Can someone find joy in the South Dakota mudflats? It was Dutch theologian Henri J.M. Nouwen who suggested that joy doesn’t simply happen, rather that is it is something we must choose. Or, find. This thought surfaced recently and caused me to think of what in nature could give me joy. Nature is where I typically turn when that spark of joy is necessary for soothing the soul. 

This thought happened to occur in the midst of a conversation about American Avocets I was having with our head librarian, Jason Frank, who is a dedicated birder and naturalist when he’s away from the stacks. We were chatting about my inability to find one of my favorite shorebirds when he suggested the mudflats around Sand Lake NWR about two hours west in NE South Dakota. With an empty afternoon ahead of us, we headed west.

First came the Avocets, which we found in a flooded field depression not far from Houghton just a few miles from the Sand Lake Refuge. That pair would be the first of a beautiful handful of shorebirds that would occupy our afternoon, and yes, all contributed to blissful joy.

Yet, it was the Avocets that drew us across the prairielands. I’d been missing them. Literally. Earlier this spring there was a brief gathering at the Big Stone NWR where Frank had spotted and photographed a flock he found wading alongside the river. Knowing my love, he had alerted me the following afternoon with his photographs and pinpointed where they were wading. I rushed to the Refuge only to find a locked gate and smoke rising from the thousands of acres of prairie grassland. A spring burn was underway, and continued for the next day or two … just enough time for the flock to fly elsewhere.

Refuge biologist Brandon Semel noted a week or so later that we are actually on the very eastern edge of their natural territories. This was after I had spent a few trips searching the area wetlands where I’d photographed them last summer. Which led me to this more recent conversation with Frank. Like, “Where can I find Avocets?”

My attraction to these beautiful waders is a strange love story. Back when I was in a forgettable career stretch with a Minneapolis-based ad agency, I found a piece of cottonwood at the studio of a wood artist friend, procured a few wood carving tools and went to work whittling away both wood and ad agency aggravation — whittling away the late night hours when I should have been sleeping. It was during this hobby moment I came upon photographs of this brown-headed beauty of a shorebird with the thin, upcurved bill. My carving was of a rather non-nondescript assemblage of a shorebird and nowhere close to an Avocet. One slip of the knife would have quickly made their narrowest of bills another shaving.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago while on the annual Salt Lake Birder’s Tour that I saw my first real life Avocet, thanks to Lac qui Parle SWCD manager Rhyan Schicker. Just before the annual kickoff breakfast she told me there were several wading in a flooded farm field just east of Marietta, home of the annual birding mecca. I rushed out and there they were, even more beautiful in person than in the guide books and magazines. I returned over the next few days for more photographs. Then, the next couple of summers they hovered around here, particularly near some mudflats up by Barry, MN. Not this year, though. We’ve had no rain so the lowlands are bone dry.

Frank suggested the Sand Lake possibility. Over the years this interesting refuge has yielded some nice images, although many hours of stalking the “teapot” flying Woodcocks went sorely unfulfilled. Although our little afternoon foray started with a bit of disappointment when we discovered a formerly quite active Blue Heron rookery abandoned. Finding the Avocets turned the tide. Fortunately no highway patrol came upon us, and that the motorists who whizzed by were so understanding and kind. We had parked as close to the road ditch as possible with my lens sticking out the window, yet half the car was still in the road.

Our luck and joy would continue. As we came upon the eastern edge of the Sand Lake Refuge we found different flocks of Sandpipers, each being skitterish and prone for quick flights and returns. Then we happened upon a solitary Black-necked Stilt. Far more common to the American Southwest, the guidebook offers only a pencil thin width of territory this far east. We were in it. Joy!

Between the Stilt and the Sandpipers we were enjoying all the offerings as we crept along the shallow waters. When Sandpipers can wade without the water touching their bellies, they’re wading in quite shallow waters. With the taller birds like the Stilt and Avocets it’s difficult to judge the depths. So we merrily wiled away the afternoon before we happened upon pair of White-faced Ibis further down the road. 

With our past years of wet spring weather the Ibis seemed fairly comfortable around our area of Minnesota. On that Salt Lake tour a few years ago numerous Ibis were seen at several sites, their bills, unlike the Avocets curved  downward. They flew in mini-V formations from one standing water site to another. This  year? Not a single sighting until we happened upon them in the Dakota mudflats, where they meandered thoroughly unconcerned with the odd guy with the long bazooka of a lens sticking through the car window. Nor was the solitary Sandpiper keeping them company.

Perhaps it would have made wonderful sense to stick around until sunset. However we decided to move on toward home and leave the birds behind in their shallow mudflats. We had been greeted by an Avocet prelude and given benediction by the Ibis, which might mean very little to many. For us sitting in our car on this roadside nave, there was a thorough sense of joy within the high skies of this prairieland “cathedral.” As Nouwen had suggested in his writing, we had chosen our sense of joy and had gone to find it.