What happened?

I was trying to create a list of a fixed number of N dates from start to end using the "periods" argument of xr.date_range.

What did you expect to happen?

To obtain a DatetimeIndex object with N period's dates between the starting date and the ending date.

Minimal Complete Verifiable Example

```Python import xarray as xr from datetime import datetime

Attempt to create a date range with exactly three parameters

xr.date_range(start=datetime(1961, 1, 1), end=datetime(1991, 1, 1), periods=3) ```

MVCE confirmation

• [X] Minimal example — the example is as focused as reasonably possible to demonstrate the underlying issue in xarray.
• [x] Complete example — the example is self-contained, including all data and the text of any traceback.
• [x] Verifiable example — the example copy & pastes into an IPython prompt or Binder notebook, returning the result.
• [X] New issue — a search of GitHub Issues suggests this is not a duplicate.
• [x] Recent environment — the issue occurs with the latest version of xarray and its dependencies.

Relevant log output

Python Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "/home/roberto/miniconda3/envs/gs1/lib/python3.11/site-packages/xarray/coding/cftime_offsets.py", line 1225, in date_range return pd.date_range( ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/home/roberto/miniconda3/envs/gs1/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pandas/core/indexes/datetimes.py", line 1009, in date_range dtarr = DatetimeArray._generate_range( ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/home/roberto/miniconda3/envs/gs1/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pandas/core/arrays/datetimes.py", line 400, in _generate_range raise ValueError( ValueError: Of the four parameters: start, end, periods, and freq, exactly three must be specified

Anything else we need to know?

When running:

``` import pandas as pd from datetime import datetime

pd.date_range(start=datetime(1961, 1, 1), end=datetime(1991, 1, 1), periods=2) ```

Outputs: DatetimeIndex(['1961-01-01', '1991-01-01'], dtype='datetime64[ns]', freq=None)

Environment

/home/roberto/miniconda3/envs/gs1/lib/python3.11/site-packages/_distutils_hack/__init__.py:33: UserWarning: Setuptools is replacing distutils. warnings.warn("Setuptools is replacing distutils.") INSTALLED VERSIONS ------------------ commit: None python: 3.11.6 | packaged by conda-forge | (main, Oct 3 2023, 10:40:35) [GCC 12.3.0] python-bits: 64 OS: Linux OS-release: 6.5.0-14-generic machine: x86_64 processor: x86_64 byteorder: little LC_ALL: None LANG: en_US.UTF-8 LOCALE: ('en_US', 'UTF-8') libhdf5: 1.12.2 libnetcdf: 4.9.1 xarray: 2023.12.0 pandas: 2.1.4 numpy: 1.26.4 scipy: 1.12.0 netCDF4: 1.6.3 pydap: None h5netcdf: 1.3.0 h5py: 3.8.0 Nio: 1.5.5 zarr: None cftime: 1.6.3 nc_time_axis: None iris: None bottleneck: 1.3.5 dask: 2023.12.1 distributed: 2023.12.1 matplotlib: 3.8.2 cartopy: 0.22.0 seaborn: 0.13.0 numbagg: None fsspec: 2023.12.2 cupy: None pint: None sparse: None flox: None numpy_groupies: None setuptools: 68.2.2 pip: 23.3.2 conda: None pytest: None mypy: None IPython: 8.20.0 sphinx: None