Prairie sloughs and swales

The prairies of the mid-western part of the continent are well known for their incredible productivity as well as critical migration habitat for numerous waterfowl and shorebirds. I'm referring to the potholes and swales, an iconic feature of the prairies.

If you look at various parts of southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and the adjacent states, it is amazing how many sections of the landscape look like the following Google Earth image. That is an incredible number of potholes in a relatively small area! They vary in size, of course, and some years are wetter than others, so water birds have to adapt to whatever is available to them. The home territory where they hatched one year might be as dry as a bone when they go back to it the next year, making life challenging.

Many potholes are well away from the roads, and you don't see them. But fortunately some have easy access, and in some cases, the road goes right along side, or even cuts right through them. Some have steep sides, surrounded by dense cattail vegetation. They were used primarily by ducks, it seemed. But where there were gently sloping sides and muddy edges as the water level dropped, it was great for shorebirds.

We came across a few that I just had to stop at. One of them had a good variety of shorebirds, including:

Marbled Godwit

Willet

I did see a small number of Black-necked Stilt, but did not get any photos. There were lots of smaller shorebirds such as Lesser Yellowlegs, Pectoral Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, etc.

Other birds commonly found in prairie wetlands were also present, including

Franklin's Gull

Eared Grebe

It was neat to see all these Eared Grebes in prime breeding plumage.

One slough had a Horned Grebe nesting just a few metres away from the edge of the quiet gravel road. I got their photos from the van.

Some young had already hatched, but one egg remained in the nest.

 Do you see the youngster peeking out from the far side of the adult?

One slough complex that I was particularly intrigued by was this next one. There was lots of room to pull off and explore one of the sizable cells that made up this complex, and the road went along another part of it. The water was fairly shallow in most places.

As I explored parts of it, I quickly realized how little of the overall complex I could actually get to. This next image from Google Earth shows the complex. I only got to see about 10% of it, primarily the part along the road.

There were at least 1000 shorebirds that I saw, of various species, including more than 30 American Avocets.

 A single Cinnamon Teal was resting amongst the shorebirds.

 A flock of 22 Marbled Godwits was flying around.

 Red-necked Phalaropes were plentiful.

 There was the occasional dowitcher, presumably a Short-billed

 Here, a Short-billed Dowitcher is surrounded by almost 100 other shorebirds. There was a huge number of Wilson's Phalaropes making up most of the shorebird numbers.

Wilson's Phalarope

 Various ducks, and quite a few Eared Grebes were around.

Given that I likely only saw about 10% of the pothole/swale complex, it makes one wonder what there was over the entire complex. It seemed especially interesting to shorebirds, quite possibly because there was a small cattle operation adjacent to part of it, providing lots of extra nutrients.

At another slough complex in Manitoba, I saw a ton of Eared Grebes and Am Coots...

 ...but by far the highlight was seeing several White-faced Ibis! According to the established range for this species (Sibley's Field Guide; Cornell U site), it does get into the very southern part of Alberta and maybe just barely into the southwestern corner of Saskatchewan. But apparently over the last few years they have been expanding. According to a contact I have with the SK Breeding Bird Atlas, they got their first confirmed breeding record in 2018, the second year of their first provincial atlas.

 Unfortunately the birds I was able to photograph were all in flight, and all chose to give me mostly back lighting, so these photos are much more heavily processed than I would like.

I was surprised by how few Yellow-headed Blackbirds I saw in my travels. Surprisingly I have seen more in Chatham-Kent this year (9) than I did across all three prairie provinces (2).

Clearly the pothole and swale complex of the southern prairies are wonderful places to visit at certain times of the year if you like birds. It makes the sewage lagoons of southwestern Ontario, as productive as they seem to be on occasion, look pretty quiet by comparison. A return trip to spend a greater amount of time is warranted!

The next post in this short series will focus on a very special place of the southern prairie provinces.

Westward Ho!

We just got back from a 'quick' trip out to Alberta, as far north as Grande Prairie, primarily for family events. It turned out to take a little longer than our initial plans, but that is another story. And we really hadn't intended for this trip to be a natural history exploration type, but there was so much of it along our route that it was hard to ignore it. So a few short days ago, and three weeks after we started out, we arrived back home.

There is too much to show and tell for a single blog post. This first post will portray some of the highlights from the roadsides in those prairie provinces.

It is partly true that the prairies are flat. Some areas are incredibly flat, and are where one finds remnants of tallgrass prairie, such as this site in the very southern part of Manitoba. It is part of the Aspen Parklands and Tallgrass Prairies near Tolstoi.

I had been here on one occasion, back in 1991, and seemed to recall that a lot of it was more open than what I was seeing on this trip. It was quite overgrown by comparison, at least if I was going by my recollection. This photo above is by far the most open of anything I saw on this preserve this time. There were a few of the typical tallgrass prairie plants, including Purple Prairie Clover....

 ....White Camas (which is attractive to the human eye, but quite poisonous to livestock).

 Wood Lily. The 'Western' Wood Lily is the provincial flower of Saskatchewan, but it is the same species as the one found in Ontario: Lilium philadelphicum.

 This next one is the yellow form of Indian Paintbrush. The red form is sometimes abundant on more southern tallgrass prairies that I have seen in places like Missouri.

We saw a few butterflies, but it was too hot for a lot of butterfly activity. I was hoping for a Poweshiek Skipper, a very rare species found on these Manitoba tallgrass prairies, but I was not successful.

Meadow Fritillary

 Monarchs were widely scattered, but not abundant.

A bit farther north, we came across these colourful wildflowers, which is a different species of Indian Paintbrush.

Wildlife different from what we are used to here in southwestern Ontario was fun to search out. Richardson's Ground Squirrels, locally known as gophers, were plentiful, and often fairly cooperative.

We got a fleeting look at a White-tailed Jackrabbit. It is similar in size and shape to the European Jackrabbit of southern Ontario.

We saw a few Pronghorn.....

....and a few more Mule Deer.

 We did see a few bears in various places.....three altogether and all in Alberta north of Edmonton, but we never saw Goldilocks :-). They were scooting across the road pretty quickly and only got photos of this one bear. Thankfully Marie had her cell phone handy.

A nice variety of birds was noted even along the road way.

Western Kingbird

Interior form of Horned Lark

Lark Bunting

 In places where there are no, or very few, trees, birds like Common Nighthawk have to improvise. It was unusual to see them sitting on fence posts!

Black-billed Magpies are widespread. They can be seen scavenging along the road when the opportunity arises (this next photo is one I took on a trip in the fall of 2007)....

...or wherever they can find something, even in people's back yards.

Although some parts of the prairies are flat, in reality most of it is anything but flat. There are some impressive sand dunes, which we had to bypass on this trip. But the various river valleys made for an enticing landscape.

 In some of these river valleys dams were built to create small recreational lakes. While their main intent was water control and recreation, some of the native fauna was able to make good use of them as well. We didn't see a lot of these American White Pelicans, but a few scattered about.

By comparison, Franklin's Gulls were fairly abundant.

The next post will deal with one of the iconic features of the prairies: swales and potholes.