From my buddy Carrol Henderson…a disapproving viscacha. “I don’t approve of foreigner, not the band.” Now that is one dedicated friend, he went all the way to Peru to get me a special disapproval. Love you, Carrol! I’m not sure this is an official lagomorph, but it looks close enough to a rabbit to be [ Read More ]
One of the more evil participants on our crane tour just emailed over this photo. On the ride home, I made a little nest for myself on the luggage and fell fast asleep. I was happily dozing when I heard, “whisper whisper…is she awake…whisper whisper…oh if only we could put this on her site…” Now [ Read More ]
Well, Sunday was a free day since we came home early from the tour. It was an incredible 60 degrees in the Twin Cities in the morning, so what should I do with that free time–finish up an article that’s due Monday for a friend who will be nameless or go birding…hmmm…birding….article…which to choose? I [ Read More ]
Saturday morning I woke up at 3am in my hotel room to the sound of rain beating a pipe outside my hotel room. “Wow,” I thought to myself, “If this keeps up, there’s no way we can watch prairie chickens this morning.” I then rolled over and went to back to sleep. Our plan had [ Read More ]
So, Friday morning our group went to a crane blind at Rowe Sanctuary. They were kind enough to give our group our own blind that holds about 16 people so our group of 13 fit right in. It was a two story blind, people upstairs got to kind of look down on the cranes, while [ Read More ]
Check out what I found for sale at Rowe Sanctuary: Crane temporary tattoos! I wonder if my tatoo inspired it? We did make the trip back on Saturday instead of Sunday. The group was very understanding about it, and we’re going to try and find a way to make up the lack prairie chickens to [ Read More ]
Some random photos of cranes, because, hey, that’s about all I got. Sometimes you just can’t help but take pride in your work–I had that moment in spades yesterday. I really enjoy leading bird trips, they are exhausting but it’s so much fun. It’s kind of like hosting a mobile party that lasts all weekend. [ Read More ]
From the Minneapolis Star Tribune: Two downtown Minneapolis skyscrapers are the initial participants in a new project that will turn off lights to prevent birds attracted by the nighttime glow from crashing into tall buildings or circling them in a daze until falling. The 57-story Wells Fargo Building and 33-story Accenture Buildings will turn off [ Read More ]
In case you were concerned whether or not our group had seen any cranes yet, here is your answer: Oh, just a few…thousand! Once we got past Grand Island, they were all over in the fields. The group was antsy for them too. I forget how exciting the multitude of sandhill cranes can be. I [ Read More ]
We are stopping for lunch and I must say, we are seeing oodles of red-tailed hawks at least six of which are dark-morphs, mostly in Iowa. Red-tails seem to be one every 4.3 miles. It’s gotta be some spring migration. Other highlights include merlins and meadowlarks–spring woot. No cranes yet, but we won’t see those [ Read More ]
