P.S. I was very close to finding this bird in June 2021, you can read about that here : Zen and the art of missing out on birds

1. Birding Level

By birding level I mean when have you started birding. Because, the first few birds are always easy. I am writing in the context of the US, to get to 100 birds in the US when you’re starting out with birding is really easy. Well, you do have to work for it, but it won’t be that hard to reach that. You’ve got to work about 3x harder to get 200 and 6x for 400. This may sound like the increase of power and magnitude level on Richter scale but to some extent it is true. Once you get to 400 species, getting that 50 more species is a lot harder than getting the 200. Currently, I am at 540 species for the US. Getting past that 500 was HARD! And, once you get to that part, it feels like every bird you need has frequency of less than 5% anywhere you go. For example, the screenshot below has the frequency of lifers I could get in the US.

2. Location

You may say, there are some easier species in that list, and that is true. For instance, the Harlequin Duck, could be an easy species depending on where you are. I was in Fairbanks, AK, this past August and a lot of people were reporting the bird from a specific area in Denali National Park, sadly when we got there, the ducks weren’t around. Someone might say the Louisiana Waterthrush is an easy bird to get, and sure is. But I live in Fargo, ND and they are rare birds in our area. Interestingly, there’s a breeding population in Minneapolis area and Sabina and I tried to get that bird last year as well as this past year. Dipped out on it. Maybe that can be my new nemesis bird. I have been trying to find it for the last 2-3 years!

3. Timing

Timing is very important as well, same was true for the Harlequin Duck as well as the Waterthrush, we were in the area pretty late in the season. I know that there is a really good chance of getting the Harlequin Duck in the Glacier NP area and we might be making a trip to that area next year, so I could pick up the duck and a few mountain species that I still need. The ‘timing’ part could be how much time you’re spending in a certain spot or the timing of the birds or seasonality. If I had enough days to spare in Denali or Alaska, I wonder if I could have had that bird. Sadly, I was there only for a few days and a single day in the area where the ducks were reported from. Having said that, I did get a lifer Willow Ptarmigan in Denali NP.

So, what lifers did I get recently that has left me with no nemesis bird for the moment? Well, I got 2 with in a span of a week.

The first one was a Clark’s Nutcracker in Jamestown, ND. Which I had been chasing for a decent while, which again was a location + not spending enough time in the area. When we went to the Custer State Park area in SD, I did spend a whole day trying to find the Nutcracker with no luck. Good thing I added a life as well as State list in a single shot.

The 2nd one, I had been chasing for a long time. Almost 8 years, the infamous Yellow-billed Cuckoo! Almost as same time as I was chasing my long time nemesis bird the Summer Tanager. I almost missed out on the Cuckoo too because I don’t pay much attention to the MN birds. I do regularly get eBird alerts for Cass county but not Clay county in MN. Dennis, a long term and a really good birder in Moorhead got the bird in his yard. I texted him as soon as I heard about it and I reached out to him. As I got to his house, he told me that the last time he saw the bird, it was flying across his neighbors yard. So, I had lost hope of finding the bird to some extent. We went around his yard, his neighbors yard trying to find the Cuckoo. After about 15-20 minutes a larger looking bird flew from a small tree in front of his neighbors yard and landed on a different tree. Assuming that it was our bird, I walked to wards the tree, hoping to get the glimpse of the bird we just saw in flight. I saw an object that looked like a bird, instead of looking through the binos, I took photos, just so if it flushed, I would have photos. The bird didn’t flush and I did manage to get a decent shot of my new lifer!

What a great view and what a beautiful bird. With this bird, I don’t have a nemesis bird for now. As mentioned above, I could technically put the Harlequin Duck and the Northern Waterthrush on my nemesis list. But, I will let the list cool down for a while and let it be 0 until the start of next year. Starting January 2027, the nemesis list starts out with

1. Harlequin Duck

2. Northern Waterthrush

Thank you for reading my random musings!

The last time we were out, my car had been giving a little trouble so I was a little worried driving about 500 miles to the cities and back. But, a cool bird was at stake so it was worth taking the risk.

Coincidentally, one of the person who initially reported it with a friend, was a person whom I had contacted few weeks before get some information on Acadian Flycatcher and a Louisiana Waterthrush in northern part of Minneapolis. When I saw his name on the checklist I texted him and asked about the details.

As we got closer to the cities, I put the location from eBird in google map and we ended up in the place. The parking lot was empty. I realized we were in the wrong spot. I was hundred percent sure I was in the wrong spot. I texted my friend and then got the actual location.

We finally got to the location, sadly, it hadn’t been reported for over 4 hours. We waited and scanned the area for over an hour, hoping it would fly back. Walked around to scan other areas near by but at last we had to head back to Fargo. While heading back to Fargo, I had 2 counties in MN that I hadn’t birded and those were about 45 minutes North of where we were, so we decided that we bird those county and then head home.

We birded in Ishanti Co and Kanabec County, with that I only need 18 more counties in MN to finish my MN counties. I finished my North Dakota counties last year!

As we got to the end of the 2nd county up north, the way home back would skip I-94 and head west and probably take us to highway 10 through Detroit lake. It didn’t seem logical to drive down to the cities and then back to Fargo when we could just keep on driving west which would save us about 45 minutes. So we started driving north and I had a feeling. Sabina had been talking about going to the Columbia store in Albertville. So I felt like we could at least go there and then head back home. So we decided on that. Also, we needed to eat something before we headed home and we had South-Indian food in mind and that would lead us somewhere close to the cities. We found a food truck right outside Rogers, MN so we headed there. Sadly, the food truck was closed. The closest restaurant from there was about 23 minutes, and it was an authentic Hyderabadi food. Later I realized that I had already been there a few years ago. But, as I took the exit to get to the food place, I saw my dashboard and the head indicator of my engine kept on rising. By the time I was about to take a right turn into the parking lot it was all the way to the top. I was worried about something else going wrong, and the engine wasn’t in my menu for the day. I pulled the car over in the parking. My guess was that the coolant was low? Probably? So, we headed inside the restaurant and I let the car cool for a while. I went back to check the coolant and realized that it was empty. Basically, there was nothing left. I was so close damaging my engine haha! And, you know what, that is a very important thing in your car, but the dashboard never shows any signs about it, I wish it would show signs on the dashboard like the engine oil change sign. I did have coolant in my mind for a while, since it’s been over 7 years that I had this car and I have never changed it. So, it was somewhere in the back of my mind, but I had never checked it. Good thing, we were in a city. So after we were done eating, I drove to AutoZone and bought a coolant and poured it in. I let it sit for a while and cautiously I drove around the city for a while to see if the indicator would go high or not. At least we would be in the city. We drove around for a while and the indicator remained normal so we started heading back to Fargo. As I got back on the interstate, I thought about how we made this decision and what if we had headed up north and then west along the county highway. That would’ve sucked. I guess there would be some small cities along the way but chances are high that a 90 people small town in MN would have any AutoZone. However, Minnesota people are nice so I don’t think we’d have been stranded for too long haha. I wish we had gotten the bird as well. And, I was 100% sure that someone would report it the next morning, and, it was re-sighted the next morning. But, that’s who birding works! You get some, you miss some. If you get all the birds you chase, that wouldn’t be fun. Also, if your car doesn’t give you trouble, it would be boring right?

Happy Birding everyone! Also, check you Engine coolant! Especially before you twitch a bird and drive 500 miles or more..

The Lord of the Wings!

There are few species of birds that have achieved great milestones with their flights, not that the birds care about or even know about the Guinness World Record, but they have beaten a few world record very nonchalantly. A very famous bird to achieve that milestone was named “B6”. B6 is a juvenile Bar-tailed Godwit who set a new world record for the longest non stop flight from Alaska to Tasmania, Australia! That bird was just 4 months old. In October of 2022 it flew 13560 km (8425 miles) non stop. I am currently training for a half-marathon in September and I am on a very easy training plan with mostly 3-5 miles run on average per day. Even when I am doing that 3 miles run, I find it hard to not-stop in between to take a rest. I am a bad example because I am not a runner, but every time I am running I think about these birds that fly non-stop during their migration and assume if they ever get tired or feel like I should take a break? Maybe that determination is what breaks records, the urge to not stop. I don’t care much about the record, I just want to finish the half-marathon. Anyways, back to the Godwit. You know what’s interesting? Like in most shorebirds, the adults of the Bar-tailed Godwit fly a month or so earlier than the Juveniles. So, basically, once the juveniles are starting to look like a bird, the parents head out with or maybe even without a proper goodbye. The Juveniles are alone in Alaska to figure out where they are headed next, and in a journey they have never taken in their life, and somehow they make it to the location that they are supposed to be at? Isn’t that crazy? More on how birds know where to go will come in another post. For now let’s move on to other crazy fliers. Trust me, there are crazier flyers than the Bar-tailed Godwit.

A bird that does not see Winter!

I live in Fargo, North Dakota and I have few friends who’d love to not see the winter, specially the cold, windy winters here in Fargo. But, sadly we don’t have the means or ability to do that for variety of reasons. However, there is a species of birds that, never in its lifetime sees ‘winter’. Sounds crazy right? but that is true. Well, depends on how you define winter, but let’s get right to it.

The Arctic Tern travels about 44000-56000 miles each year during it’s annual migration, and does so like no other birds. During the Summer in Northern hemisphere it travels to the breeding grounds in the arctic shores and before the winter in the northern Hemisphere it travels down to the shores of Antarctica, when they’re right about to get their summer. In doing so, this species of tern experiences two summers in two different hemisphere. Arctic terns are known to undertake the longest migration of any animals in the world, with one bird flying over 59650 over the course of its annual migration. They are known to fly about 1.5 million miles during their lifespan which is about 30 years.

While Albatrosses are known to fly for years before touching land, they’re not flying throughout the whole time. I have seen various posts where they are mentioned to keep on flying for years, which doesn’t seem to be true. And, it would be insane if a bird could fly non stop for years right? or even months? How about 10 months? Naah, that wouldn’t be possible? is that what you’re thinking right now? If so, then please be ready for a shocking revelation. There is one species of bird that has been known to fly for 10 months without landing on the ground! 10 months!

That species is the “Common Swift” (Apus apus). Common swifts reside in Europe and Asia and overwinter in Africa. A research conducted in 2013-2014 by a group of Scientists in Sweden tagged 9 Common Swifts with various data loggers that included an accelerometer and a light sensor which would keep track of their general activity and location. Out of all the tagged birds, 3 individuals never landed on the ground during their entire journey where as the rest of the birds were in flight for over 99% of their migration journey.

Even though this might come as a surprise, Common Swifts or most swifts in general are designed for flight and in most species, these birds even breed in air! They find their food in air and drink water by flying low along lakes and rivers. But then 10 months is no joke, and you might be wondering, they don’t even sleep? Well, for that, we will look at how some of the species that fly long distance sleep while migrating. And, you might be in for a surprise again! That’s in the next part!

Yellow breasted Meadowlarks

• Eastern meadowlark (Sturnella magna)

• Chihuahuan meadowlark (Sturnella lilianae)

• Western meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta)

Red breasted Meadowlarks

• Red-breasted meadowlark (Leistes militaris)

• White-browed meadowlark (Leistes superciliaris)

• Peruvian meadowlark (Leistes bellicosus)

• Pampas meadowlark (Leistes defilippii)

• Long-tailed meadowlark (Leistes loyca)

You might be thinking oh well, those look very easy to identify, and they kind of are, except for the EAME and WEME. As the name suggests EAME and WEME are found in each half if the state, having said that they do overlap in various states almost along the mid continental line (If that’s what it is called). For our area, Fargo and west of here EAME are hard to get, however, you drive east for a while and they start popping up.

I still need that bird for the county and this past May one was reported by a long time veteran birder in our county Keith. So we went there listened to hit, heard the odd sounding song and reported the bird on eBird. A week or so later, we got email from the “eBird cops” as you might have heard on the famous birding documentary “Listers”. It was supposedly a hybird. Few of the other long term and veteran birders in the state got a good look at the bird and got photos and were able to say that it looked better for a hybrid rather than a EAME. That was it. I lost my county bird # 283!

This past week Keith heard another meadowlark that definitely sounded a lot different. So, we decided to meet Sunday morning and have multiple ears, multiple eyes and multiple lens pointed at it. As soon as I got to the parking lot that we were supposed to meet in, Keith told me that the bird was singing behind us. A different location from where he had heard the bird first. I recorded the bird on my phone as soon as I heard the weird sounding meadowlark. I tried Merlin but Merlin was indecisive, probably because of the location. When Trebor showed up, we started walking towards the area where the song was coming from. The bird was singing from top of a tree. However, as we got closer to it, it flew. As a bird usually does. But, unlike what a bird you’re usually chasing does, this bird did something different, something weird and new, it landed almost in front of us. I managed to get a few shots before it flushed. I had decent shots to see the ‘malar’ area/region which is something that could be used to "‘identify’ the eastern and the western species.1

So what’s the deal with the malar region then? Let’s look at some photos!

If you look at the lower mandible on this bird you can see that the area behind base of the lower mandible has no yellow or the whole malar is mostly white. To compare that with a WEME let’s look at the photo below. See how that base of the bill is followed by yellow? almost all of it? That apparently is one of the ‘visual’ or ‘morphological’ differences between the two species.

However, as always, there’s always an exception and looks like there is one in this case as well. So basically, this might not be the best thing to use while identifying the species, relying on the song would be the best option or ranges. For more on the variation in the malar region refere to : Cornell Lab Blog

Wait, it’s not done yet. Looks like there are other traits you could look for, again, with caution. The central tail feathers of EAME seems to look more darker along the center and has thicker bands compared to the WEME. For reference look at the photo below. The horizontal tail bands on WEME seem to be thinner compared to EAME. Also a good thing to note is the darker coloration in the back region of EAME compared to WEME (again, seems to vary a lot, but EAME is supposed to be darker looking than WEME). Compare the whiteness or the clear white malar in the two photos below. And based on all the photos that I have gone through trying to figure out our species, EAME seems to have a tinge of rufous in the back.

Another fieldmark that has been mentioned a lot is the number of white tail feathers or retrices, apparently, EAME has 3 (or more rare) retrices whereas WEME has 2.5 or 2. But again this seems to vary a lot between individuals.

The nail in the coffin (or the nest box?)

No field mark is better than songs or calls to identify these two species. Or is it? We will get to that later. But, it does seem to work most of the time. So listen to the variation in songs and calls between these two species. Specially the call seems to be a dead giveaway. The call sounds throaty pluk or chupp in WEME whereas in EAME its a buzzy dzzhrrt or dzert.

WEME song: Audio credit: Ron Overholtz (Xeno-canto)

WEME call: Audio credit:

EAME song: Audio credit: Manuel Grosselet-Edgar del valle-Rebeca Martinez (Xeno-canto)

Call of EAME: Audio credit: Thomas Magarian (Xeno-canto)

Now, moving on to the interesting part. Here is the song that we heard. And the interesting and kind of a sad thing is we heard the bird make a EAME call, but nobody had their phones up for recording it.

