8 TH EB A UsD-U:B.O'Ne- BU eal ein 
As we drove north on Routes 77 and 81, the majority of houses we 
passed had no plantings around them; we were told these had died in the 
drought years. Often nearby were thriving shelter belts installed by the 
W.P.A. These contained Chinese elms, Caragana or Siberian pea tree, Rus- 
sian olive and Tartarian honeysuckle, as well as two native plants, green 
ash and buffalo berry, Shepherdia argentea. Clouds of Franklin’s gulls were 
following tractors, and ring-necked pheasants were splendid along the road- 
ways. We knew we were really in the West when we saw three jack rabbits. 
The Waubay Wildlife Refuge is made up of a series of lakes bordered 
with bur oaks, their trunks bright with a yellow lichen. Lee W. Arnold, the 
Refuge Manager, took us around in his pick-up truck. Canada geese were 
nesting on several islands, the flock having grown from a nucleus of wing- 
clipped birds. Golden-eyes were using a box on a tree. Cormorants and 
stately white pelicans nest on the refuge. Mr. Arnold was proud of his two 
great horned owl nests, from which the young had recently flown, and of the 
refuge badgers that lve on ground squirrels. We met western kingbirds, 
our first clay-colored sparrows, and, strangely enough, our first eastern blue- 
bird. The junior author climbed 30 feet up in a box elder and found two 
eges in a Swainson hawk nest. Beavers had built a great dam and lodge, 
and, because they had already utilized all the small trees in the vicinity, 
had started gnawing at enormous cottonwoods. Deer are too numerous and 
are difficult to hunt in the woods, which is the last original hardwoods in 
South Dakota. 
At Sand Lake Refuge, under the guidance of Henry Nelson, we saw 
even more birds, even though we missed the 300,000 migrating geese that 
had been present two weeks earlier. There were five kinds of geese — many 
Canadas, three Richardson’s, and one each of snow, blue and white-fronted, 
Six species of ducks, and twelve of shorebirds, among them sanderlings in 
rusty spring and white fall plumage, stilts and white-rumped sandpipers, 
piping and black-bellied plover, a dowitcher, many turnstones in bizarre 
spring plumage, and two lovely avocets. Also western grebes, cormorants, 
pelicans, gulls, terns, pheasants and thirteen species of 
passerines. On a piece of prairie were puccoon, a pur- 
plish milk-vetch, and a charming little yellow violet, 
Viola nuttallii, discovered by Thomas Nuttall in 1811. 
In North Dakota we passed much prairie. In one 
meadow we found pasque fiower in seed, a little vetch in 
bloom, a sharptail grouse, our first harrier, and by two 
little ponds, a handsome pintail and his mate and a pair 
of blue-winged teal. On a great overgrazed pasture we 
met prairie smoke and western wallflower with fragrant 
yellow blossoms, and dense circular mats of a pussytoes, 
Antennaria microphylla, about 18 inches in diameter; 
some colonies were white, others pink. (We found Dr. 
A. O. Stevens’ “Handbook of North Dakota Plants” most 
helpful throughout the trip.) On the pond were shovel- 
lers, mallards and teal, yellow-heads, redwings and 
Brewer’s blackbirds, as well as a pair of charming Wil- 
Nuttall’s Violet son’s phalaropes. But the greatest discovery was that 
