A BISON WATERHOLE

      A bison waterhole in Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan Province, Canada is featured by live camera on computer screens.  One of several on the immediate dry, short-grass, northern prairie, that waterhole is small and shallow, but provides water for birds, mammals and insects.  I watched that waterhole, which is fed by springs and sporadic rainfall, and the surrounding prairie, from early June until mid-July.

     A black-tailed prairie dog town, with several prairie dog residents, surrounds that bison waterhole.  Colonies of prairie dogs dig their own homes deep into the soil of the prairie.  And each burrow has a couple of exits so those rodents don't become trapped in their own abodes.  The camera shows the "dogs" moving about, eating grass and standing upright on the mounds to their burrows to watch for danger.  Coyotes and badgers, which I have seen around prairie dog homes by the live camera, prey on prairie dogs.  The badgers dig them out of their tunnels. 

     I've read that several kinds of wildlife, including rattlesnakes, live in abandoned prairie dog burrows, but the camera only showed a family of burrowing owls living in a deserted shaft in the ground.  Those small, comical owls mostly ingest insects and mice.  

     The live camera shows that several kinds of mammals and birds come to the bison waterhole to drink.  Up to a dozen stately, slow-walking bull bison come to get water at least once a day.  Two other kinds of grazers, elegant pronghorn antelopes and mule deer, have occasionally been spotted drinking.  And, of course, the prairie dogs regularly came to sip water.  

     Several brewer's blackbirds, and a few each of American crows and mourning doves regularly drink from that little pond.  The blackbirds follow the walking bison, presumably to eat invertebrates stirred up by the bison's hooves.         

     A pair of mallard ducks lived on that small pond for a few weeks, and I often saw the drake alone.  I thought the hen was setting on eggs, but I never saw ducklings and the mallards disappeared.

     A small variety of shorebirds, including a killdeer plover, an upland sandpiper, a long-billed curlew and a marbled godwit, patrolled the muddy shore of the receding pond to drink and search for invertebrates to eat.  Those shorebirds were all there occasionally, not all at once, and every one was seen as an individual.  And I never saw young from any of those species at that waterhole, though they could have had young on that prairie.

     A few other kinds of small birds were spotted on live camera at the bison waterhole and its surrounding prairie, including a magpie, horned larks, Sprague's pipits, a chestnut-collared longspur, a Baird's sparrow, a clay-colored sparrow, eastern kingbirds and tree swallows.  

     Larks, pipits and long-spurs are birds of short or sparse vegetation habitats where they consume seeds and invertebrates.  They all nest on the ground.

     Kingbirds and tree swallows caught flying insects over the pond, but in different ways.  Kingbirds perch on weeds, fences, or whatever, and swoop out to catch insects in mid-air, one at a time.  Tree swallows, however, sweep swiftly over land and water, and catch several flying insects in one long flight until they are full.  

     It was interesting to note some of the western birds and mammals that benefit from water holes and prairie dog towns on the northern prairie.  The live camera made me feel like I was there.

    

               

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