And if you look at both of these photos that I took, you can easily see that there is some overlap of the yellow in the malar region. And, also that the tail has thinner band than we would expect in a EAME.

However, if you look at the total number of white tail feathers, this bird clearly seems to have 3 white tail feathers (or may be a half and half on the 3rd one? (3rd from outside). Also, again, the central tail feather doesn’t look dark, doesn’t have thicker bands. So either this bird is a clear WEME that has learned to sing and call WEME songs and calls or this is a hybrid bird.

Or what do you all think? Leave your opinion in the comments! And, if you know more field marks or identifying techniques for these two species feel free to share!

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this post and would love to support me you can do so at : Buymeacoffee

All the noises

I got call from him when he arrived outside my apartment. I went out to get him. As we were getting his stuff out of his car, he mentioned that the car window glass had fallen off. I took me a while to understand what he meant. It was exactly what he had said, the driver side window glass was crooked and had fallen out of its motor wheel? or whatever it is called. So, it was tilted and the window was 75 % open. He was worried about people getting into his car and potentially stealing the car. I assured him that he’d not have to worry about that in Fargo (mostly). But we did manage to get his window fixed, fixed enough to look like it was locked.

The next morning as we headed out, I spotted by my office to grab an extra pair of Binocular for him. As I got back to the car, he told me that the window glass had fallen off again. I told him, let’s do the same thing as yesterday, but this time, it had fallen down! All the way down and there was no way we could get that thing off. Oh well. We could’ve potentially driven my car, but then that’d wouldn’t solve the problem of leaving a car without a window unattended. So, we decided to take his car. I hadn’t thought much about it until we got to the interstate and the noise started hitting us. And, we had a solid 5.5 6 hours of that to get through. And, in the back my head, I was thinking about what if it rains? I did have a backup plan of getting a cardboard or some sort of plastic from Walmart and taping it off.

We had a lot to catch up, about 11 years’ worth of catching up, and with the interstate noise and the North Dakota wind, it felt like we were screaming inside the car. My throat was about hurt by the time we were in central North Dakota. We stopped in Dickinson to get some supplies from Walmart. I didn’t feel safe enough to leave his car unattended so I told him to stay in the car and I would go get the supplies. When I came back, he told me that he found a reel on YouTube where this guy had shown how to remove the small panel from the base of the window. He had already done that, and he was able to slide his fingers in the cavity and reach the glass. But the problem was, it was almost impossible to grab the glass and then pull it up because of the narrow opening, you could fit all of your fingers from the side but not enough to grab the windows. He told me that the guy had used a tape and a spatula to adhere the tape to the glass. I tried inserting my fingers in the cavity and soon realized that we could just do that with a tape. I told him to go get a duct tape and I waited outside. As he got back, I took a roll of tape, taped the tip of my fingers and slid it down the cavity. I was able to stick the tape to the glass enough to move it, but the problem was it was stuck somewhere, I was able to move it a little bit but not enough to get it out. So, I tried to tape the other side and see if we could pull both sides together. Sadly, the left side cavity was even narrower and maneuvering in there wasn’t easy. Interestingly, I don’t know what I did, I should have moved the window from where it was stuck. As I pulled on the tape from the initial location, it slid up. We both grabbed the glass at the same time and it was up. Problem solved, well partially!

We had to get the glass to stay up somehow, and as I rolled around the duct tape in my hand, I realized that we had a solution. We taped the glass around the window and it stuck! Voila! I can’t write this down enough to explain but the silence in the car after that was amazing. It felt like were in a different vehicle.

A few miles east of the town of Medora, there’s a rest area/ visitor center called the Painted Canyon. And if you are ever heading out west in that direction, I highly recommend stopping there. I usually always stop there, even if I don’t have to. This time, it was for him to enjoy the view. As he was doing that, I tried to look for a campground and reserve one. Most were full, there are some up in the north unit but those are first come first serve, and on a weekend, it might be hard to find one. I usually prefer State Parks (SPs) or National Park (NPs) campground than private but I got to give credit to the private campgrounds for saving my butt more than a few times. And it happened again, Medora Campground in the town of Medora had a few open sites. I had camped there a few times before and to be honest that place is really good! Good sites, good bathroom and a shower area. Sits right next to the Missouri river and walk-able distance to the TRNP visitor center and South Unit entrance.

We had a McDonald sandwich for lunch and nothing else so we were as hungry as a horse. The first thing we did was start the fire and made some food. After that we went to Skyline Vista to look at the sunset. A quick stop at the Prairie Dog Metropolis, a decent sized Prairie Dog town pretty close to the visitor center. I love that place! There’s always a Black-billed Magpie around that place, and I saw one as soon as we got there. The sunset from the vista was amazing as well! We got back to the camp and sat around the fire talking about the past the present and the future. As I lifted my head to look around, I saw a Great-horned Owl on a dead branch about 50 yards from us.

1:23 am!

It was a very hot day and I drank a lot of water that day, so in the evening/morning a toilet time was due. I had gone to the potter potty before going to bed but it kicked in again. As I got up and went to the bushes and got back to my tent, I heard this scream, and remembered that someone had reported a Barn Owl from that area. I wasn’t sure if it was confirmed or not, but I heard a similar sounding scream, interestingly enough I couldn’t be sure if it was a Barn Owl or not, the scream sounded like Barn Owl but somehow it was different. I have a recording which I need to go through to confirm! If it is, that would complete all the owls I could get in the state of North Dakota.

Reverse Storm Chasers

I had seen news and forecasts about a weather system that was arriving in eastern Montana and Western North Dakota on Sunday. So, I thought staying there wouldn’t be wise, so I decided that we slowly start heading east, driving to Lake Sakakawea area (Garrison Dam) and camp at the Lake Sakakawea SP. That turned out to be a good decision (partially).

Before getting to state park, we had to drive through the town of Beulah. It’s a small town in west-central ND with a population of about 3000 people. Strangely enough, one of my friends had mentioned that the best Mexican restaurant was in Beulah. So, we had to try it out. As I put the location of the restaurant, it brought us to this abandoned motel area. There was a signboard that said “Guadalajara Grill Restaurant” but nothing in the building looked like a restaurant. I couldn’t even tell if it was a restaurant or not. It looked like an abandoned area that’s used as a place for people to gather and smoke weeds or more. So, I turned around and called my friend. He didn’t pick the phone up. We drove around the same area and this time my friend told me he’d go check it out. I was skeptic about the location, but as he went in, he gave me a thumbs-up and apparently it was the place. So, we got in, ordered a Burrito and it was really good. I might have to eat more food there to decide if it was the best in ND, but definitely no complains about the food with sample size of 1!

As we got to our campsite, the wind was howling. It was only around 20mph, but I’m not sure if it was the location or the high point of the lake, it felt like the wind was way higher than that. We struggled to put the tent down but finally got it. Hoping that it would be right where we pinned it down by the time we came back, we headed out to the dam.

An example of a windy day in North Dakota. Location: Buck Hill, TRNP

As we got back to the campsite after our short tour, the sky was getting darker and the wind was getting stronger. So, I checked my phone to see if there’s going to be any rain. Well, the app said 20% around mid-night to 1 am and increasing in winds right around that time. What choice did we have? I tried to look for the weather the next day and saw a post that said, there’s a chance of high winds, hailstones and even tornadoes! And, something caught my eyes, nothing new, just the regular term that is used in describing hailstones. The news or the prediction said- “Hailstone the size of softball is possible”. I had never thought about it before that, but then if we were to get hit with a hail the size of a softball, I would love to know the size of it. I have never in my life held a softball in my hand, I have seen people play softball at distance looking for birds in nearby park. It does look big but I didn’t know how big it actually is. So, I googled the size and it said that the circumference is about 12 inch and the diameter is 3.8 inches. That’s when I remembered, how the rest of the world, laughs at the US for not using metric system and using softballs, golf-balls, school busses as unit of measurement. And, I have done that in the past as well. But, that evening, I realized the significance of it. I had to google the size of the softball because I don’t know how big it is, remember? I’ve never held the ball. But, in that instance, if was told that it was 3.8 inch in diameter, how much of help is that? I’d still have to take some time to think about it right? But, for most Americans they either 1) have played softball or golf or 2) they have children or family members who have played it and they know what the size is. They are used to it and rather than saying it has a circumference of 12 inches, it’s easier to just say what size it is compared to an object that they are used to. Not everyone knows the unit of measurement. But if you have a reference, then it makes more sense.

How I perceive ounces: A small tangent

In the August of 2017, as I arrived in Fargo (or US) for the first time. I was out exploring places. And, I had always heard about Margaritas but never had one. Mexican food/restaurants weren’t a thing back in Nepal then. I wonder if it’s still the same. I went to this local restaurant following good reviews. It was a place called the Vinyl Taco (really good place if you are ever in town). So, I ordered a Margarita, and the server asked me what size. I wasn’t sure so I asked what were the options, I think she said 12oz, 16oz and 32oz. I had never used oz in my life before. I didn’t know what 12oz was but it sounded small, 16oz sounded in the middle, so I went with 32oz. And, now every time someone says anything about oz, I go back to that time and think 32 is too much. As I had realized after I finished that margarita. That 32 oz margarita has been my softball for drinks since then.

Even outside the US, let’s take an example of Nepal. If you were to say a “hailstone of 3 inches” you’d almost have no references to think about how big it is, I mean we all know inches, but you’d have to think about it. But, if you were to say the hailstone the size of a Momo, you’d not need to think for a bit! I guess that’s what you need when you need to send out information to general public so that everyone is aware what to expect. I feel like it’s a genius idea that is made fun of most of the times! And, surprisingly it took me 9 years of being in the US to even think about this! Ha!

So, next time I am describing a bird to someone, I am using Chicken Nuggets, Golf ball, Softball, a hotdog or donut holes!

Having said that, you probably are wondering how many species of birds you can get in a single day or birding in Cass county? Well, the number will surprise you.

11:30 pm, May 19, 2026 Wednesday

I was trying to get some sleep before waking up at 1:45 am to get ready and hit the road. I had to pick up Trebor before we headed to Torre’s house where Keith would meet with us. The plan was to hit one of the ‘wetlands’ closer to us. Interestingly, Fargo area doesn’t have much for lakes. You’d have to go about 20-25 miles S/W to see any form of water bodies. This Horace ponds, in recent years, has been a goldmine for birding in the area. The birds we were expecting to hear around the ponds were, as Trebor likes to call them “SMBs” or the Secretive Marsh Birds.

As we drove on this muddy road, thanks to the recent rain, we flushed a shorebird of some kind, could’ve been a Killdeer, could’ve been a Wilson’s Snipe! Or even an American Woodcock. Who knows?

The temperatures were low, we had a freeze warning that morning, I think right around the time we got to the ponds, it was around 34 F (1 Deg C). But, there was no wind so it didn’t feel that bad. The usual drive to the ponds were, as young people nowadays say, muddy “af”. So we decided to park the car ways out and collect mud in our boots. I had almost thought of buying a muck boot the night before but I never wear those and just buying a ~$100+ boots for one morning sounded ridiculous in my head. So decided to go with extra boots instead, which I forgot to transfer from my car to Torre’s car anyways. The good thing was, it wasn’t as rainy and wet as last year. My legs did get pretty wet and cold as we started the forest birding, but they warmed up pretty soon as well.

At the ponds we heard Canada Goose, Mallard, Killdeer, Sora and a Least Sandpiper. No rails of any kind. The ponds weren’t as productive as we were hoping it to be. Our next stop was Heritage Hills Park in southern part of Fargo. We were hoping to pick up Eastern Whip-Poor-will, Barred Owl, Northern Saw Whet Owl1. We had picked up Great-horned Owl at Torre’s house just before leaving.

We got to the parking lot and started listening for the owls. Surprisingly, we heard a Screech-Owl. Which is always a good bird to find, prior to this year, screech owls have been tough birds to find in our area. This year on has been using a cavity in one of the parks that was on our route, but it was definitely great picking up the bird right there. We tried playback for the Barred Owl and a minute or two later a giant blob of something flew and landed in a tree in front of us. Sadly none of us had a headlamp or flash light of any kind so we didn’t get the best of looks. But the night was bright enough that we could see the face of and the shape of the Barred Owl through the binoculars. No whips or any other birds in that area either. We tried a couple of other locations for the whips and a slough for Virginia Rail but no luck there as well. Our first stop for post-sunrise or daylight birding was at the Forest River park. Right around 4:50 am we stopped at a nearby park to listen to anything we could find and rightly so we heard a Northern-saw Whet Owl tooting! Another year of Saw-whet breeding in our area.

It was nice to get all the owls checked off before we started our forest birding. As we pulled into the parking lot of Forest River, the Robins were at full swing as noisy as they can be. The Red-winged Blackbirds were singing as well. However, the most interesting of the song we heard was that of a Wood Thrush. Wood Thrush are notoriously hard to find in Cass County. But the last 2 years, we’ve had them in decent number. Exactly 364 days ago from this day we had 3 of them singing on our previous big day. Forest river was birdy! We were hearing tons of birds. As we were wandeirng around the parking lot trying to listen to various birds, Torre and Trebor heard an Eastern Whip-poor-will. As per the Big Day 5% rule, we were allowed to miss a few bird species. That was my (and Keith’s) first miss for the day. We picked up a decent number of Warblers from Forest river. Another highlight for the park was a Red-shouldered Hawk. Just like the Wood Thrush, Red-shouldered Hawks are hard to find in the county, or maybe not detected enough? either ways until the week before I didn’t have RSHA for the county and within a span of a week I had seen 3 (or 2…maybe the same individual because all 3 were juveniles).

After Forest River, we went back to Orchard Glen to get some warblers. FR can be really good at times for warblers, especially a good place to pick up a Connecticut Warbler. We had one during the 2024 Big Day. We did pick up really good birds but not the Connecticut Warbler. However, when we were at the parking lot, I briefly got a look at a Towhee, barely got to see the head and no other fieldmark. We waited for as long as we could to get the bird back to doing Towhee stuff but we didn’t have the whole day so we left. Spotted/Eastern Towhee! Which again is a good bird for the county.

Next park on the list was Iwen park, another location that can pull some amazing birds depending on the days. It was around 8:30 am in the morning when we reached Iwen, it was starting to get warm and my feet was getting back to being dry again. We picked up quite a few sparrows in an around Iwen park.

Oak Grove and Trefoil park in north Fargo were the next parks that we were about to head to and if you’ve ever thought about birding in Fargo during spring migration, keep those 2 places in your list of places to bird. Those can be Birdy af! Sabina (my wife) and I had a Golden-winged Warbler and a Northern Parula the evening before and we were hoping they’d stick around, and they did. Interestingly enough, this year we’ve had a huge surge of Golden-winged Warbler and the Northern Parula. We picked up a Blackburnian Warbler and a surprise Blue-winged Warbler. We still needed a Canada warbler, so I was working up this made up trail along the river. As I got out of the thickets, I saw Trebor and Keith working their way up some trees, I think Bur Oaks? Not so good with trees. At that time we heard an interesting song that was buzzier, and again I suck at bird sounds. But both Keith and Trebor are good at it, but we all wondered about what it was for a while. And it was a species that’s very hard to get in the county as well and I’m definitely not used to seeing that bird a lot, that actually would’ve been a county lifer for me. But we got our eyes on it and Trebor and I saw it briefly and it was all yellow and wings had a tinge of grayish blue and blurry wing bars. We went “Is that what we think it is?”

