North Dakota is a state which I have traveled through. Several times. The North Dakota photo gallery contains photographs of a few mammal and bird species photographed in North Dakota, including several more of the Upland Sandpiper pictured below. That gallery also includes a variety of other photos from the state.
From notes on a trip through North Dakota: I have returned from the land of weak coffee, aka North Dakota, Montana, Kansas, and the other states of the US plains. The videography proved to be slow and difficult but there was some interesting scenery, in a flat sort of way.
While zipping along a gravel back road in North Dakota at the posted 55 mph, I saw this Upland Sandpiper (photo above). It must have had fledglings nearby because it kept coming back to roughly the same spot. It would stand quietly for the still-camera but proved very elusive whenever the video appeared.
The birds were not terribly cooperative on this expedition but the flowers only moved around in the breeze - often a great deal in the wind.
Among my favorites were a wild rose at Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the Prairie Lily which I found at many locations, including hundreds in meadows at Lostwood National Wildlife Reserve.
The first Wild Turkey that I saw was in the southeastern US where I would occasionally catch a glimpse of them heading (loudly) over the rise into a nearby gully - never to be seen again. In the west I sometimes find Wild Turkey along the roads - generally at higher elevations.
In North Dakota I found a flock of Turkey in a corn field - with nothing around for miles - but corn fields. It was quite intriguing and of course raised all sorts of questions about the origins of these particular birds. I photographed them until I got tired, then down the road I went, leaving them to their corn.
There comes a time in my trips when I have had enough, I am ready to go home - I have pushed myself to physical and emotional exhaustion and I just want to sleep in my own bed. At that point, something quite counterintuitive happens and I get a second wind. In North Dakota I reached that point recently and what followed were two sixteen hour days of driving separated by five hours of sleep at a rest stop. Driving through western North Dakota and across Montana - both wonderfully beautiful - in such a madness is not a desirable event to live through, but with me it is almost predictable.