Birds, Reptiles & the Others: What Else Lives in the Badlands
If you caught our last post on the mammals of the Badlands, you already know this park punches well above its weight when it comes to wildlife. Bison, ferrets, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs — the mammal roster alone is enough to fill a full day of wide-eyed staring out the car window. But the Badlands doesn't stop at mammals. Look up, and something with wings and bad intentions is probably circling. Look down on the trail, and you'd better be watching where you put your feet.
This is Part 2 of our Badlands wildlife series. Today we're covering birds, reptiles, amphibians, and butterflies — and we're starting with a safety section, because one of the animals in this post bites and means it.
A Word on Snake Safety
The prairie rattlesnake is the Badlands' only venomous snake, and while bites are extremely rare and no fatalities have ever been recorded in South Dakota, this is still the section you want to have read before you're on the trail.
Rattlesnakes like to hang out in tall grass, under bushes, beneath logs, and in crevices in the rocks. Watch where you step and — I cannot stress this enough — stop poking around in random holes in the ground. If you do get bitten, stay calm, identify the snake if you can do so safely, and seek immediate medical attention. Keep the victim as still as possible to slow the spread of venom. While only 1 in 736 snakebite patients die from venom and only 50–75% of bites even inject venom, you really don't want to roll those dice.
The good news: most bites happen because someone either stepped on a snake or was actively messing with one. Sturdy boots and long pants go a long way toward prevention. Don't be that person. More on the rattlesnake itself — including why they're actually more scared of you than you are of them — in the reptiles section below.
Birds
Birds of Prey
Look up at almost any point during a Badlands visit and there's a good chance something with wings and bad intentions is circling overhead. Raptors — from the Latin word for "to seize or plunder" — are birds that hunt vertebrate animals, and all of them share four traits: hooked beaks, sharp talons, a carnivorous diet, and remarkable vision. Some eagles can even detect ultraviolet light to track urine trails left by prey, which is either deeply impressive or deeply unsettling depending on your perspective.
The Badlands hosts a solid roster: massive golden eagles, soaring buteos like red-tailed hawks, nimble accipiters, and fast-diving falcons. If you want to tell them apart in the sky, size and wing shape are your best clues — eagles have fan-shaped tails and rarely flap, buteos soar on wide rounded wings, and falcons make rapid, urgent wingbeats like they're late for a meeting.
One of the most charming raptor residents ties directly back to our last post on prairie dogs: the burrowing owl, which sets up home in abandoned prairie dog burrows — sharing the real estate strategy of rattlesnakes and black-footed ferrets. It's a whole ecosystem running underground while the drama plays out above. On the larger end, golden eagles in the park are capable of hunting bighorn sheep lambs, deer fawns, and young pronghorn — which puts a slightly different spin on that serene, soaring silhouette against the Badlands sky. Beautiful? Absolutely. Cuddly? Decidedly not. The Badlands has a way of reminding you that nature is gorgeous and also entirely unbothered by your feelings about the food chain.
Wall Habitat
The dramatic rock formations aren't just a feast for the eyes — they're also prime real estate. The steep cliffs are riddled with hollows, nooks, and overhangs that attract a surprisingly diverse crowd of birds. In summer, cliff swallows return all the way from South America to build their mud nests in sheltered spots on the formations — a commute that puts most of our road trips to shame. Golden eagles and prairie falcons nest high on the cliffs and can be spotted year-round, soaring overhead with the quiet confidence of animals that have never once worried about anything, ever.
If you venture off the road and hike among the formations, keep an eye on the junipers growing in the flatter slump areas along the wall — these moisture-retaining zones attract cedar waxwings, black-capped chickadees, Townsend's solitaires in winter, and the boldly marked black-billed magpie, which has been known to approach visitors directly to solicit food. The magpie, apparently, did not get the memo about being a wild animal.
Prairie Habitat
Roughly half of the park's 244,000 acres is mixed-grass prairie, supporting numerous bird species — many of which have declined significantly over the last century. The western meadowlark is the one you're most likely to hear before you see, singing from fence posts across the grasslands in a way that is genuinely one of the more pleasant sounds the Badlands has to offer. Ground-nesting birds like the killdeer tuck their eggs right into open terrain, relying on camouflage rather than elevation for protection — a bold strategy.
