the door is always open during Refuge hours. A summer intern, Ross, was there and happened to come out when we were there. Ross has been there three summers in a row. He greeted us and gave us some hints about the Refuge. One hint was "Look out for the Moose". Really? Yes there are Moose on the refuge (we did not see any however.) He is a Master's degree student who was going to work with the U.S.Fish and Wildlife on his Masters thesis . (It concerns some problem with the cattle getting sick from drinking the algae on the refuge that needed to be solved.). That was our start with good hints form a man who was familiar with the refuge. (There have been Moose, Elk, and one cougar in the time he has been there)
This Refuge is well known for the SPRAGUE'S PIPIT AND THE BAIRD'S SPARROW, which we saw . Today's total was 51 species, the best total for species in a few weeks.
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| A Red Tailed Hawk that circled around us and called. |
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| The Baird's Sparrow. Very white and secretive. We were fortunate. |
The road was up an down hill following the outline of the Reserve on the west edge. Along this route were many different habitats that exemplified what the Refuge was about. The mixed prairie plants provide much of the food for the grassland dependent species and the "prairie potholes" boast some of the highest densities of nesting ducks in North America. Fifty percent of all waterfowl that migrate, use this "Coteau" for breeding and nesting. This drive was 7.5 miles around and we took four hours today, not including lunch.
** Coteau, definition: "The Coteau des Prairies is a plateau approximately 200 miles in length and 100 miles in width (320 by 160 km), rising from the prairie flatlands in eastern South Dakota, southwestern Minnesota, and northwestern Iowa in the United States. The southeast portion of the Coteau comprises one of the distinct regions of Minnesota, known as Buffalo Ridge.
The flatiron-shaped plateau was named by early French explorers from New France (Quebec), coteau meaning "hill" in French; the general term coteau has since been used in English to describe any upland dividing ridge.
The plateau is composed of thick glacial deposits, the remnants of many repeated glaciations, reaching a composite thickness of approximately 900 feet (275 m). They are underlain by a small ridge of resistant Cretaceous shale. During the last (Pleistocene) Ice Age, two lobes of the Laurentide glacier, the James lobe on the west and the Des Moines lobe on the east, appear to have parted around the pre-existing plateau and further deepened the lowlands flanking the plateau.
** As noted in an earlier blog, in the building of the Garrison Dam for Lake Sacajawea SHALE was the main reason that part of the dam broke before it was finished and slid into the reservoir killing 8 men.
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| There are five main lakes on the Refuge and one slough. |
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| Some of the "Potholes. |
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| Part of the road in the refuge is straght. |
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| Part of the road has curves around the hills. |
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Throughout the growing seasons there are plants and flowers. IE: Spring; Pasque flower, blanket flower, Canada locoweed. For late spring; purple cone flower, prairie lily, smooth camas; and for late summer plants like blazing star, spotted grayfeather, goldenrod and asters. The same is true with the grasses and native species of which there are 700 species recorded here. The differences would be whether they are on the top of the hills ( ex: blue grama); on the slopes (EX: western wheatgrass); or in the moist areas ( ex: big bluestem). Each of these are just examples of what might be seen, as there are hundreds of types.
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| The Prairie Lily some call the "Wood Lily". Note ther plants. |
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| Some of the plants and grasses around the Prairie Lily. |
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| A very hard to captur, Marsh Wren. He was out of the grasses. |
When we stopped for lunch at a Kiosk at mile 2.0, there was actually a handicapped parking spot on concrete. This was a surprise as we had never seen this in ANY of the NWR we had visited on the 24 years of auto tours. But we were intruding actually, and after parking, noticed a Barn Swallow that had a mud nest on the wall of the Kiosk. We stayed, excused ourselves , and watched the female feed the young get fed their lunch at the same time as we did. The Male came once in awhile and sat nearby to supervise.
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| The female feeding the young Barn Swallows at the Kiosk. |
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| The male Barn Swallow, watches close by. |
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| These Ring Billed Gulls loved the warm road on th lee side of the wind. |
That wrapped it up for the Refuge tour, and by 2:30 we were ready to head for the trailer. It was 91 degrees out there, and Ruth admitted a hot kitchen is not what she needed while cooking supper, We opted for a place at the edge of town called "Grizzly's Grill and Bar" and cooled off at the same time. It was pulled pork for Ruth and a chicken pasta and honey/dijon sauce for Jim. Excellent. It had a sweet flavor. and the chicken was very tender. I told the waitress that if they had it with shrimp would really sell.
Tomorrow we will stay closer to home with two small NWR's about 15 miles from town. They rae smaller, but each has its own unique "flavor"
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