We spent a decent time to re-find the bird, it was singing constantly so I had my Merlin recording the bird and finally we all go to see the bird! It was a Blue-winged Warbler! What a good bird to get for the Big day.

The day was still long, but that probably was already the bird of the day!

Trefoil gave us plenty of good birds and a lot of warblers a few species of sparrows and we headed to the Fargo Lagoons from there. We picked up a good number of birds at the Fargo Lagoons, including a Cackling Goose.

I wish I had kept track of how many birds we had as the day progressed so I could have written the number here. I did have a trip report going on so I kind of knew, I just didn’t write the numbers down until we left the city area to head out west. By the time we left Fargo and were heading out west, we had 119 species. We had to beat 2025 Big Day number and we still had good number of species to get out west. I was feeling good about it. It was hard to say but it felt like we were doing better than last year.

Fargo area doesn’t have much for lakes or wetlands, the only place you can get lakes or wetlands in the whole county is the western part of the county bordering Barnes Co in the west and Ransom county to the South. Basically the lower left corner of the county. It’s about 1 hours drive and I don’t go there as much as I should. I just wish we had that area about 20-25 minutes away from us. I wonder what rarity is missed in that area just because its not birded as much. There’s probably a Ruff, a Red Knot, Eurasian Wigeon, Garganey that hangs around the lakes in that area that are missed every year. Anyways, Torre and Keith had found Black-necked Stilt few days before the big day, and we were hoping to pick those up (finger crossed). Apart from those, we didn’t have much for shorebirds and one of the locations in that area has been very shorebirdy. One of the place there is so good, I named the location “Good Shorebird area” until it was renamed as a hotspot with the actual name of the lake. That place is one of the very few places to get a Ruddy Turnstone.

Trebor had 2 different locations where he had found Say’s Phoebe the week before or so and we hit those spots to see if we can re-find the bird, but no luck with that. But by that time, we were already up to 154 species for the day. We only needed 4 more to beat last years record! I didn’t tell anyone that, I was going to keep that a secret until the end of the day. But, we were almost running out of species. We tried a few spots for an Upland Sandpiper, they didn’t pan out. We tried a few spots for the Least Bittern and Sedge wren, that didn’t work either. As we were driving on random roads to find these species, at point Keith was driving along this road, I saw something that looked different from the side of my eye. I wasn’t sure about it but I asked Keith to stop and back the car so we could look at this odd looking bird. It just felt like it’s a bird I don’t see a lot so it looked different. It could’ve easily been a Western Kingbird. But the GISS about it was different, and it did turn out to be a Say’s Phoebe!

As we were making our way back to Fargo we picked up a Green Heron. Interestingly, almost close to Fargo, on the side of the highway, I again saw some birds that looked odd and more like plover, since we didn’t have any plovers I told Keith to stop again. Someone said, “You sure it’s not just a Killdeer” Trebor had a good look too and we both replied, Nah it looked more like a Plover. So as we drove back, turned around and scanned the area for the Plover, it ended up being Upland Sandpipers. Two Uppies just chilling in the middle of an agricultural field! Back in Fargo, we picked up an Osprey nesting on a cell phone tower. After that we were supposed to go to the Horace Ponds again to end our day, but as we got back we saw that they had blocked the roads to get in there. So we had to change our plans and head back to Forest river. We did have a good chance of picking up a Common Nighthawk at the Forest River park and a swing by a house with Purple Martin nest boxes on the way, which we hadn’t seen that morning. We got both! As usual, the tradition to end the Big Day is to drink a couple of beers at the dike in Iwen Park, so we headed to the Iwen Park.

By that time, I hadn’t checked the trip report as well, but I knew for certain that we were over 157 species for the day. We had broken the record. I asked Trebor if he thought we did better or worse than the previous year? I think he replied, I feel like we did to slightly better but it might be close? To that, I told him he’d be surprised. Which threw him off in the other direction. When I asked him what our number was he said 149?

At that time, we already had 163 species + 2 other taxas, with the Towhee and Alder/Willow. And, I knew that I might have missed a few species on eBird so we could easily get one or two more species at the end of the day.

165 ± species to end the day! Not only did we break the previous years record we almost got 8 more species. So the day ended on a good note. We left Iwen around 10:15, by the time I picked up my car and I was home it was almost 11:20. We had a solid 18 hours of birding!

Torre had the paper checklist, the next day or so, he texted the group and said we had 168 species! I went back and checked my eBird, and I swear it took me hours to not figure it out. So Trebor and I started sorting out all the birds and figured out that I was missing Broad-winged Hawk, the Red-shouldered Hawk and the Red-headed Woodpecker in my eBird list! I can’t remember what was the other species that was missing on my list but we did figure it out! We ended up with 167 species and 2 other taxas, so a total of 169 species for the day! That is a really good number.

It is going to be really hard to get 170+ species next year, but we will get there! 175 for 2027!

What was your guess? Were you close enough? Isn’t it crazy that you can get almost 175 species of birds in Fargo (Cass co) in a single day? And we missed out on a Wilson’s Snipe, Eastern Phoebe, American Bittern, Solitary Sandpiper and a Canada Warbler…which are relatively easier species to see. Funnily enough, we had 2 Solitary Sandpipers and an eastern Phoebe the day before. But again, what is a big year with out a big miss? Every year, we have a species, a rarity that we pick for the big day and I had a Blue Grosbeak, which we didn’t find. But for next year, we we’re going to have the miss of the day as well. I think that is going to be fun. The miss of the day definitely was a Wilson’s Snipe! They’re just every where during a normal day!

Here is the trip report if you are interested : https://ebird.org/tripreport/525920

The winds were brutal, as always in Fargo, North Dakota. You’d not expect anything less from a November wind. Right around 1:30 pm we got a text on our local birders message chain.

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Harlequin Duck (Histrionicus histrionicus) at the Fargo Lagoons. That would have been a lifer bird for me. It was a Monday afternoon and I couldn’t just chase it right away. I was TA at the time and we had our weekly meeting at 3 pm. I had to wait until the evening to try finding that duck. By the time I was done with my meeting, I had lost hope of finding that bird, but I had to check. So I headed out to the Fargo Sewage Lagoons with my tiny spotting scope that I had bought off FB market place (my binos were better than that scope). As I parked my car up on the berm and got out, I could feel the cold November wind piercing my face, my eyes teared up right away, my hopes started drowning alongside the tears from rolling down my cheek. I tried to scan the lagoons to see anything I can find. Well, there were a few ducks there, far away, but those were TFCT birds! “Too far can’t tell”. And, so is the problem with the TFCTs, specially on a lake/lagoons where you’re scanning from a distance and without good optics or even with good optics it’s hard to see.

As predicted, I saw nothing. Well I saw distant blurry ducks, but I couldn’t say what it was. No lifer Harlequin Duck for me.

Later that evening, someone managed to get a good shot of the bird and it was correctly identified as a Long-tailed Duck (Clangula hyemalis), which would have been a lifer as well.

The infamous Summer Tanager

8 May 2018

I didn’t have a car back then and to be honest, I wasn’t listing much back then. Because I didn’t see much. I had a really good park near my apartment, by near I mean a 20-25 minutes walk. But in summer I barely had 20-25 minutes to spare. Most of my time would be spent in the field measuring house sparrow nestlings. But, during the first week of May, someone had reported a Summer Tanager. And, that was my first summer here in Fargo. I actually had no idea what a Tanager was, but when I saw the photo of the bird, I couldn’t believe how beautiful it looked. So I had to go see it. But the problem was, it was in a park about 8-10 miles south and unless someone drove me there, I wouldn’t be able to go. I did convince a non-birder friend of mine to go down there with me for a hike. But sadly I didn’t get to see it and the obsession started.

10 May 2021

On the contrary, on a warm summer day, I was working in the field. I got a notification on my phone, I finished measuring the house sparrow nestling on my hand and checked my phone.

“Summer Tanager at Forest River Park”

That Tanager would’ve been a lifer for me. I had been chasing one for the last 3 years. I wouldn’t be done with work until the next few hours, and again, by the time I would be done. That bird would be long gone. But I had to try it, and as expected, that evening I walked around forest river park and the area that the bird was reported on multiple times, however, no Tanager!

10 May 2023

Long story short, there was a Summer Tanager, I went and look around for over 2 hours. Didn’t get it.

31 May 2023

Another one was reported in the fall, I ran to find that one as well, but no luck. 2 years later another Summer Tanager was reported in a nearby park. That time I was home and I got there quickly, it was a park that I knew really well. I scanned the area it was foraging around, as I was hooked on looking up to find the bird, my legs got stuck on a log hidden in the trails with weeds or some plants and I fell down, camera and extended lens first. At first, I didn’t think of it much, I thought that they lens hood had fallen of but the lens was fine. But as I got to my car and tried to retract the lens, I realized that they lens was broken. Well it was stuck at around 240mm. It wouldn’t go higher or lower than that. A $1500 down and no Summer Tanager.

May 1 2024

Another day, another Summer Tanager! This time, I had a more flexible timeline since I was done with my PhD. This time I got there as soon as I could, driving over the limit on a really busy Fargo roads. I wouldn’t have mind getting a ticket if I had gotten the Tananger. At that point I had never been pulled over, and I didn’t get pulled over either (I was definitely going over the limit). Got to the park, and I also had a pin point location this time so I started scanning every single branch. But as you know, I don’t get to see a Summer Tanager.

As you can count the years, it’s been a while at this point. And still no Summer Tanager. And, there’s a nemesis bird and there’s ultra nemesis. Summer Tanager was turning out to be an ultra nemesis bird for me.

Did I ever get a Summer Tanager? That’s a story for another day.

27 June 2023

A beautiful male Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea) was reported from western part in Cass Co. Mid-afternoon bird and I was just back from my fieldwork. I grabbed the keys and headed out to look for the bird. Imagine a rectangle for a county, this bird was in the lower left half of the rectangle. So, basically I had to head down south and then drive east on a county highway. The highway divides the counties. As I was driving right around the limit to get my lifer Blue Grosbeak listening to a true crime podcast I heard a loud bang and it took me a while to realize that a small rock that a semi-truck had drove over flew right at my windshield making a small but noticeable dent in my windshield. You know how rental car people say “Anything under golf ball size dent is fine” well this would have been not fine.

I got to the location, scanned the whole area for well over an hour. No luck with the Grosbeak. ~$500 down (the wind shield) no Grosbeak.

The birds that were missed

These are some of the worthy mentions for the birds that were missed. But there exists a plethora of birds that has been missed multiple times. The list of ‘Nemesis’ bird grows, thrives and lives in the darkest corner of my eBirding history. One of those notorious nemesis and currently (May 18, 2026) an active Nemesis bird is the Yellow-billed Cuckoo. Ever since I have heard about that bird I have been trying to find one. Interestingly enough, just 15-17 miles east of Fargo in the Buffalo River State Park in Minnesota, they are found in summer times. Back in the June of 2021 multiple people had reported the bird at the park. And it is one of those parks that I go to a lot, it has beautiful hiking trails along the grasslands. I tried to get that cuckoo multiple times during that summer as well as other summers in the years to follow but I am yet to find a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. I was at Magee Marsh during the 2nd week of May in 2023. We were walking along the broad walk looking for various warblers. At a distance, on the top of a branch I saw this bird that looked like a Mockingbird and I was second guessing my self because of its GISS. As I asked for my friend to look at it, the bird was gone. I couldn't figure out what it was. A few minutes later, we walked into this group of people staring at the same branch, I asked them what they were looking at, one of the people there replied “There was a YBCU that flew from that branch over there”. I will never know if that was my bird or not but it was the same tree and the shape looked like one too. I have been looking for that bird for a while now and hopefully I will find it soon.

One of the most sought out lifer that I haven’t been able to find in the last 7 years has been Sprague’s Pipit. I just can’t seem to find that damn bird. But, I hope 2025 is the year. I am going to find that bird!

There are lifer Nemesis and then there’s county bird or state bird nemesis. For me, Red-shouldered Hawk has been a county nemesis for about 8 years now. Strangely enough, this paragraph was supposed to be about how I might get that bird in 2025, and I had to come back and edit it, because I finally got my RSHA on 17th of May 2026.

For now, Blue-winged Warbler and Least Bittern remain the longest chased Nemesis bird for me! But what is birding without missing out on birds? Say, if you were to get all the birds you chase, birding would be really boring. I think the life of birding is missing out on the birds. It’s the fuel and the sole reason that drives you more to find those birds. And the satisfaction that you get when you finally get the bird beats nothing. This is what I call the “Positive feedback mechanism of birding”. When I finally saw one of the nemesis (longest nemesis) bird, I won’t lie, I had a small ball of tear rolling down my eyes. That was one of the most beautiful bird I had ever seen. More on that later…

Well I am really good at missing out on birds. But there is something even more interesting, the real art of missing out on birds. The Curse of the county birds, but that is also for later.

A brief remembrance to the birds that were missed and found, missed and still not found and will be missed and not found for a long time.

Next up: The Curse of the County birds

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About 25 years later

“Last exit” the sign board said. Right in front of us was the US-Canada border north of Pembina, North Dakota. We were heading to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

“Purpose of visit?”

The Canadian border office asked.

“We’re going to see the snakes” all of us replied with excitement.

Anywhere else in the world, that might have been a weird thing to say. Maybe the officer would say “You’re going to do what now?”

Up at the Canadian border near Winnepeg, he was like ‘Oh ok! It’s pretty cool’. Everyone there knows about the snake dens. The ‘Narcisse Snake Dens’! However, no one knows how to pronounce Narcisse, as it seems.

“Have a good trip” said the officer and we were officially in Canada. Though we were there for the Snakes, I was there for the birds as well. As soon as we crossed the border, I started a eBird checklist. The first bird I heard as we got into Canada was a Killdeer! My first Canadian Killdeer. A flock of Franklin’s Gull flew over me as I was taking a photo at the “Manitoba” sign.

Then I picked up the regulars along the highway, the Red-wing Blackbirds, Mourning Doves, American Crow (Canadian Crow?), Common Grackles and so on. My plan for the trip was to get at least 100 species in Canada.

One of the early cool birds that I got to see was a Common Raven. I was kind of expecting to see the Raven up there. But, something that I wasn’t expecting to see, also while taking care of coffee out in the open was a Black-billed Magpie flyover. I got so excited to see that bird, only to realize they are more common up there than I had expected. We went to our Airbnb, checked in and headed towards Assiniboine Forest. It was a beautiful forested area with good hiking trails. I was pretty sure that I would pick up a lot of birds there, however, I was surprised at the number of species that was around. Having said that, this was 2nd of May, and we didn’t have much in Fargo by then, so Winnipeg not having a lot of species makes sense? I guess! But, I did get a Northern Harrier, Broad-winged Hawk, Eastern Phoebe and picked up FOY Orange-crowned Warbler. Not much for birds there but the park was beautiful.

