Early in July of this year (2006) we took a trip out Western South Dakota. The trip was centered on visiting with my wife’s family. Her parents were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in Deadwood, SD. When I first knew that we were going to be going to South Dakota I was excited as I have never been to that part of the country and I thought that there might be birding opportunities abound.
I started doing some research into birding in SD; I quickly became very disappointed that we were going to SD. My initial research did not turn up very much in the way of information and the little that I did find was very disheartening. Further research changed my mind a little bit but I was still less than excited about going (from a birding perspective). In a move somewhat against my personality I decided that I would just make the best of it, there, after all, were some new birds to be found plus we were going to be in the Black Hills, the highest points east of the Rockies in North America, home of Mt. Rushmore, etc…
I continued my research with a new ferocity and found several new resources. First is the wonderful book Birds of South Dakota. This is a book published by the South Dakota Ornithologist’s Union that is clearly a labor of love. It is gorgeous, with a full page devoted to each species. For each species there is a full color photo, a write up of the bird, its behavior, and distribution throughout the state. This is certainly not a field guide and also it is not intended for use as an identification guide, but as far as I know there is no better resource for bird distribution and abundance data for the state of South Dakota available. This book let me see the possibilities and build an itinerary that looked downright exciting.
The above mentioned book and some online resources (see below) made it clear that my number one goal was to bird Spearfish Canyon.
[More to come in Part 2] Be there when I learn how to drive a minivan, learn that Deadwood is nothing but gambling, and see my jaw crack as it hits the floor on my day out to Spearfish Canyon.
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