Important Bird Areas: Prairie Potholes & Badlands
The sites listed here come from The American Bird Conservancy Guide to the 500 Most Important Bird Areas in the United States (2003). The prairie pothole region extends from northeastern Montana through much of the Dakotas to western Minnesota and Iowa; the prairie is mixed-grass to the west, tallgrass to the east, with extensive glaciated wetlands that serve as the core breeding habitat for most of North America's dabbling ducks and several diving ducks. Other nesting waterbirds in this region include Yellow Rail, Piping Plover, Marbled Godwit, Wilson's Phalarope and Franklin's Gull, while shorebirds found here on spring migration include American Golden-Plover, Hudsonian Godwit, and White-rumped and Buff-breasted Sandpiper. Sprague's Pipit and Baird's Sparrow are among the landbirds found in the prairies. Sites #21-25 are from a separate, adjacent region to the south, the Badlands, a mixed-grass prairie that has nesting Mountain Plovers, Long-billed Curlews and McCown's Longspurs.
avg. score: 1 of 25 (4%)
required scores: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