The next trip was ‘The Leaf’, which was amazing by the way. The leaf is a sort of Horticulture museum in Winnipeg, that has varieties tropical to dessert plants and flowers. Not only that, they have an amazing walk-in1 Butterfly exhibit.

The last stop before we called in the night was the ‘Living Prairie Museum’. Nestled in the western part of the Winnipeg city, the living prairie museum is this protected open tall grass prairie. We hiked the trail for about 30 minutes, apart from a few fly by Wood Ducks, a distant White-throated Sparrow song and a Fox Sparrow, I didn’t have a lot of birds in there. However, the hike was amazing! By the time we were done, the sun was about to set, the horizon and the nearby apartments with lit with the golden hour sun.

The next morning: The quest for the Danger Noodles

We woke up early in the morning, headed to the nearest Tim Hortons, and drove towards the town of Gimli and lake Winnipeg. The famous ‘Red River of the North’ in Fargo empties in lake Winnipeg. So as a Fargo residents, we had to go see the lake. And, we were not disappointed. Interestingly, the lake was still frozen. I had a flock of Common, Hooded and the Red-breasted Mergansers, all new birds for Canada. A good number of Bonaparte’s gull and few Ring-billed Gulls. The trail along the lake was busy with Ruby-crowned Kinglets and White-throated Sparrows. The cattails along the lake was buzzing with the beautiful Song of the Song Sparrow, the chip of the Swamp Sparrow and a big flock of American Tree Sparrow fluttered around running away from us.

On the way to the Narcisse Snake dens, I got my Sandhill cranes, American Kestrel, Marbled Godwits and a few Black-billed Magpies on the highway. The grasslands on the sides of the highway heading towards the dens were birdy, specially the mudflats.

After about 30 minutes drive, we finally got to the dens. And, one thing we realized was that Canada does the ‘sign boards’ or boards really well. Every place had a really cool looking welcome sign or boards. The snake dens board was pretty cool as well. The only surprising thing was, as famous as that place is for snakes, it was just a walk-in trail. No visitor centers, no small shops or anything. I was hoping to buy a Garter-snake fridge magnet!

Extremely excited I started racing towards the dens, I was still looking for birds, but I was really looking forward to seeing the Garter Snakes in the dens. As I was looking for this tiny bird fluttering in a small branch, I realized that there was a big (probably female) Garter snake right under me. As I tried to gently grab her to show her to my friends, she slithered away, un-interested. The tiny litter bird was an Eastern Bluebird. First Bluebird for Canada!

Finally the Snakes!

The first dens we got to was not very active, I mean there were snakes, but maybe less than 100, but it was exciting either way. That den brought the young kid in me out, that kid who was really excited about seeing those snakes on tv. I was right in front of a snake den and looking at hundreds of Snakes. I was a little sad, because I thought we might have been there earlier in the season for the snakes to be out. But, that was the only week I could have made it, the next 4 weekends I have birding related events to attend. We had what we had. We would see a bunch of small snake balls along the trail. Sadly, they would leave as soon as we walked on the trail. I wonder what percentage of their energy is wasted on running away from humans? We want to see them, but also by being there we disturb them from their sun basking. I know that they wouldn’t hear me, but I would always tell them, you don’t need to leave, we won’t disturb you. But, they didn’t trust me.

As we walked towards den number 2, I could hear some slithering sounds, but it was very loud to be snakes, so I requestioned my first thought of them being snakes, we got closer and they were snakes! That was one of the best things I have ever seen in my life. I might write a blog about that later, but there are things that I have seen in life where I went, holy crap that thing is amazing. Most of those are wild animals, nature related things or just anything that is related to nature in some forms or way, except one.2

We didn’t count but those snakes numbers were amazing. Probably thousands, and, yes we could hear them slither. You could hear them from quite a distance.

Can you hear the Snakes? And yes, the Song Sparrow was hanging out with snakes (well, nearby)

What an amazing thing! We stayed there observing those snakes for a while and started heading back. We went there on Saturday and had to come back to Fargo on Sunday, wish we had more time to explore Winnipeg and other parts of Manitoba.

I was at 69 species for Canada after I picked up a Purple Martin near a highway, I was hoping to get to at least 75. On the way to Fargo, I saw that there was this beautiful Marshy area on the way south called the Oak Hammock Marsh PWMA, a lot of shorebirds sighted around that area, so we decided to do a quick stop at that place. And, again it was amazing. Again, I wish we had more time to spent there. The interpretive center at the Duck Unlimited building was one of the most amazing and informative interpretive centers I have been to. Canada does things in a really cool way. Oh, and I forgot, most of the buildings around nature related buildings had bird friendly windows! When I was looking at the feeders from a dotted windows I saw my Canada life bird White-crowned Sparrow.

We headed back to the parking lot and started Driving back. Right next to the parking lot, Theo yelled out Cliff Swallow, and he’s not a birder, so, we had to confirm, and it was a Cliff Swallow. He does know birds, not just all of them and usually gets the family or type right. One the way to the Den, he yelled out, Bird with long bill….woodcock! It was a Wilson’s Snipe on a fence post. As we headed out on the road, I saw a mudflat with a bunch of birds in it, so I asked Theo to pull in the overlook. We started scanning the birds from the car. As I was looking at some Marbled Godwit, Theo yelled out, ‘Dude! A Curlew’. I told him, you mean a Godwit? He replied, nope, it has a long decurved bill. That did sound like a Curlew!

“That would be a really good bird for this area!” I replied and scanned the area that he was talking about. There was this shorebird with a long decurved bill foraging with the Godwits. It was far and hard to tell, so I took a photo and looked at the photo and realized that it was a Whimbrel and not a Curlew, still a really good bird for the area and for the year!

What a great last bird for Canada!

The snake trip ended shortly, but I will be back. I will spend more time in Canada next time and get more birds. I ended up with 80 species of birds for Canada. My dream of seeing those snakes came true and so did my recent dream of birding in Canada!

The first trek I went on was not an actual mountain but this beautiful look out hill that overlooked 2 amazing mountain ranges in Nepal. Interestingly enough, non of those mountains were 8000’ers!2. But, they were amazing. We were at about 2500 meters, and our neck hurt trying to look up at those mountains. I wonder how it would feel to get higher than that, in fact, how it would feel to be on top of one of those. That was a dream for later. A few years later, 2009 to be exact, two of my friends and I planned a trip to get to this high altitude and a beautiful glacial lake in Nepal called Gosaikunda. That trek would go as high as 4800 meters and drop down to the lake which is situated at 4300 meters.

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By the way, I forgot to mention, I also grew up around forested areas. Well, technically, I grew up in a city but a city surrounded by forest all around. I had never seen a grassland or rangeland before I started traveling around.

The Gosaikunda trek starts at around 2000 meters mostly at a north facing slope and gradually goes up in a mixed oak/rhododendron forest reaching up to conifer dominated forest to exceeding tree line3 and then reaching snow-line. One thing I had never thought about was the part where the tree-line ends and the shrubs start. This isn’t apparent in the Gosaikunda trek, however, a trek with in the same trekking system, the Langtang valley trek, the shurbs or the rangeland covers most of the part. I did my first Langtang valley trek in 2012, but, I only learned about rangeland in 2024. Almost 14 years later, and realized that the area I had hiked would qualify for a rangeland or even a grassland. I wonder if it’s called an alpine meadow. Either way, let me paint a picture of what it looks like.

You hike up a trail, it’s moist and dark, the boulders along the trail are covered in dark green mosses. The trees are lined with lichens, an epiphytic orchid with long leaves hangs from the tree branches. Colorful mushrooms call the forest floor home. Songbirds perch on branches and sing their heart out letting the passerby known of the presence. Occasionally, a few barking deer munch on the green grasses, pikas run around trying to hoard fresh leaves in the dens. You see a shadow on the trails, peaking through the thick canopy of the trees, a shadow of a huge bird soaring up the thermals in the sky, probably a vulture. You can feel the air getting thinner and thinner as you get higher and higher. The dark forest lightens up as you start losing the canopy cover. Finally you get out of the forest, and you reach this open meadow. Small rolling hills, small shrubs and few conifers depending on which side you’re looking at. If you’re there in spring or summer, you see a carpet of green grass and forbs. Beautiful Himalayan plants with an explosion of colors from their spring bloom. It’s the most picturesque thing you’ve ever seen. The canvas is divided into the grass carpet in the bottom, a middle range of rolling hills with few trees, and in the background lies a snow-clad mountain, towering over this beautiful landscape, keeping an eye on the valley below.

How can you not love that? And I did love it, I still do. But for me, it was a mountain, it wasn’t a grassland, or I think I should say a ‘rangeland’. I would always say, I love mountains, and again, I do! I absolutely love mountains. At the same time, I didn’t realize that I love that openness of a grassland, the limitless sea of grass, sea of flowers and the open sky.

14 years later, I would learn more about the actually ‘sea of grasses’, the prairie of United States. We had learned about the Savanas, the Pampas and the Prairies, but I had never imagined what it looked like or never paid attention to be honest. Even though I was in the US almost 9 years ago now (currently its 2026) I never thought about the grasslands or the prairie until I started my job at a fire ecology lab working in the central grasslands of North Dakota. I had driven around most of North Dakota and imagined all the grasses around us to be the part of the grassland, never realizing that I was mostly looking at ‘sea of Kentucky Blue Grass’ or ‘ Smooth Brome”. Even with those, I did love walking around the wilderness. Does it apply to the grassland? or it has to be a forest to be the wilderness, I only see the term being applied to forested areas. Anyways, back to the main topic. I absolutely love being out in the open. And, mind you, North Dakota is flat. Imagine the flattest land you can think of and flatten that up as much as you can and you will get North Dakota. Still, even with the invasive species, even with all the changes it has gone through, even with random Russian Olive or Siberian Elm tree in the middle of the grassland, that openness still has an appeal. The gentle ups and down, the first appearance of a not so colored Pasqueflower on brown canvas of the early spring, the reddish tint of a prairie smoke, the red, the yellow, the white and the orange of the Echinacea, the purple of the prairie cone flower. The diversity of the colors of a rangeland is unparalleled.

Imagine calling this the dessert of the Americas. Forget about dessert, this ecosystem alone is one of the most diverse system in the planet. The sheer diversity of song birds, the pockets of waterfowls spread across the prairie pot holes. The prairie dogs popping their head out from holes on the ground. The lone burrowing owl family that has now claimed a previous prairie dog real state. The elegant garter snake snaking around grasses. The grouse and the pheasants bursting in air as you walk through a thick and lush grass cover. The gentle breeze blows away the milkweed floss. It flows through the air as you flow through the beautiful landscape, where ever you want. Boundary less, free, unbounded by any constraints, you move along with the nature.

At this point, you realize, how come Grasslands never make it to the conversation of this vs that as in Mountain vs beach and so on. I just feel like grasslands/ rangelands are highly underrated and under explored. I’d rather be in a grassland with a swarm of mosquitoes than a beach with swarm of humans being as noisy as they can be. There is something special about the open sky, it makes you feel free and less intimidated. The reason I say this is, might not be true for everyone, but the first time I stood at the base camp of Everest (well you can’t see Everest from there)4 and looked at Nuptse, it was really intimidating, I was at around 5400 meters and I was still trying hard to raise my head to see the summit. It stood there like a giant, making all of us realize how insignificant we are. And, my story of seeing a giant lake or an ocean is the same. The first time I saw Nepal’s largest lake, which isn’t even super large, I was so intimidated, I had never seen any water body that big and it’s just felt different, same with the Pacific Ocean that I walked into. There was a form of uneasiness in me when I saw the giant ocean in front of me, the waves, the endless waters until the horizon and beyond. But, with grassland? all you find is peace (or noise of winds howling in your ears if you’re in North Dakota). On a calm and warm day, a walk in the grassland is the most peaceful thing you can feel. Be it the alpine meadows of high Himalayas or the Prairies of the United States.

I will always be a mountain man, I have my affinity to it. But, I have definitely grown into grasslands in the last few years. There is something beautiful, something special about grasslands. And, hope we have enough left for the coming generation to see and enjoy walking through.

My wife and I were chasing the Kelp Gull (Larus dominicanus) in Milwaukee. So, we decided to drive down to Chicago and bird with our friend Aubrey. Kelp Gull was my 495th bird. While we were there, I realized that the Great Tit (Parus major) and the European Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) counts on eBird as lifers. So we had to go find that bird. I also realized that there was Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea) and Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus) reported in Chicago which would be my lifers. European Goldfinch would potentially be a US lifer since I had already seen it in Nepal. We got all the birds except the Yellow-billed Cuckoo! 8 years chasing and still going strong. But, I saw the Monk Parakeet on the eBird needs alert so we had to go chase that one, and I ended up getting a Monk Parakeet for lifer # 500 for the US.

By that point, unless I found a Yellow-billed Cuckoo somewhere, I didn’t have a lot of options for lifers nearby. So, I was looking at potential lifers within a short drive. Well, relatively. The closest thing that I saw was an American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus) near Spearfish Canyon, SD. That was still a 8-9 hours drive but not too bad. I had been to that area before with a couple of friends, none of them were birders so I didn’t get to do a lot of birding. And, to be honest I had no idea the Dippers were found there. So, we decided to head down there to find the Dipper!

We decided to head to western North Dakota first, birding along the Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) , then heading south to Spearfish Canyon. It was Sabina’s first trip to the western part of the country so she picked up a bunch of western birds. The first lifer she picked up was a Lazuli Bunting (Passerina amoena). I knew a place for Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) near Amidon, so we went to that spot as well. More on TRNP later.

We got to Spearfish Canyon pretty late in the evening, though our plan was to camp, we hadn’t reserved a Campsite yet. We found out about the Spearfish Canyon along the way and headed there, however, there was an event going on near downtown and most of the roads were blocked. Somehow, we ended up reaching the Campground entrance but we were asked camping permits to even enter the park. I told them that we didn’t have one but were looking to see if there are any spots that are open. One of the person there told us that most of them were occupied but you could still try. So, we went to the campground area and searched for a potential campground. The designated camp site with fire pit and all were occupied, but a nice lady came towards us and told us that we could just set up our tent any where in the park and pay at the office tomorrow morning. Phew! We didn’t have to get a hotel.

Well, it wouldn’t have been bad to get a hotel too as we found out the next morning. Around 4 am, I woke up and realized that it had been raining for quite a while. Good thing, I have a solid tent that doesn’t let any moisture in. It was raining pretty hard, from there onwards, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I pulled out my kindle and started reading my book. As soon as it got bright, we headed out to find a McDonalds, that saves a lot of time, and you can use that breakfast prep time for birding. We went to the nearby McDonald’s and let the tent dry for a while. And thankfully, by the time we were done, the rain as well as the sun was out. We did let the tent sit out for a while as we birded the local park.

