One of the trips I was able to take last year was to North Dakota and the grasslands in the central part of the state. Jamie Cunningham of Sabrewing Nature Tours led the trip. Both she and the trip in general exceeded my expectations. Lots of opportunities with great birds. She has had extensive experience birding and photographing birds in this area and as a consequence, has a very good grasp on the bird behavior here. These birds are much different than the tropical birds we are used to, not only in appearance but in behavior. These images are of two, rather plain looking, birds but also birds I had never seen, let alone photographed, before. During our orientation of the first night, she described some of the opportunities we would have during the coming week. These two birds, Upland Sandpiper and Wilson’s Snipe, were most likely to be seen on fence posts. Yeh, right??
Sure enough when I saw them (only one sighting of each during the entire trip) where were they at? On fence posts of course.