Kelly’s Slough National Wildlife Refuge, near Grand Forks, is well-known to area bird enthusiasts as being a great place to do some bird watching, particularly during the spring and fall migrations. Depending upon weather, bird watching should be quite good from around the late March through May.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the refuge was established in the 1930s to develop and manage a system of wetlands and grasslands unique to the Red River Valley. The Red River Valley is one of the most intensively drained and farmed areas in the nation, so marshes and associated habitats are in short supply.
As such, the refuge provides an important “stop-over” area for migrating birds, particularly waterfowl and shorebirds, to rest and stoke their biological furnaces before continuing their migration. Species observed on the refuge just last year include trumpeter swan, great egret, Hudsonian godwit, ruddy turnstone, American golden plover, and buff-breasted sandpiper.
The refuge consists of a little over 1,200 acres of wetland and upland habitats. Unlike some National Wildlife Refuges in the state, most of this refuge is closed to visitors to protect the wildlife. There is, however, a parking lot and a short trail that leads to a viewing deck that provides good viewing of the birds and perhaps other wildlife.
It should also be noted that adjacent and nearby are several WPA’s (Waterfowl Production Areas) that are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as well as Wildlife Management Areas managed by the North Dakota Game and Fish Department.
If you are interested in birdwatching do yourself a favor and check out eBird. It is a website dedicated to birds and birdwatching, and managed by the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. I have found it to be a helpful source of information for anyone interested in birds and birding. The site can serve both the novice and expert birding enthusiast in a variety of ways. Users, for example, can post bird sightings and keep track of their species lists. What I find particularly helpful is that a user can explore bird sightings in a particular area (e.g., by state such as North Dakota or by recent reports by location). One can also search by species.