As usual, before heading to any new place, I get on eBird and find potential hotspots to find the target species. Spearfish Canyon area had a bunch of hotspots for the American Dipper, I had sorted them out by most species reported for the area. Silly mistake, but I assumed that we will get it at the first spot. Well, also in my defense I thought my phone data would work in that area. But as we drove into the Canyon heading out, I lost my data and I had pin for only one spot. We went to the spot I had and there was no Dipper there. We did pick up Sabina’s lifer Western Flycatcher (Empidonax difficilis) and Violet-green Swallow (Tachycineta thalassina).

The problem that we had now was I didn’t know what other spots were good for a Dipper. But, again we were around a canyon with this creek (Spearfish Creek). So we decided to just walk along the river along the highway, wherever we could find a pullout spot. The first spot we went to was a beautiful lookout with a small waterfall. A few people around, but no for a Dipper.

The next spot had a beautiful hiking trail, so we decided to try that and walk a few miles to see if we can find one. No luck again! We tried about 5-6 lookouts and still no luck. I was starting to think if we should go back to the town and try to find other hotspots. But, we had already traveled so far from the town, the best thing to do was to keep on trying. We headed further south and found this trail called the Devil’s Bathtub Trail ! Which sounded cool.

There were tons of people at that spot and we weren’t hopeful that we would find a Dipper there. We parked the car and headed out on the trail. I usually walk fast, faster than Sabina does! I was walking close to the creek, scanning every single rock along the creek. No luck. As I looked behind to see where Sabina was, I couldn’t see her. But, from the side of my eye, I saw something move along the river. A small brown object that was bobbing. I bino’ed it, An American Dipper.

I was so excited I wanted to shout, but I didn’t. I wanted to call Sabina before the bird left, but she wasn’t around. I went back on the trail and saw her iSeeking a plant. I told her, I got it! We got back to the spot and looked at the Dipper for a while. I absolutely love Dipper! We have 2 species of Dippers back home and I had gotten my lifer Brown Dipper (Cinclus pallasii) when Sabina and I were out hiking in the Himalayas.

The American Dipper jumped out of the rocky area and we saw that it was banded. We stayed in that area for a long time just observing the Dipper. The sound of the river, the dance of the dipper. That place always has my heart. It was such a fun experience. Sabina loved that trip so much, we plan to do it again this year!

Our trip report from that trip:

https://ebird.org/tripreport/395530/552845

Well, Sabina and I were out looking for some shorebirds around mudflats. We didn’t find a lot of Shorebirds, but we did see a bunch of ducks. Mostly Blue-Winged Teals and Northern Shovelers. I told Sabina to keep her eyes out for Garganeys in the flock of Blue-winged Teals! And, at one of the lakes with bunch of Redheads and Canvasback, she suggested that we should look out for the Garganey because 1) the lake was big 2) there were a lots of duck. However, most of those ducks were basically Redheads and Canvasback. So, I told her, it might not be in this flock. Garganeys usually are found in flocks of Blue-winged Teals.

She sounded surprised and asked, “Why? Why can’t they be here?”

Well, I don’t have an exact answer, but I’ve read a bunch about these birds, not just ducks, even song birds that hangout with other birds that look similar to them. For example, a Brambling hanging out with House Sparrow flock, Tufted Ducks hanging out with either of the Scaups or a Ring-necked Ducks. As I was mentioning the likeliness of these species pairing together. A thought appeared in the corner of my mind.

Why?

Or even, how? How do they know what ‘they’ look like? They don’t use a mirror like we do?

Sabina hit me with a counter for my silly question. They obviously see their parents when they are young. So they should know, what they look like? How do you think, we know of what we look like?

And, that does make a sense, well to some extent.

So it was off my mind until this afternoon.

This afternoon

Every spring and fall, during the migration season, I walk the University everyday to look for Window strikes1. This afternoon, I found a White-throated Sparrow, to be specific a Tan striped White-throat. As I collected the bird and was heading back to my office, I saw a few of my collages enjoying some Mate2 outside our building. I stopped for a few sip. As I put the bird down on the table, a non birder friend asked me about the bird. I explained what it was and as I am with birds, I went on a tangent and told them about the different versions of White-throated Sparrows and how they usually cross pair between white and tanned striped. As soon as I mentioned that, one of them asked, how do they know what type they are?

Now that is a different question, slightly, I guess. But again as soon as he asked that and I was amused, I realized it has to be genetic. My amusement was ephemeral.

“Well, genetical imprint, I guess”, I replied.

Side-tracking here again. So, if you don’t know about the White-striped and Tan-Striped White-throated Sparrows, there are 2 different “morphs” of these sparrows, known as the White-striped and Tan-striped. White-strip are more aggressive and are known to sing more than the tan-striped. Tan striped are known to be better at parental care. While breeding these birds are known to breed cross color morph, making them better at aggressiveness as well as taking care of the nestlings. Cool right?

But as we got to discussing about this, another cool point was brought. For the species developing with their natural parents, they might be able to know what they look like based on their imprint of their ‘parents’ but what about species such as Cowbirds where they develop/grow in another birds nest? How do they know what they look like and how do they end up flocking together with the Brown-headed Cowbirds and not a Meadowlark or a Chestnut-collared Longspur?

And, I was back to square one! How the hell do they know? Well, there’s some kind of genetical imprint for sure, but what? or how? Do they have a coded photographic image? Am I going crazy over something really simple? or is it really complicated? Anyways, for now, I am going to end this here. But, I will follow up on this as I do more research on this subject. Hopefully, I will have some answers to this by this coming weekend!

I was there on a mission, and my mission was the find birds. As a part of my thesis for my masters’ degree research, I was studying the altitudinal variation in bird diversity from 1600 meters up to 5400 meters. Before that, I had done some high altitude birding but not enough to understand the sheer diversity of birds in the Himalayas. I was new to Birding, I was a recreation ‘Bird watcher’ back then. That trip not only brought the birder in me, but also brought the scientist in me, eventually leading to my PhD quest and research ideas (definitely not a linear route though).

September in Himalayas can be chilling cold, I can’t tell you all how cold it was because I didn’t have a phone back then, I did finally get a phone a year later as I started working. But, it was cold, I was wearing layers, almost all the clothes I had and I was still feeling a little cold as we started our hike up to Thorung high camp. In the dark of the night, with that dim moon light, I could see a few Himalayan Blue Sheep1 (Pseudois nayaur) grazing near the ridges of the mountain. To early to be grazing? I thought.

The walk from Thorung Phedi to Thorung high camp is a steep climb up a rock surface of about 400 meters altitude gain. It usually takes least 1 hour + to get to the top. The morning was clam and almost comforting, even with the cold. It was pin drop silent, if you would get close to the Blue Sheep, you could almost hear them nibble. About 48 minutes later, we reached high camp. Hikers at the camp were getting ready to head up the mountain. The tea-houses were lit up and the dinning area looked very busy with people. We had skipped the breakfast, I am not much of a breakfast person anyways. We took a break for about 10-15 minutes, because I need the sun to be up so I can survey the area for birds.

Slowly, the mountains started glowing. The summit started looking like it’s painted with gold. A sign that the sun was up. We started heading up the mountain. I would stop periodically on my transect to do the bird survey. My friend would rest on a giant boulder appreciating the majestic mountain surrounding us. I could hear him panting nearby, as I was trying hard to listen to birds. The first few transect had no birds. And, since that was my first field survey in that altitude, I assumed that there would be no birds at 5000+ meters. Well, I was wrong.

As we got closer to the top of the pass, the Thorung La Pass , I saw this giant thing foraging on the ground. The fog didn’t help much, I kind of saw a silhouette of an animal, I couldn’t make out what it was, didn’t look like a Blue Sheep, it was much smaller and looked more like a bird. As I got closer, I realized it was indeed a bird! It was some kind of Pheasant. I wasn’t used to the birds of Himalayas and I had definitely not seen that bird before that day. I had no idea what it was, apart from the fact that it was a Phasianid. I quickly took a photo, and then checked my field guides, they were Tibetan snowcock (Tetraogallus tibetanus). Casually foraging at around 5300 meters. First bird of the morning2.

As we got close to the summit or the highest point, I saw more Snowcocks along the trail. We rested for a bit at the summit, had a cup of tea and started heading down. As you descend down from the top, you get into the district Mustang, the landscape is pretty much the same, its all rocky and rugged with barely any vegetation. Not too far from the summit, I saw a dark bird land right next to the trail. It almost looked like a crow, but it would be unusual for a Crow to be that high, even though the Large-billed Crows (Corvus macrorhynchos) can be found up to 4200 meters. Another option for a high altitude corvid would be the Choughs, but this bird was significantly larger than the smaller choughs. I had never seen that bird before but this time, unlike the snowcocks, I had a general idea of what it was. It was a Raven! Common Raven (Corvus corax) back then it was called the Northern Raven. I was so surprised to find a bird at that altitude, again casually foraging. I called my friend, who looked blue and was panting like crazy, trying to grasp any molecules of oxygen that he could and this bird was just chilling and flying up like its nothing, at around 5400 meters. I took some photos and headed back to the trail.

A few minutes later, I saw a small bird hopping on the side of the trails again, and this time I knew what the bird was. It was an Accentor! Accentors are small songbirds in the family Prunellidae, they are another high altitude species, mostly found between 3,000 and 5,500 m asl. I saw two species of Accentors at that location, the Alpine Accentor (Prunella collaris) and the Robin Accentor (Prunella rubeculoides).

Amazing! I thought to my self, a bird that’s barely 18 cm, at an altitude of 5400 meters in the cold of the Himalayas! I already loved birds by then, but that first trip to Manang is when I fell in love with birds, I was fascinated by their abilities to do what they do and not even break a sweat! (Which they don’t)3 .That is when I thought about my future research which led me to think about my PhD work.

More about that later.

When I got to Fargo and saw my first Raven, I was surprised, that they’re in low altitudes here. In Nepal, you have go above 3500 meters asl to find a Raven!

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And, Keep on Birdin’

I discussed it with my wife (Sabina) and we decided to head there if it’s sighted by anyone else in the morning.

So, as we woke up this morning, I found a GroupMe text from a local birder who had gone there and found the bird. As soon as I saw the text, I woke Sabina up and 5 minutes later we were on the road. On the way we realized that the county where the duck was sighted was a new county for me and Sabina. Sabina has only been in the US for the about 12 months now, so if its a new county for me, its a new county for her.

I love county birding and everywhere we travel we try to bird all the counties that we can. I completed all the counties in North Dakota last year, and I have been trying to complete all the counties in Minnesota as well. The duck was sighted in Lac qui Parle and Sabina quickly found out that we could bird another 4 counties if we planned it right.

On the way there, we picked up a few new birds for the counties along the way. While driving south on the County highway 75 in Traverse county, I saw a huge Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) and pulled the car over on the shoulder. Right when I was about to grab my camera from the back seat, I saw a few car heading our way. So, I quickly put my hazard lights on. The first car gave me a weird look and drove on, the second car however, made a quick turn. And, that’s when I realized it was a Sherrif’s car.

“Oh shit”

Living in Fargo, I have always heard that Minnesota cops and Sherrif’s will give you a ticket if they stop you! And, they’re not cheap tickets. For the last 9 years that I have lived in US, I have only been pulled over once, and that was this past winter in Duluth. It was a foggy cold day, and apparently you’re supposed to have your lights on during cold, fogy raining day/afternoon. Oh well. But, this time I was sure I was going to get a ticket for illegal stop or something. As the Sheriff parked his car behind mine, I took my license out and got ready. He came through the passenger side.

I think a full conversation will be more fun than me telling the story:

Me: Good morning officer!

Officer: Good morning. Well, I was wondering what was happening here, but as soon as I pulled over I saw your plates and realized what you were doing!

Me: Yes, haha! How could you miss that amazing nest.

Officer: It’s pretty cool. They’ve been here for a few years now

Me: Oh, that’s awesome, I see one of the eagles right next to the nest (pointing at the tree)

Officer: Alright, you have a wonderful day, I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t have any trouble with your car or anything.

Me: No, we don’t! Just looking at the nest ! Thank you for checking! You have a good day!

What a nice person! He was so friendly and nice, it was really fun talking to him. We kept on driving towards our destination. A few minutes after that, I saw this small shorebird on the side of the road and stopped in the middle of the road and turned around, it was a FOY² Wilson’s Snipe (Gallinago delicata). I scanned quickly to see if any cop cars saw me! We also picked up FOY American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos)

As we got close to the location, I saw a car spotted on the other side of the road about 50-60 meters from the point. I automatically assumed that the bird had moved, so I went over there, but we only saw a few shorebirds. And, I absolutely love Shorebirds, but at that time, I was looking for another bird. So, I turned around and headed back to the original point.

We parked near a mudflat with a bunch of ducks and scanned, there were only Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors). I saw car stop next to us, I pulled down my window and a lady asked us if we were looking for the Garganey. She told us that it was on the other slough about 30 meters from where we were and that it was on the left most corner the last time they saw it. As suggested we pulled over on this drive way and started scanning. A bunch of Northern Shoveler (Spatula clypeata), a few Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors) and Green-winged Teal (Anas crecca), and that was it. No Garganey!

Sabina suggested that we get out of the car and look. But I was worried that if we got out, the ducks might leave. So we waited in the car and kept our eyes open. About 5 minutes had gone by and still no luck with the Garganey. Then, I saw someone pull up behind us, and they got out of the car right away. The birds didn’t flinch, so we got out and I took out my Scope!

We scanned a bunch of it and still no luck. Another 5 minutes went by and a flock of ducks landed on the slough. I scanned quickly, no luck, just Teals and Shovelers. But a quick seconds later, another flock came in and I could see that there was a weird look bird in the mix. I quickly took a photo and saw it. I realized that the other group hadn’t seen it, so I told them that it was in the new mix. Sabina saw it through the scope as well. It was a lifer for her! And, a US lifer for me! Garganey is found in Nepal so I had a lifer Garganey from back home. I got an “ID” photo.

Apparently, this bird was just the 2nd sighting in Minnesota post eBird era! What an amazing bird to find. The last one that I saw on eBird was back in 2024. I am surprised that I never heard about it that time. Well, I mostly focused on my state and county list back then, so maybe that’s why!

I always take my camping chairs with me so I pulled those out and we spent about 10-15 minutes, but the Garganey never came out, mostly hiding in the corn stubs. So we decided to leave, we had a few more counties to bird. We had to head south to get to Yellow Medicine county and before heading there we quickly stopped by the mudflats from before to get the shorebirds. A quick scan and I saw a shorebird with dark bell and a droopy bill! FOY Dunlin (Calidris alpina), FOY Pectoral Sandpiper (Calidris melanotos) and a FOY Baird’s Sandpiper (Calidris bairdii)! And, picked up a FOY Franklin’s Gull (Leucophaeus pipixcan) at the same spot as well.

We headed south looking for birds along the county. At the end, we ended up adding 5 new counties in Minnesota! With that, I only have 25 counties left in Minnesota!

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¹ “Twitching" is a British term for the, often obsessive, pursuit of a previously located rare bird. A person who engages in this activity is called a "twitcher".

