Our first stop was Doland, SD. Aside from numerous mourning doves and house sparrows, there were some other birds hanging out at the edge of town. I quickly spotted a kingbird but even without my binoculars I could see the white stripe on the tail indicating that it was an Eastern Kingbird. I see the Eastern pretty much every day on my way to work. I was hoping to spot a Western Kingbird. I thought maybe we weren't far enough west. Realizing I had a few minutes while my son napped, I went inside to get my binoculars and camera. I was glad I did! The Eastern Kingbird was gone but it was replaced with a beautiful Western Kingbird just a short distance away.

I walked along a row of trees and saw a bird fly in and land. When I put up my binos I was rewarded with not only an American Robin but an Orchard Oriole. We have Orchard Orioles at home and we band them once or twice a year at work but I have never stumbled into one in the wild so this was a lifer for me as well.


I also saw this Brown Thrasher in the same area. This would have been a lifer last year. For a while this was a nemesis bird of mine. I could never find them. Now, for whatever reason, I've seen something like three or four of them this year.
While doing a little yard birding I heard a Western Meadowlark and followed the sound out to the road where he was perched on a power line. He was facing away from me so I didn't get any good photos. Out on the road it was fun watching the Western Kingbirds chase the Killdeer. There were numerous killdeer around and the kingbird would chase after them if they flew under the powerline he was sitting on. I snapped a few photos of the pursuit, this was the only one that came out. They were moving really fast. You can see the bottom of the city's population sign, "Pop. 297" There are probably more birds than people. Heck, there are probably more house sparrows than people.

We pushed on a few days later to the black hills for the family reunion. We narrowly avoided a forming tornado along the way. I had my eye on this storm cell for a while and as we drew closer I could see this interesting looking area on the tail end of the storm. When we got closer I could see little tendrils spiraling down out of this area. They would form and disappear pretty quick so I didn't catch them in photos very well. Luckily we were traveling perpendicular to the storm at 75 mph and we cleared the area without so much as a drop of water on the windshield.

~Kirk
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