Welcome to this very special section of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota! Painted Canyon is the easiest to access and one of the most colorful badlands areas in the Park. Let’s go friend!!
Wait, how do you even say Makoshika?! Thought you’d never ask my friend. We are here at Makoshika State Park, Montana’s largest state park with 11,538 acres of amazing badlands to explore.
Makoshika, pronounced Ma-KO-shi-ka, is a variant of the Lakota Native American word “mako sica”, meaning “bad land”. Across much of eastern Montana, western North and South Dakota, are badlands, all abundant with fossils from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. So come along and let’s explore!
Every spring a spectacular migration of Snow Geese takes place in Central Montana’s Freezout Lake. They winter in central California, rest for a week or two here at Freezout, then continue to their Arctic tundra breeding grounds. By the end of March annually there can be 50,000 geese a day at Freezout!
It is now 6:30am and time to appreciate a beautiful pre-sunrise sky. The wind is picking up and we have a bit of a hike to get closer to the geese. Deep, peaceful breath . . . let’s go!
It started the other morning as I opened my kitchen curtains. At least 12 pair of Mallards frantically taking off out of the creek right by my home. I know curtain movement can scare them, but they were at the wrong angle to see these curtains. Ah . . .suddenly a Bald Eagle flew low over my house. That will definitely scare them! But now the geese are acting up and leaving too.
Poured my coffee, settled in my chair for a nice early morning wide-open back yard view. WOW, I did not expect to see this!
Although Bald Eagles’ nature is to mate for life, they perform courtship rituals annually to stimulate their bonding hormones reinforcing their lifelong bond. Both mom and pop eagle incubate the one to three eggs which hatch in about 35 days. Eaglets leave the nest when 10-12 weeks old, but depend on and learn from their parents for another 6 weeks.
Female eagles are larger than the males. This allows them to better protect their nests and young. It takes about five years for a juvenile eagle to be fully mature with adult coloring of white head and tail.
Eagles build nests larger than most any bird, up to 8-feet wide and 13-feet deep. The pair will build the nest or repair one they built in the past. Nests are often repaired and reused for many years, some ultimately weighing 2 tons.
Of the two visitors, the eagle sitting higher in the cottonwood is larger, the female. She stayed about two hours!
Eagles are excellent fishers and that is their preferred food, but will eat almost anything including carrion. I watched an eagle flying around a lake full of small diving ducks. Eagle would swoop down, ducks would dive, but 40 minutes into the action the eagle made a catch. They also steal fish from the talons of osprey and other eagles in flight. One reason Benjamin Franklin did NOT want the eagle to be the U.S. emblem. “He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly.” These days the eagle may be the perfect emblem . . . . sigh. Well, I still like the bird, not so much the rest.
There is something about being watched by an eagle that’s a bit unsettling. This male left after about 45 minutes but certainly had me pegged through the picture window!
This is one special way to start the day! Until next time my friend, slow down and look up . . .