² FOY refers to to the first of the year bird i.e. a bird you see for the first time for a calendar year, and is not a lifer for you, just a new bird for the year!

It’s dog park nestled in an around a neighborhood and a open field to the north, there were only 2 options on where the nestlings could be. Either along the tree groves east of the neighborhood or by the botanical garden near the south-west end. I started walking near the neighborhood first, as it has more trees. And, a really cool canopy-walk. I don’t know if that’s the right term for it, but it has these tree groves and the a lower shrubs grove that creates a tunnel like effect. Early in the migration season it is a treasure trove for Sparrows, Thrushes and Ovenbirds!

However, this area isn’t much of a “GHOW nest” habitat along this stretch. There are some old growth trees on the north end of it. But again, I had no idea where the nest was so all I could do is walk around and look for the owlets. The walkway was buzzing with American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla) and Northern Yellow Warbler (Setophaga aestiva). Ocasionally, I would hear the “Che-Bek” of the Least Flycatcher (Empidonax minimus). That was most of everything that was around. Still no owlets!

I walked over to the Botanical garden area which again doesn’t have much of a treeish area, where the nestlings would be perched, is what I had thought. I don’t know why but this area has a small train track, and I am pretty sure it wasn’t a remnant of a previous train track, because it doesn’t exist outside of that park! Maybe it was a recreational trail? Like a theme park? Who knows. I walked around the fence that surrounds the train track to get to the areas with tree. There’s a beautiful graden right around that area, where you can walk in. It’s not usually birdy, so I did’t go inside.

When I got to the north-western part of the fence, I saw something on the floor of the roof. I couldn’t tell what it was at first. A racoon? a mammal of some sort? It couldn’t be a Beaver? It was something that was lying on the balcony, flat. Almost like some sort of Mammal.

4 years before that:

I was birding in one of the hotspots in Fargo. Mostly looking for Warblers. I was this huge opening on top of a tree. I always scan those for Screech owls. Rather than a Screech, I saw something that blew my mind. It was fingers! Fingers like humans. I was aware that North America doesn’t have any primates, but those fingers looked very primate-y. I was dazed and confused. Right around that time , someone walked in and asked what I was looking at, I told them about my amusement and this lady smiled and said, oh you’re looking at a Racoon. Well, I didn’t know Racoon’s had fingers like that.

To the right of that roof, well technically not a roof, I googled and it’s called a ‘Gable’? I have no idea, but as per google, it was peak of the gable, I saw a Great-horned Owlet. It was looking right at me!

I took a photo of that owlet and got back to the other thing on the floor, and it hit me. It was another Great-horned Owl nestling. But, it was flat on the floor, almost as if its hurt or couldn’t move or something, I assumed that something was wrong. But, right when I was about to call for help, the other owlet flew next to that owlet and it got up. They hung around for a while giving me plenty of opportunity to take photos and even a short video.

As I got home, I tried to figure out what was happening, and with a quick reading I found out that that’s how Owlets sleep. Since, their head is so big their developing neck muscles aren’t strong enough to support it. So they have to sleep flat on the ground! What a crazy thing. I would have never thought about that. And, then I read somewhere that, people have seen them sleeping like that on trees. Their talons are hooked on the branches and until they relax their muscles, the talons don’t release, which means they can sleep easy, as long as they want, without falling to the floor.

Have you seen an owlet sleeping on its stomach?

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I get asked a lot, but I actually don’t know why Nepal decided to go with the Himalayan Monal (Lophophorus impejanus) as the national bird. But, it’s dazzling explosion of vibrant colors, probably symbolizes Nepal’s highly diverse culture and tradition. For a small nation, Nepal is very rich in culture, tradition and languages. With in the 147,181 square kilometers ( 56,827 sqmi) area Nepal has 124 distinct languages and 125 ethnic groups. Our landscape is highly diverse as well, so are the birds: To learn more about Nepal’s landscape and birds, read my blog on Birding in Nepal !

Himalayan Monals are high altitude birds in the family Phasianidae. It is a monotypic species, but is closely related to Sclater’s Monal (Lophophorus sclateri). Their range extends from Eastern region of Bhutan to Western Pakistan and parts of Eastern Afghanistan. They inhabit open coniferous or mixed forests primarily with Rhododendron (National flower of Nepal : Rhododendron arboreum) and Bamboo. In central Nepal, flocks of Monals can been seen foraging around cultivated landscape and Himalayan meadows close to human settlements. Their summer altitude in Nepal is around 4350 meters whereas they are known to descend down to almost 3200 meters asl in winter.

It would be fair to say that the sexual dimorphism in coloration in Monals are quite extensive. With the male displaying plethora of coloration while female limited to more or less similar patterns and coloration. The male has a striking metallic green crest, shiny coppery neck feathers, greenish head, violet purple back, mostly black on the ventral side and a rufous tail. The bill is grayish with enlarged and slightly de-curved maxilla. Bills are usually paler in females than in males. Turquoise-blue per-orbital skin in both sexes, slightly more prominent in males.

Himalayan Monals forage on the ground, and are mostly active early in the morning and in the evening. Their diets primarily consists of seeds, tuber shoots, insects, larva and even vegetable materials from nearby villages (in Nepal). They’re known to dig up to 25 cm with their bill.

Like most lekking pheasants, the the Monal is known to gather in groups during breeding season and fan their tails, lower their wings and circle the females displaying their funky coloration. Instance of flight displays, specially gliding with spread tail has been recorded as well. Monal nests are very simple with minimum scrape under bush or on a steep hillside and are usually unlined. Eggs are pale yellowish or reddish-buff or brownish marking. Female lays about 3-5 eggs, and the incubation period is about 27 days.

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Cover photo credit: Ajit Hota (Wikicommons)

Amidst all the chaos, there was a silver lining or a feather lining I should say that was keeping me sane. And, they come in all forms and all colors - Birds! I had been a long time birder before COVID. In fact I started birding around February of 2007. But back then I was a ‘bird watcher’ casually enjoying looking at birds during my hikes and nature walks. By 2013, as I was climbing up huge mountain ridges to find birds for my masters’ thesis, I was turning into a birder. There is a thin line between birding and bird watching, and mostly nobody knows where you draw the line. But a general consensus is that, bird watching is something of a leisure where you enjoy taking some time off your hike to look at and enjoy the activities of birds, whereas birding is when you chase a Kelp Gull 10 hours away. I was somewhere in between birder and birdwatcher around 2013. As the years progressed, I was leaning more towards a birder, and by the time I got to the US. I was totally converted.

The birding culture here in the US ended up propelling my love for birds in a more robust kind of way. Even though eBird, the largest citizen science database for birds, started in 2002. I wasn’t using it prior to coming to the US. I had heard about it but it never came to my attention to use it. But, when I got to the US, my colleague, Aubrey Sirman, in my lab told me “You should use eBird” and boy I did!

That definitely was a turning point for my birding career, well it is kind of like a career. Even the first few years, I wasn’t into it as much. I would go birding with Aubrey every time she was chasing a bird in the sewage ponds near Fargo or at our field sites. I would log in every new birds that I used to see around our field sites. My PhD work was with House Sparrows (Passer domesticus). But, we get a lot of other birds around our field sites. For the first few years, starting from 2017 to 2019, I had less than 50 birds on my eBird for the US. Then in the summer of 2019, I bought a car and that helped a lot as well. As you know, you can barely get anywhere without a car in the US. And, the birds, they can be anywhere. By 2020, I had 166 birds for the year in the US.

It was in early 2022 that I realized that I had been birding quite regularly on eBird. So, on eBird you can keep track of how many days you’ve had a checklist streak for, kind of like a snap streak in ‘Snapchat’, where I am on a 0 day streak. My streak at the time of my realization was 47 days. Home and family was faraway, I needed something else to keep me sane. So it was then that I decided to keep that checklist going for as long as I could. And, for someone who is the most impatient person I know, I knew it’d lose track of it by day 70 if not less than that.

I am not a person of discipline, by that I mean, I don’t live on a well fed structure, I don’t plan stuff, I just wing it. I’m not a planner or someone who adheres to plans. I like the randomness in life. To do something for a long time is too boring for me. However, this, in a way, was a challenge for me, to see how long I can go.

Right around that time, actually it started during COVID, I had another thing going on. I was reading a lot of books! I have been a reader of books, especially non fiction but I don’t mind reading fiction as well. And, when you don’t have a lot of things to do, you read, I guess! I do keep track of the books I read, and I realized that I had done a book a week for the year 2020. Which meant I had to keep on continuing to do that as well. So by the time it dawned on me to do a checklist streak, I was already on a book per week streak. Some form of discipline , I guess. Since 2025, I haven’t been able to do the book streak! I am so far behind on reading. Hopefully, I will pick it up again someday.

My eBird checklist streak started on January 31, 2022 and it’s been going on since then, as of today (April 4, 2026) I have a checklist streak of 1525 days. I will tell you that it’s been a really hard thing to do especially when I am traveling. For instance, post-COVID, I finally got a chance to travel back home. Airlines fares had gone off the roof, and for a graduate student with limited earning, I had to go with the cheapest options I could find. The one I found was with a 21 hour layover in Seoul, South Korea. At that time, I was getting close to a year, 294 days, that would have been my first attempt at a checklist a day for a whole year. Sadly, I didn’t have a visa to get outside the Incheon Airport, so I had to find a bird from within the airport. I had never been to the airport and I didn’t know what it’d be like. But as a researcher of House sparrows, which I love seeing, I thought I would find one sparrow, hopefully inside the terminal as you do in O’hare, Chicago. Sadly, there are no sparrows in Incheon. Even more sad was the fact that I didn’t see anything for hours looking outside the terminal. I skipped breakfast to stare outside the windows to find a bird. Technically you can submit a checklist on eBird without a bird, because you might not always get a bird while birding (highly unlikely , but probable). But, I did want to find something. After staring outside the window for about 8 hours, I finally saw a bird in the distance, I could barely tell what it was, but the good thing was, there would only be one option for that particular bird in the area and I knew exactly what it was - an Oriental Magpie (Pica serica).

Since then, everywhere I go, everywhere I am, I need to find a bird. I need to go outside. And, adding to another weird habit of mine, I do walk at least 5 kilometers every single day, I don’t have a checklist streak for that, but I know that I have been doing that for over 8 years now. Which reminds me of a nasty blizzard in Fargo, ND a few years ago. With the need of keeping the checklist going. I bundled up in all the warm clothes I have and started walking outside my apartment, with visibility of a few meters.

If not for the checklist, I’d probably not even get out. But, a checklist had to be made. I wandered off on the streets of Fargo, hoping to find a crow or a rock pigeon. I walked for over 25 minutes with no luck and finally found a few house sparrows on a person’s feeder. My species for the save! “The checklist lives on! If I do”! I thought to myself as I realized how far I had to walk back.

Another madness streak addition happened on February 12 2023. I had been on Duolingo for a while and been learning Spanish here and there, I probably had a streak for 15-20 days. But, as I was racking up my eBird checklist and book reading streak, I thought I should go on and keep the Duolingo streak as well. Since February 12,2023, I have been doing at least 15 minutes of Spanish every single day. Surprisingly, my Spanish has gotten better. I can understand really well, however, I don’t have anyone to practice with so my spoken is pretty average, but my reading and listening are getting a lot better. I am at a point where I have learned enough on Duolingo and to get better at Spanish, I would need to speak a lot through other mediums such as taking a class, but for now I will keep the streak going.

For someone who’s not a fan of structures, keeping a habit was certainly a huge challenge. However, my love for birds has been shaping me throughout this time to be better at keeping a habit. Birding is a form of therapy, and I’ve realized that if you’re bad at something, do it in a way where you enjoy it. I somehow managed to connect my dis-connectivity with real life in the form of birds. Forming a habit can be really hard, but as long as you make it past the first peak, there’s no coming back.

Someday, I wish to keep a streak of running every day, even if its just a mile or 2. For now, that streak is at 0 days!

I had been to many higher Himalayan trekking/birding spots prior to 2024, except for Dolpo region. As a joke, I always used to say that ‘I’ve saved Dolpo for my honeymoon’. The only catch was that it takes about 2 days of travel by bus/car to get into the district headquarters and a solid 3 days walk to the lake and 2 days to get back. I wasn’t 100% sure my future wife would be interested in doing that for our Honeymoon.

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However, when I first pitched the idea to Sabina, she was more than excited about the idea of a Dolpo honeymoon. And, it really worked out well for me because she’s into birds as well. I had never thought about marrying a person who might get interested in birds, let alone marrying an Ornithologist. All the pieces fell in the right place I guess.

Anyways, we got married on the 23rd of November 2024. As a tradition in Nepal, you’re supposed to visit the bride’s house either the day after your marriage or after 5 days or 16 days depending on different communities/people. For us, we followed Sabina’s family tradition and did a 5 day version of it. But, right after that we had about a week before Sabina had to start her bird surveys for her thesis. Dolpo would take a solid week and a little more, so we were on the fence about going there. We were exploring other options, probably a shorter Langtang Valley Trek, or even Mardi Trek. However, deep down both of us wanted to go to Dolpo so we decided to make it happen.

We could have flown into Juphal airport saving a few days, but we would miss out on all the birds and of course all the districts that Sabina hadn’t traveled to before. The only thing that sucked about traveling by bus was that it would take about 18 hours to reach Kohalpur, western Nepal and then another 12+ hours of bus rides to Dunai, the headquarters of Dolpo.

What better way to spend your honeymoon than getting stuck in a bus for about 2 days? And, of course, birding along the day. The bus to Kohalpur from Kathmandu leaves in the evening so we didn’t get to the bird until the next morning. We reached Kohalpur around mid afternoon, the bus to Dolpo wouldn’t leave until 5:30, which in Nepali time means 7. Interestingly, the bus left 30 minutes earlier at 6:30 (or one hour late, for regular time).

We traveled through the night on the switch back roads, which were surprisingly better than what I had assumed they would be. Dolpo is one of the districts that wasn’t connected by roads to the national network until not too long ago. I cannot sleep on planes or buses, and regardless of how hard I tried to fall asleep I would wake up. Right around midnight, the bus stopped for about 4 hours, because the roads are so windy and small, if you were to drop, you’d fall down 200+ meters. So, just to be safe, the roads are closed during the night time. We had passed through a checkpoint before the sunset so the driver was able to drive until the other check point which was around mid-night. I tried to get as much sleep as I could, but I was more excited about seeing the part of the nation I had never been to and also, morning or the light meant birds! I was excited to see what Dolpo had in store for us. We left the checkpoint around 5:45 am, still fairly dark to see anything. As the daylight broke, the bus driver stopped the bus for tea break, or breakfast! Sabina and I grabbed our binoculars from our bags and headed out. Winter in Nepal can be cold in the morning. Well, it also depends where you are, but in general, the morning can be around close to freezing even in the cities and as you go higher up the mountain, the temperature goes downhill. We weren’t super high in terms of elevation but it was cold. This small town called Dadagaun in Jajarkot district of Nepal had a bunch of tea houses right along the highway. Almost every tea house or even grocery shop had fire going right in front of their shops. We picked one that had chairs and had a good view of what looked like a creek in the backyard. Creek usually means birds!

