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Photos by Doug Backlund / www.wildphotosphotography.com
Poorwills are actually relatively easy to see at night, one just needs to drive gravel or dirt roads watching for the red eye shine of these mysterious birds. They hunt from the ground or a low perch in open areas, sallying upward to catch passing moths and beetles. However, in this situation a photograph is difficult to take. I wanted a photograph of a poorwill on the ground. In all my years of wandering the forests and prairies, I had only seen one poorwill on the ground, and I had no camera then.
Last year Charlie and I decided to go the North Cave Hills in northwest South Dakota for the Memorial Day weekend. I knew from previous trips to this area that poorwills were common in the area. I hoped to find one on this trip that would be photogenic. Even if we didn’t have any luck with the poorwill photos the North Cave Hills are a great place to visit. The landscape consists of a sandstone escarpment rising out of the prairie. Ponderosa pine forest cloaks the uplands of this region. Nesting Golden Eagles and Prairie Falcons are found here, as well as abundant Ovenbirds, American Redstarts, Lazuli Buntings, Violet-green Swallows, Western Tanagers, Mountain Bluebirds and a myriad of other species.
We arrived on Thursday night. It was colder than I expected but we heard one poorwill calling that night. Friday, we searched the sandstone rimrock for poorwills. And we found one! But, it flushed characteristically before we saw it. However, we marked the site and came back the following morning. It wasn’t there. But we located it again, about 100 feet away. Once again it flushed again before we spotted it. This was beginning to look like the second definition of a snipe hunt.
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