Over near the prairie dog towns, burrowing owls move into abandoned tunnels during summer and, unlike most owls, can be active at any time of day, making them one of the more reliably spottable birds in the park. It's another reminder that in the Badlands, almost every animal's story is somehow connected to a prairie dog. Those little guys are doing more ecological heavy lifting than they get credit for.
The Others
Amphibians
Here's one that my wife would like me to skip entirely, but I'm including anyway: the Badlands has frogs. The dry prairie doesn't look like prime amphibian territory, but seasonal streams, ponds, and wetlands provide breeding habitat for six species — including chorus frogs, Great Plains toads, Woodhouse's toads, plains spadefoot, and the blotched tiger salamander, which can reach a genuinely impressive six to nine inches as an adult. Mating calls from frogs and toads can be heard from late spring well into summer, which is either a delightful natural soundtrack or a personal nightmare, depending on which member of our family you ask. For the record, we did not encounter any frogs on our trip. My wife would like that noted clearly and in writing.
Beyond the family drama, amphibians are worth paying attention to for a more serious reason. Their permeable skin makes them more susceptible to environmental changes than most animals, making them valuable indicators of overall ecosystem health — essentially nature's canary in a coal mine, just hoppier and more upsetting to certain members of our household. Amphibian populations are declining worldwide, even in protected areas, and scientists are still working to fully understand why. So as much as someone in our group would prefer a frog-free national park, their presence is actually a really good sign. I've chosen not to share that perspective at home.
Butterflies
After all the bison, ferrets, raptors, and screaming prairie dogs, it's nice to take a moment for something a little more gentle. The Badlands is home to 69 documented butterfly species — out of 177 found across South Dakota — fluttering through the wildflowers and mixed-grass prairie in a way that feels almost unfairly peaceful given everything else going on at ground level. The most recognizable is the monarch, which feeds on milkweed and absorbs toxins from the plant that make it unpalatable to birds. A reminder that even the prettiest things in nature have figured out an angle. On the larger end, the two-tailed swallowtail reaches five inches in wingspan, which is the point where a butterfly starts to feel less like a butterfly and more like a small, cheerful emergency.
They say a butterfly flapping its wings in the Badlands can cause a chain of events felt around the world. I'm not sure our trip had quite that kind of impact — but watching these things drift across the prairie while bison grazed in the background and hawks circled overhead was the kind of moment that sticks with you. The butterfly effect of a good family trip, if you will. (I will. Nobody can stop me.)
If you want the best chance of spotting them, the Medicine Root Trail is an excellent hike for butterfly-watchers — just bring a camera, since collecting or netting them in the park is illegal. Look but don't touch. Same rule as everything else out here, really.
Reptiles
The Badlands is not exactly a reptile paradise — long, cold winters keep diversity fairly low, with just 9 species of snakes, lizards, and turtles found in the park. Being cold-blooded in a place that swings from over 100 degrees in summer to -20 in winter is a tough gig, so reptiles spend a lot of their time either hiding in shade during the heat of the day or buried underground waiting for winter to end. Honestly, relatable. Painted and snapping turtles spend summers near water sources and pass winter buried in the mud at the bottom of streams and ponds — a hibernation strategy that sounds either miserable or deeply peaceful depending on your perspective.
The one everyone wants to know about is the prairie rattlesnake — the park's only venomous snake and the reason we put a safety section at the top of this post. Despite their reputation, prairie rattlesnakes prefer to avoid people entirely, bites are extremely rare, and no fatalities have ever been recorded in South Dakota. They are, in other words, much more scared of you than you are of them — which is a sentence that's easier to believe from the car than on a narrow trail in tall grass. We didn't spot any on our trip, which is one of those outcomes the whole family agreed to be quietly grateful for. Some wildlife encounters you're perfectly happy to enjoy from a comfortable reading distance.
That's a Wrap on the Badlands
Between the two posts, we've now covered the full roster — from a 2,000-pound bison that couldn't care less about your schedule, to a ferret the size of a sock pulling off one of conservation's greatest comeback stories, to butterflies drifting across the prairie while raptors circle overhead. The Badlands has no right to contain this much wildlife in one place, and yet here we are.
If you missed Part 1, you can find our deep dive on the mammals of the Badlands [right here →]. And if the Badlands is on your radar for a family trip, stay tuned — we've got trail tips, camp recommendations, and a full trip recap coming down the road. At the GossSquatch pace, that means soon. Probably.
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