The usual suspects in Nepal along that habitat would be the Blue-whistling Thrush, White-capped Redstart, Plumbeous Redstart and White Wagtails. I ordered 3 glasses of black tea. I like scalding hot tea whereas Sabina waits until the tree is less than lukewarm. And, I finish a normal glass of tea in less than 2 minutes. So, just to give her company, I always order 2 glasses for me and one for Sabina. We went to the backyard and started scanning for birds. Sadly, there was nothing. No Redstarts, no Thrushes, nothing. Sabina spotted 2 small birds puffed up on a small branch on the other side of the road, I quickly glanced to see what they were. They were Common Mynas (Acridotheres tristis), a very common bird in Nepal.

The ride after the tea was pretty slow, as the Himalayan roads started getting rougher and rougher and gnarly at places. The birds were pretty slow as well. We would see the occasional Sparrows and Crows along the roads, but nothing fun. Right around 11 am we stopped for our meal/lunch. This teahouse was in a gorge. There was nothing around except for that one house. Eurasian-tree Sparrow (Passser mountanus) were chirping their heart out in the yard. We could hear the distant croak of the crows, by this point, the Large-billed Crows (Corvus macrorhynchos) were getting more common than the House Crow (Corvus splendens). House crows have black body and head with gray nape, giving the neck a distinct collared appearance, whereas the Large-billed Crows have all black body and a very thick large bill (hence the Large-billed Crow).

The first exciting bird came around mid-day. We weren’t even birding, technically. Sabina saw something flying outside the window, she described the bird as almost a butterfly that was flying very fast.

“I saw flashing white as it flew”. She said,

“You got your first lifer of the trip then!” I replied.

The bird she saw was one of my favorite birds, The Wallcreeper (Trichodroma muraria). It is a monotypic species in the family Tichodromidae, a very common species in mountainous regions.

As we got into the Inner Himalayas, we started seeing a lot of raptors in the air. Too far to tell the species apart from a moving bus and very bumpy ride, but we assumed that they were the Himalayan Griffon (Gyps himalayensis). We hadn’t yet seen my favorite Vultures of the Himalayan skies, the Bearded Vulture (Gypaetus barbatus). But, as we would go higher up in the mountains, we’d definitely start seeing them.

My first experience of this vulture was about 13 years ago. I was trekking in the central part of Nepal around 4200 meters asl. It was a bright sunny day, as I was climbing this west facing hard slope, mostly looking down on the ground because I didn’t want to see the steep wall that was in front of me. Suddenly, I saw a dark patch of clouds right in front of me. Almost as if a small cloud had blocked the sun for a brief moment. But, it was too fast to be a cloud. So, I looked up and I saw this large object, which looked very weird. It was flying for sure but it didn’t look like anything that could fly. I wasn’t sure but I was looking at a part of the back-bone of a yak or a large goat. That’s why I couldn’t believe my eye. But a few moments later, that bone came crushing down on this large boulder about 100 meters or so from me. And, then I realized what it was. I had heard about this vulture, which is very aptly named in Nepali, called the “Bone breaker”. It was none other than the Bearded Vulture (Gypaetus barbatus).

By then end of the day, we finally reached Dunai, the headquarters of Dolpa. It took us almost 48 hours to reach Dunai. My back was hurting by then, and I was just tired and sleepy. We found a decent hotel and called it a night. The next morning, we’d have to start early and head up the hill to lake Phoksundo.

The trailhead to Phoksundo is about 3.5 kilometers before the headquarters, which meant we had to walk back to that point to start our hike. We were told the previous evening that there aren’t any teahouses until 2 hours of walk so you’d have to go to Dunai for the night since it was already getting dark. And, that’s what we did. Only to realize that we could have reached a decent teahouse in less than 35 minutes. But we were glad that the hotel we stayed in Dunai had hot water and good food. It would be a while until we shower again, so a shower was worth the 3.5 km that we had to walk.

We started our hike really early in the morning, right around the break of dawn. Eurasian Tree Sparrows were going rampant in the village. They were everywhere. In Nepal, both Eurasian Tree Sparrows and House Sparrows are very common, but the higher you go in elevation, you stop seeing House Sparrow and mostly just see Tree Sparrows. The usual Rock Pigeon and Large-billed Crows were in good numbers as well. As we left the village, we started hearing this bird along the farmlands on the side of the road. I had no idea what those birds were, and I am very bad at bird ID by sound. And, sadly, unlike in the US, Merlin doesn’t work as well in Nepal. As soon as you open it, Merlin warns you that it can only identify 40% of the birds. This sharp chip of the bird was very distinct, and I was thinking to myself, only if I could see this bird once, I’d definitely remember this bird. And, I did! It just took me a while to finally see the bird. About 20 minutes later, we heard the same repetitive chips, this time there were more and Sabina finally spotted a small sparrow looking bird jumping around in the bushes. I looked at it and saw the beautiful pattern of its face. It was a Rock Bunting (Emberiza cia). Another rocky slope and higher elevation species. As I was trying to take a photo of this Rock Bunting, Sabina spotted a big bird across the river. It was far to ID it from just the bins. I had to take a photo and zoom it in to realize that it was a Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus). Both new birds for the district of Dolpa! We continued our walk. Right before we got to the trail head, I saw a bird on the river, looked very familiar, but I am not 100% confident about the ducks of Nepal, especially in winter. But, as I put my bins on the bird, I knew what it was- a Gadwall (Mareca strepera). We saw a Wallcreeper not too far from us while looking at the Gadwall. We were already so distracted that it was past 8 am when we reached the trail head. The trailhead starts right at the confluence of two rivers, Thuli Bheri and Phoksundo river or Suligad river. As soon as we crossed the river and went past the Army checkpoint (most national parks in Nepal have army checkpoints), I saw a flash of yellow in a small tree. Before I could point my binoculars towards it, Sabina said, Yellow-bellied Fairy-Fantail (Chelidorhynx hypoxanthus). I absolutely love seeing that bird. I stopped my eBird checklist there and started a new one. I was planning to do a checklist from the trailhead to the next stop and then start a new one there and so on.

The first bird on the new checklist happened to be one of my favorite birds. And, my friends usually make fun of me for saying this, they complain that I say “One of my favorite birds” for all birds, which is true, I just love all the birds! But, the bird we saw on our fresh checklist was a Brown Dipper ( Cinclus pallasii) . How do you not love Brown Dippers?

The second bird was Blue-capped Redstart (Phoenicurus coeruleocephala), a relatively high altitude species. Nepali Redstarts are old-world flycatchers in the Muscicapidae family. We had some regulars around that area, but the birding slowed down after a few minutes of walking.

It was our first time in Dolpa, and we didn’t know what to expect. And, most of our trips are centered around Birding, all the other stuff are secondary. As we continued our hike, I was getting worried about the birds we were going to see.

When you’re hiking in the Himalayas of Nepal, most of the trails lie along the side of the river and you follow that river upstream. The trail can expand and shrink, turn into a single track at times, but you will get an open area from time to time surrounded by forest. However, in this hike, all we had was the bank of the river, along this small stretch of almost single track trail with a steep slope to the right and river to the left followed by another steep hill. Basically, we were following this gorge. Hence, not a lot of birds.

Around mid morning, we reached a place called Kageni. That was our brunch spot. This place was different, it was almost a valley with enough space between the wall of the mountain and the river. However, there is not a lot of diversity in vegetation. It had farms, which meant we had Siberian Stonechat (Saxicola maurus), a very common bird of the farmlands, Eurasian Wren (Eurasian Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes). We had a few Coal Tit (Periparus ater) for the American audience, this is equivalent to Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus), they actually look very similar! Coal tit has a longer bib than the chickadee and more gray in the back and very distinct white wing bars. We finally saw the Bone Breaker Vulture, soaring high up in the Himalayas. We were at around 2300 meters asl and the bird, probably, was at 6000 meters. You can see a variety of raptors soaring in the Himalayan skies, but no raptor is as easy as a Bearded Vulture to tell apart from. The Bearded Vultures have a diamond shaped or wedged shaped tail like a Raven does. So, even if the lighting is bad, it’s black lit or it’s as far as the eye can see it as a dot, as long as you see that weird pointy tail, you know it’s a Bearded Vulture. The only thing you could mistake it for would actually be a Raven, if you’re not sure about the size. But, the Common Raven (Corvus corax) is a very high altitude species in Nepal (3500 meters or higher). Which at that point could’ve been both, but again, size matters (Raven: 58-69 cm, Bearded vulture: 100-115 cm). A ridge below the Vulture fly zone, we saw a flock of small dots almost kiting in the thermals. A crow sized or slightly smaller black bird, that looks like a crow, sometimes acts like a crow, but isn’t a crow- Choughs! Nepal has Red-billed Choughs (Pyrrhocorax Pyrrhocorax) and Alpine (Pyrrhocorax graculus) (aka Yellow-billed Choughs). These are high altitude corvids with district looking bills on the body of a crow! And, they usually flock around riding thermals. So, if you see large numbers of ‘crows’ riding the thermals or almost trying to hover like kestrels, you’re looking at a Chough. Be sure to check out their bill color to see what species!

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S204801158

The hike after our brunch was pretty slow as well. We didn’t see a lot of birds, probably because of the time of the day. Birds weren’t as active in the morning. We had picked up another Peregrine Falcon along the way, and right after we left Kageni, we saw a waterfowl race across the river valley/gorge and head up north. I couldn’t see what it was, but I did manage to take a photo of it and realized that they were Common Merganser (Mergus merganser). We did pick up a mid to high elevation Variegated Laughingthrush (Trochalopteron variegatum). Laughing Thrushes are Leiothrichids which were previously in the Timaliidae family which includes the old world babblers.

I did my masters’ degree research on Himalayan birds. And, unlike most of my pre-eBird birding notes, which basically just had the name of the birds, I actually had data and photos for most of the birds, which I later put on eBird as historical data. So, I wasn’t getting as many lifers as Sabina was.

My first lifer on the trip happened because of a small mishap. Along the trail, there was a small landslide (because of road construction on the other side of the mountain), so we had to wait until the landslide was cleared. We were told that it wouldn’t be more than 30 minutes (It was about 45) but that gave us plenty of opportunities to bird. We were on the edge of this slope, looking down on the river and a few standing trees where tiny birds were hopping around. I could tell that one of those were tits, I wasn’t sure which from that distance, but as I put my Bins to it, they were Green-backed Tit (Parus monticolus). On the same tree, slightly lower than those tits, I saw a small bird climbing up the tree, it was a woodpecker, it was smaller than that. Nepal has 4 tree-creepers, and I would say Rusty-flanked Treecreeper (Certhia nipalensis) is one of the most common ones and the one that I had seen before. The bird I was looking at wasn’t the Rusty-flanked, so I knew it would be a lifer for me. But, we still had to identify the bird but it wouldn’t stay still for a second. It would circle around the branch so fast that I couldn’t get a single good look. And, since I was looking to the west, around mid the, the glare and the anti-light from the sun didn’t help in getting the details. However, after a few minutes, I finally saw the bird, it had conspicuous black bars on its tail, longer and more de-curved bill, Bar-tailed Treecreeper (Certhia himalayana). My first lifer of the trip!

As I was trying to point the bird out for Sabina, she ended up finding another Creeper and the marks she was describing were different. So , I quickly looked at the bird and realized that it was a Hodgson’s Treecreeper (Certhia hodgsoni). Two lifers in one Spot!

We briefly stopped in Chekpa for tea. As we were getting higher and higher, it was starting to get colder so a tea break sounded wonderful and tea break would also give us some time to explore nearby birds. Which ended up being a really good decision. Right across the tea house where we were taking a break, I saw some weird looking Pigeons! They looked similar to feral Rock Pigeons (Columba livia domestica) but seemed different for some reason. I knew what they could be but I had to confirm. A quick glance and I was able to confirm that they were Hill Pigeons (Columba rupestris), I had seen those before, but they were not on my eBird so I managed to get my eBird lifer or I like to call them rebird! Another lifer that I had been looking out for a long time was one of the long-tailed tits! The genus Aegithalos consists of Long-tailed tits, and Nepal has 4 species of Long-tailed tits with 3 Aegithalos and one Leptopoecile genus.

After a short break near the village of Saijol, we started the gentle hike up the mountain that would soon turn into a steep switch-backs. Right before the uphill started, we saw a small bird hoping around in the bush. The way we bird is, I ask Sabina to tell me whatever fieldmark she sees, she isn’t 100% confident about IDing birds and she hasn’t been birding for a long time either. But she’s a great sportster, so, I usually ask her to just yell out the fieldmark she sees. For this bird, she went, has white on the throat. I had seen the general body shape and size for the bird. It could’ve been a white-browed Fulvetta (Fulvetta vinipectus) but the colors didn’t match. I finally got a decent look and it ended up being my lifer Long-tailed Tit, the White-throated Tit (Aegithalos niveogularis).

As we got closer to the steep hill, we saw a hunting Eurasian Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) . I took a quick photo and started walking. It was almost 4 o clock, we still had over 2.5 hours to walk. We walked past this old teahouse and the owner of the teahouse walked up to us and said “You won’t make it to Ringo tonight, stay here”. I knew it was a steep walk and a long walk, I didn’t mind walking in the dark, but I had to ask Sabina since she was already tired. She insisted that we keep on going, and so we did. By the time we reached the steep switchback, the sun was already down and it started to get dark and cold really soon. What we hadn’t realized walking in the valley below was how windy it was on the open slopes of the mountain. The wind was brutal and this evening kept on getting colder. The switchback trails were pretty brutal as well, and the fact that it was mostly sandy didn’t help at all. It almost required twice the effort. The part that sucked was, I knew that we had to go past a waterfall, and the village of Ringmo wasn’t too far from the waterfall, but I didn’t hear the waterfall at all for a long time. Slowly and steady we kept on climbing, I finally had to get my headlamp out. After about 2 hours of walking, I finally heard the waterfall, and about 3o minutes later we ended up on this flat trail that led us to the village of Ringmo. We didn’t look around for any tea houses, we headed straight to the first tea house we saw.

The plan was to get up early and hit the road to get to the view point of the Phoksundo lake. You can view the lake from the village but to get a good view of the whole lake you have to work hard, there are two view points, the first one is about 1.5 hours walk and the higher point, from where you can see the Y of the lake, is about 3 hours walk. We were only hoping to get to the first view point, because we wanted to bird more in the village and the surrounding forests and then slowly head up to the view point.

The lake is surrounded by this tiny trail on the ledge with a steep drop to the lake if you make a small mistake. At times, you can barely fit 2 people on the trail. We didn’t see a single bird on the trail or even on the lake. I was hoping to see a few Ruddy Shelduck (Tadorna ferruginea) but we saw none. At one point on the trail, there was a wash or a landslide, mostly boulders, and it must have been there for a while. We could see secondary succession and it had a forested area with a lot of birds moving around, mostly tits. But, Sabina picked up on this small bird that didn’t look like a tit. I gave it a quick glance and I got excited really quick. I had always wanted to see Goldcrest (Regulus regulus) and I finally saw one. Especially since moving to the US, the Goldcrest reminds me of Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa) and it was on my hit-list of birds.

