The fact that the first sighting was a robin atop a quartzite promontory above Split Rock Creek at Palisades Park did not suggest anything wildly different, but the bird was gathering building material for a nest in a nearby white oak and that made at least for a modicum of drama. On the other hand, something familiar does create a comfort zone at the start of any adventure and this birding trip throughout eastern South Dakota, unquestionably, held the potential for great things to come.

Now cliff swallows were darting about, a yellow warbler was singing in an ash near where the robins were about to nest and a pair of wood ducks was gliding quietly along the shore line in a secluded pocket of the creek, the brilliant blues, whites, browns and sandy yellow coloring of the male making for a dazzling image in my binoculars.

The other four serious birders in my group were far more accomplished than I, so this promised to be a genuine learning experience, as well as a four-day wildlife adventure. More than 400 bird species have been recorded in South Dakota and my comrades were determined the see as many of them as possible. This being mid-May, the heart of the migratory period for songbirds, our prospects were bright indeed.

Our trip would be concentrated around Sioux Falls in far-eastern South Dakota, just a few miles east of the Minnesota state line and a few more miles north of the Iowa line. Sioux Falls is the largest city in the state, with a population of 130,000, small by comparison with other major metropolitan areas. The city, however, enjoys that functionality which comes with manageable size: ease of accessibility between points, comfortable accommodations, good places to eat. It also allows for an easy exit out of town into the farmlands, woodlands, rolling hillsides, prairies and watercourses that make for great birding habitat.

Split Rock creek at Palisades Park © 2004 Tony Tedeschi

As I drifted down an easily traversed trail along Split Rock Creek, the sightings continued: a grey catbird, Baltimore oriole, more cliff swallows darting about. Returning to our vehicles, we noted a Swainson’s thrush in a stand of sumac; nearby a yellow-rumped warbler. In a distant white oak, a yellow-bellied sapsucker hammered away, the first of a number of woodpeckers we expected to see. By departure from this park, we had a couple dozen species on the list.

According to local lore, Devil’s Gulch is where Jesse James had to leap across the Split Rock River near the town of Garretson to escape the posse hot on his heels. Shaking our heads, we debated whether we thought a horse could make the jump; perhaps part of the cliffside had given way since then and it now appeared wider than when Jesse made his daring leap. What was not debatable was the growing number of birds we began hearing all about us: northern ruff-winged swallow, least flycatcher, field sparrow. A half-dozen rose-breasted grosbeaks were hopping about in an oak near the parking lot, the red, inverted triangle on the breasts of the males, contrasting beautifully with the rest of their white and black coloration. A downy woodpecker pounded away at an oak on the edge of a forested area.

We ended our first day at the Big Sioux Recreation Area, adding a purple martin and Swainson’s hawk to our list.

Day Two began indoors at the headquarters of the Outdoor Campus. The principal objective of this unique operation is to make sure that, in this age of increasingly demanding indoor activities, people not forget the wonders of the outdoors. Programs at the state-operated facility and 100 acres of woods and fields are funded by game licenses.

"The operative word is ‘outdoor,’" said Director Thea Miller Ryan. "We teach many outdoor skills here, everything from the importance of ecology to hunting, fishing and camping. Our age groups range from pre-school to the elderly."

A leisurely walk along a trail took us through a range of habitats, including grasslands, woodlands, a marsh and a pond. Classes with young children were being conducted near the facility.

"Demand for beginner courses in birdwatching is huge," Ryan said. She explained that each July the Outdoor Campus sponsored a "Weekend at Wings," highlighting birds, bats and butterflies.

Speaking of the latter. Although, it was already clear that we would not need to pump up our birding lists with any highly questionable species, the Sertoma Butterfly House at the opposite side of the parking lot from the Outdoor Campus was a pleasing departure into a world of smaller, albeit no less brightly colored species. Anyone who has not seen a blue morpho before will marvel at the iridescent color on the underside of wings that are a dull brown when folded closed. Even paying closer attention to the radiant beauty of the commonplace monarch is revealing. In an area for "other critters," I finally got to see what a tree frog looked like, after hearing its nocturnal music for so many years.

Denizens of the Sertoma Butterfly House © 2004 Tony Tedeschi

As we arrived at Newton Hills State Park a half-dozen wild turkeys were crossing a meadow heading for a cornfield. But this was not going to be a place where attention was directed downward. By the end of our visit, I’d developed a case of "warbler’s neck," having spent so much of my time scanning the upper reaches of tall trees for such representatives as blackpoll, Nashville, Tennessee, yellow and yellow-rumped. The real stunner was the blackburnian with its orange neck and chest and sweeps of black and white piping. It almost out-dazzled the scarlet tanager – almost.