The steeper part of the trail started right after the landslide, we were heading towards mid day and the birds were slowing down as well. We didn’t have any birds around the hill following the slide. A few vultures would glide around from time to time by the time we reached the top. Most of that climb was blocked by the mountain on the south-west side so we had no idea about how windy it was up there, but as we turned right to get to the view point, we could barely keep our eyes open because of the high wind. We didn’t spend a lot of time up there for that reason.

A short video from the lake. You can hear the wind and maybe see it too…

A quick photo and a video or two and we headed back. Close to the landslide, we saw a sole waterfowl flying above the lake, I quickly checked to see what it was. It was one of the highest flying birds in the world, the Bar-headed Goose (Anser indicus).

Back at the lake, we headed towards this beach on the north side of the village, the trail was mostly this pointy/pricky shrub which was pretty hard to walk through. As I was forcing my way through those bushes, I flushed a bird that looked like a thrush. I didn’t get a good view but Sabina got a decent view of the bird and she said it had a red throat. Looked like a thrush, had a red throat, must be the Red-throated Thrush (Turdus ruficollis) I assumed and it was! Another lifer!

We walked around the lake and birded for a while until it got too dark to look for birds. We headed back to the tea house/hotel and planned the next morning. We would try to get to Dunai if possible, if not we would stay somewhere on the trail and head to Dunai the next day.

The next morning, we started out early again, hoping to see some birds. A lot of the birds were common birds of the Himalayas. We had a few Himalayan beautiful Rosefinch (Carpodacus pulcherrimus), Himalayan White-browed Rosefinch (Carpodacus thura). I picked up a lifer Brown Accentor (Prunella fulvescens) not too far from the Ringmo village. while getting down to Chepka from Ringmo, close to the Saijol village, we had a tree full of Plain mountain Finch (Leucosticte nemoricola).

Overall, we ended up seeing 66 species on the Shey-Phoksundo National park trail, with 9 lifers for me and 14 lifers for Sabina. It was definitely more than what I had assumed a few days ago based on the areas around the trailhead. I wonder if we had time, and were going slower than that, we could’ve seen a lot more birds. There were a few little brown jobs that we couldn’t get a good look to identify. Many more that weren’t out. Either way, the trip was really fun, the birds were amazing and the view of the lake was breathtaking.

I don’t think we could have gone anywhere else in the world for our honeymoon, that would have beaten the trip to Phoksundo lake! The whole trip took us about 8 days to finish. We did the trek slower, since we were birding, we took 2 days from Dunai to Ringmo and 2 days to get back. You could technically get back in a single day. But, if you do plan to bird along the way. I would say 2 days both ways would be better or if you have time, take 3 days to go up and 3 to come down or even more!

Happy Birding!

If you enjoyed reading my rambling about our birding trip, and made it this far, please hit the subscribe button!

¹Nepal is divided into 77 districts.

² Tea houses in Nepal are hotels where you can stay and get food.

I got an email with that subject during the last week of April in 2018. I didn’t know much about the Prairie Chicken (Tympanuchus cupido) back then. Apart from fact that it was a bird in the Phasinaidae family. I had just arrived in the area the fall before as a PhD student from Kathmandu, Nepal. I didn’t know much about the area, landscape, the ecological region, or even the diversity of birds.

There was a huge learning curve in terms of culture, region, even language and most importantly birds. I knew some birds but I didn’t have a vehicle back then and didn’t get to travel at all so I wasn’t getting any practice. So, I would sign up for any birding activity I could get. When I saw that email, I definitely replied and asked if I could get a ride with someone. Thankfully, my department was awesome and had amazing people so a colleague of mine agreed to take me to the blind!

Of all the natural things, events (Auroras, Migrations, Avalanches and so on…) watching those Prairie Chickens dance in their leks has been one of my favorite things ever! I wasn’t aware of what to expect, all I knew was we were leaving early in the morning way before sunrise and had to be there at least 1 hour before sunrise. I had never done a birding of that sort, or anything that involved sitting in a blind. Birding culture in Nepal wasn’t as developed as it is nowadays and blind birding and so on wasn’t something I was aware of.

We got out of the car and started walking towards the blind, which was a solid 8-10 minutes walk in the darkness of western Minnesota prairie. At that time I didn’t know anything about the prairies, apart from that they’re a famous grassland ecosystem in the North America. Surprisingly, I ended up learning a lot about them later in my life.

As we walked on the trails, cut through the blue stem prairie, which I didn’t know back then, at a distance we could hear a gentle ‘hum’ which I didn’t know at all (Spoiler alert: I didn’t know anything and I still don’t know anything). Those hums started making more sense after we got into the blinds and the sun started to rise in the east. We started seeing those Prairie Chickens dancing and fighting on the lek. If I remember correctly, there were around 20 Prairie Chickens in the area and a few Sharp-tailed Grouse.

That was my lifer Greater Prairie Chicken (GRPC) and the Sharp-tailed Grouse (STGR)!

I couldn’t go the following year, but by the summer of 2019 I had bought a car and I was hoping to go to the Blinds starting the following spring (2020). But, as we all know, the world changed or stayed still for a while (or a long time) because of COVID. The blinds weren’t active and I didn’t see the Chickens or the Grouse. However, I had been birding more actively since I had a car. But, the prairie chickens were hard to come by especially in Cass County. Fargo, ND is Cass County and right across the river on the east side is Moorhead, MN and Clay County. Greater Prairie Chickens are really hard to find (or were really hard to find in the Cass county, still is). There are less than 5 reports on eBird for the Prairie Chickens in Cass County, interestingly all of them are since I have been here. So, at the back of my mind, I thought they were just hard to find in Cass, but someday I would get them. I never thought of chasing that bird for the state of North Dakota. I wasn’t much obsessed with the County or State list by then and I already had a lifer GRPC for the United States. Even when I had started birding like crazy after owning a car, I didn’t know much about the grassland birds and how important these grasslands or the variations in grasslands were for those birds. I will write another post about that, very soon.

However, after my PhD, I got a position as a research specialist at NDSU in a Rangeland Fire Ecology Lab. I didn’t know much about fire either (see? there’s a pattern, I basically know nothing). Since starting that job, I started learning about how the grassland had evolved with the interaction of fire and grazing and how important heterogeneity is for those birds.

Side tracking a little bit here.

Once I started racking up my lifers, I wanted to go find the Baird’s Sparrow and the Sprague’s pipit. And, I looked for the hotspots in eBird and went to this grassland-y area in the central part of the state. A lot of people had been finding them. I went to a “Grassland” and looked for them for a long time, I got nothing. Also, side track inception. Before I joined this lab, every time I would drive across most of North Dakota, especially central North Dakota, I always thought there were grasslands or anything that was green or brown in winter that looked like grass was a part of grassland, the prairies! Well, to my surprise, I learned a few years later that most of those grasses that I saw were either Kentucky Bluegrass or the Smooth Brome! But now I know. So, when I was looking for those specific birds, even though I was in the right area, I was looking in the wrong area. It would be 6 years later that I would finally get a lifer Baird’s Sparrow. Thanks to my current supervisor Torre, who has worked a lot on grassland birds and specially in relation to fire. We were in southwestern North Dakota and went to this 40-acre pasture. He quickly glanced at the grassland and said, this doesn’t look right. Scanned the area and said, let’s walk over there, pointing to a small patch on the southeastern part of the patch. We started walking towards the patch, flushing a lot of Chestnut-collared Longspurs, Western Meadowlarks and Lark Buntings. As soon as we got close to that patch he was talking about we heard the Baird’s Sparrow. For the last 5 years, I had been looking at the wrong “style” of grass. Again, more about this in the next blog post. This one is about the Prairie Chicken.

Anyways, fast forward a few years, I knew more about the grasslands, the takeover of the prairie by invasive grasses, woody plant encroachment and fragmented or disconnected grasslands. Coupling that with my needs alert for the state and finding a lifer bird for the US, I kind of turned started thinking about grasslands and those birds. One of the species that I really wanted to see, and more so in North Dakota, was the Thick-billed Longspur and the Greater-sage Grouse. The hopes of the Longspur are all but gone, but even until last year, I thought that I had a slim chance of finding the Greater-sage Grouse. Thankfully, I kind of got this cool opportunity to go on a Greater-sage Grouse survey in western North Dakota with a person who had been doing the survey for a long time and knew the bird really well.

I finally thought I would get the lifer Sage‑Grouse. I knew I had no chance of finding them by myself, but since I was with a person who knew the bird and the area well, I was certain. However, after surveying all the previous and historical sites for the Sage Grouse leks we found 0 birds! Later that year, I saw an official announcement that the Greater Sage Grouse has been extirpated from North Dakota. (Read more here : Link ) . There goes the possibility of finding a State lifer Sage Grouse. I do know that right across the state in Montana, there are active leks and I could potentially get it still, before I move back to Nepal at the end of the summer.

GRPC was another bird that I was waiting to get in the State by getting it first in Cass County. And, I had an assumption that they were hard to get just in Cass County, ND. Until this past weekend, when I learned that the last remaining GRPCs (there were apparently 2 breeding areas/ active leks left) were lost or are almost gone as well. I knew that there weren’t doing well, I just didn’t know they were doing that bad! I do know of one of the leks where they used to be seen for a while. That lek isn’t very far from me and I am hoping to head to that lek soon. But, with a very slim hope.

What a sad revelation for a person who absolutely fell in love with those Prairie Chicken dancing by their leks. I wish there was something I could do to save them, But I do know a lot of people are working on saving them so hopefully we still have a chance. I have heard that there are still strongholds of the chickens in Kansas, Nebraska and parts of South Dakota.

For my State Lifer, GRPC, I will work as hard as I can to find one before I leave for Nepal. Will I find one? Who knows! I’ll keep you all updated!

Ring-necked Pheasants (for me) are one of the most beautiful birds in the world. I think they are very overlooked because of 1) being an introduced species in the US 2) well, being a ditch chicken.

I guess they're equivalent to European Starlings and Hous Sparrows in terms of being a beautiful species and also hated species. But, house sparrows are one of the most beautiful birds ever! (no biases here).

To be honest, I overlooked and disregarded the pheasants until the fall of 2023 as well. However, that fall, I got an opportunity to help a colleague trap some Pheasants and I got to hold them, look at them up close and holy cow they're beautiful! If you've looked at the flamboyant colors of the Pheasant and gone….’damn, that's one beautiful bird’…. try holding one! They're way more beautiful in hand ( don't go around grabbing one though! P.S. Please don't try this at home).

Having said that, ever since that experience, I have been trying so hard to get a decent photos of Ring-necked Pheasants but they turn into Usain Bolt as soon as your grab your camera! Some how they know!

I get to go to the Western part of North Dakota a few times in Spring and the numbers of Ring-necked Pheasants in and around Adams county, ND is nuts! Last year we counted 176 in about 20 miles! They're everywhere, every fields, every ditch, every windbreak…. You see them on the dirt road, you slow down your vehicle, slowly bring down your windows, the Pheasant stays alert, doesn't move, but as soon as you get a hold of your camera, Usain mode is on!

There are birds that are hard to photograph and there are birds that are impossible to photograph ( might depend on the person) but for me taking a decent photos of Ring-necked Pheasants or Northern Harriers fall under the impossible spectrum of hardness. And I do believe that the Pheasants cross the road to avoid the photographers! Hopefully, one of these days I will get a chance to take a good photo of them!

Anyways, this past April, as my wife moved to the US with me, we started living in a non university apartment system. One of those generic apartments with over 30 apartments in the building. And, our apartment is one of those half basement things, I think there’s a name for those but I can’t remember it. But, anyways, we have a good view of the outside from our living room window, which basically is the front of the apartment that has a lot of grass and a sidewalk leading to a road. Until this past December I hadn’t thought about putting up a feeder outside our apartment. Technically we didn’t have a spot and also I wasn’t sure if they’d let us put anything on the grass or not.

However, this past December I saw that a few of the other tenants had hung dream-catchers and other stuff from the terrace or a balcony? So I thought maybe we could hang a feeder on the bottom of the terrace of our upstairs neighbors. Sabina and I went to Lowe’s and got a platform feeder on the 10th of December. I knew that the birds wouldn’t come as soon as I put the feeders. I had a bittersweet experience with birds not visiting the feeders. A few years ago, I bought some feeders and put them across NDSU campus and checked them almost daily but never saw a single bird. So I knew that there was a chance that the same thing would happen.

Weeks went by, no birds. I would wake up in the morning and the first thing I would do was check the feeder. Nothing!

I had given up hope. But this past week, as I was staring at my screen with the R error lit up on my monitor in my office, I saw a text from Sabina. It was a photo. I was curious so I checked her photo and it was a photo of our feeders with a bird in it! Almost after a month of putting up the feeders, they had found it. That made me very happy. The photo she sent me had a Junco in it, but she texted me that there were White-breasted Nuthatch around along with one Black-capped Chickadee! But, by the time I was home, most of them were not around.

DEJU at our feeders (or under the feeder). Photo: Sabina

The next morning, the first thing I did , as usual was to check the feeders and I saw few House finches. New yard birds!! I was so excited to wait and see what else might show up. But, I had to leave for work. I was looking forward to the weekend to see if we could get something cool. I had a birding field trip on Saturday so didn’t get to see the feeders much. But, Sunday morning, I woke up, made myself some tea and put on the FA Cup (Soccer match) on the TV to watch my favorite team lose (sad). The game sucked and most of the time I was just looking at the feeders. The birds would come take a few seeds, look around eat it, fly and repeat. The Juncos and the house finches would usually stay on the feeders and eat, however, the Chickadee would come get a seed and they hide in the blue spruce in our front yard. It was wonderful to see the birds doing bird stuff! As the game was heading towards a miserable end for my team, I was more focused on the feeders, which now had a bunch of Juncos and House finches. But, on the ground there was a bird that looked different than those two, it was sparrow like and had a long tail. I grabbed my binoculars to confirm my guess and I was right! It was a song sparrow! A really good bird for Fargo in January! I’d have guessed that we’d get a White-throated sparrow rather than a song sparrow if we had any. That song sparrow was the FOY bird and we got it in our yard.

Song Sparrow at our feeders (well under the feeder again). Photo: Anuj Ghimire

Monday morning was the same, I saw the usual suspects but nothing new. Then I got a text from Sabina. We have a White-throated sparrow ! So I went home and got to see the sparrow as well. Another FOY bird in the feeder.

Hopefully, our feeders will bring in a lot of birds. I have been scanning a lot in the morning hoping for a Purple finch or any other new birds. But so far, no luck! I hope we will get some of the winter finches soon! Since it is supposed to be a good year for them. It would be amazing if we could get a Varied Thrush or a Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch as well. So if you’ve been able to get any of those birds at your feeders, pass on the tips and tricks!

Watching those feeders every morning and looking at the birds being birds have been my favorite thing in January so far. There’s nothing like the joy of bird watching!