We ended the day at Union Grove State Park where we added the beautiful orange-crowned warbler and its black-and-white cousin, plus an eastern towhee and an olive-sided flycatcher.

The Adams Homestead, 1,500 acres on the Missouri River, was donated to the state of South Dakota by two sisters, Mary, who still lives at the homestead and Maud, deceased. "It’s a place to find inner renewal," Mary Adams had said of her bequest. It’s also a great place to find birds, particularly during migratory season.

We’d been told that the best place to look was down in the marshland around Mud Lake. En route, we passed a stand of cotton woods, beneath which were layer upon layer of dame’s rocket, carpeting the floor of the copse knee deep in purple. Appropriately named for its soggy shoreline, Mud Lake was a place where scores of swallows – bank, rough-winged, in particular – dipped and whirled about. Canada geese floated on the mist-laced waters, dusted with the newly fallen tufts from nearby cottonwoods. Ducks were in evidence everywhere: blue-winged teals, wood ducks, mallards. Back up on drier land we spied an orchard oriole in an ash tree.

Dame's Rocket at Adam's Homestead © 2004 Tony Tedeschi

Two hundred years ago, the Sioux had warned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark not to venture up Spirit Mound for fear of being attacked by 18-inch "deavils," armed with arrows. Undeterred by superstitions, they climbed the hillside and looked out onto the tall-grass prairie, filled with bison. "Butiful," Lewis wrote. Still so today, now mostly farmland as far as the eye can see. We added sedge wren and eastern meadowlark to our by-now weighty list.

You can obsess about something like the yellow-headed blackbird, at first elusive – a glimpse on a tall marsh reed here, flitting across the road there – then plentiful at the Andes Lake National Wildlife Refuge. What the experience does for you – however personally you approach it – is focus closely on the beauty of the world about you. I’d caught glimpses of the yellow-headed blackbird as we whizzed from place to place, but had not seen one stationary and relatively close up until we got to Andes Lake. My inability to get that close-up look had made the yellow-head the bird of the trip for me. Now they were everywhere. I even had the opportunity to get close enough for a decent photo. The proximity and plentifulness did nothing to diminish the experience for me: what a wonderful contrast of color and shading.

yellow-headed blackbird at Andes Lake © 2004 Tony Tedeschi

Named a national refuge by FDR in 1934, Andes Lake includes a 4,700-acre lake and a wonderful range of habitats, where we added many more birds to our list, including bobolinks, western kingbird, American avocet, lesser yellow-legs, widgeon, white-faced ibis and even a bald eagle soaring above us. Although not list entrants, there were many painted turtles and a field of prairie dogs.

Morning found us mid-town, Mitchell, where, as any of the locals will tell you, the great attraction is the Corn Palace. It derives its name from the 365,000 bushels of corn expended to create the murals that decorate the building, this year honoring the Lewis and Clark journey of discovery. The murals are all created of botanical elements, mostly corn – cobs, husks, kernels in a range of colors. The current incarnation – used for meetings, presentations, concerts, mostly high school basketball games – is the third such building, the first built in 1892, to celebrate the area’s principal product. Two other, ever-more-modern structures followed. All have been garishly designed with turrets and facades, and all with the corn-created murals. We noted starlings pecking at the kernels, but these annoying birds were already on our list.

Mitchell Corn Palace © 2004 Tony Tedeschi

Although the great blue heron had already made it onto our list, one of our party had heard of a rookery, just north of Mitchell, on the opposite side of the James River. It was one of those things you just had to check out. It delivered: 82 nests, 13 of them occupied as we watched, mostly mature birds leaving, arriving, feeding their young. Some of the heron nests seemed like second-storey apartments with grackle nests directly beneath. There’s always an element of awe in birds that size alighting upon nests high up in trees, at this point still lightly leafed so it was easy to watch the activity, through binoculars, even from a distance.

Walking down to the shoreline at Lake Herman State Park, we were immediately aware of the commotion in the near-in shallows, carp going through their spawning antics, almost flopping up onto the beach. It was a curious sight, but soon upstaged by an eared grebe bobbing for food, a great egret feeding along the shoreline, a female oriole building a nest, two robins in what appeared to be a fight-to-the-death over territory (thankfully the lesser combatant breaking off the match before it was too late).

When our travels were concluded the list of birds had totaled 135, a third of the state’s recorded entries, in just four days and in a fairly confined territory. Remarkable birding by any measurement. While the group I traveled with considered themselves birders, it occurred to me, throughout, how interesting such a trip would be for anyone in search of a new experience. Each day brought new adventures, literally, and adding to the list became a fun-filled experience, especially given the variety of colors, sizes, shapes and sounds the birds provided.