We have an amazing update to our photo website this time! We traveled to the Platte River in Nebraska to observe the Sandhill Crane migration and reserved a spot in a blind through Rowe Sanctuary. If you haven't experienced the cranes coming into the mudflats in the evening or departing them in the morning from a blind, do so! It is an amazing sight to see and hear thousands (over 200,000 the day we were there!) of cranes taking off or landing. We also went through the Nebraska Sandhills and reserved a spot in two different blinds, one to observe Greater Prairie Chickens and one to observe Sharp-tailed Grouse. The man that arranges trips to these blinds is amazing. He has been doing this for 8 years and he takes a lot of time getting the birds use to the blinds, slowly bringing them closer and closer to the area the birds are in. We were within 4 feet of the birds at times! If anyone is interested in knowing the name of the person who we went through to observe these birds, email us and we'd be happy to share that info.
We also went to the World Bird Sanctuary in Missouri. We would highly recommend this trip as well. The staff there was very knowledgeable and concerned about the welfare of all the birds living there. We've included photos of the following birds that were photographed there: Bateleur Eagle Golden Eagle Tawny Eagle American Wedge-tail Eagle Long Crested Eagle Harris's Hawk Lizard Buzzard (a Hawk) Great Black Hawk American Kestral Peregrine Falcon Spectacled Owl Barn Owl Barn Owl babies - only 1 month old! White-necked Raven Turkey Vulture There were other birds at the Sanctuary. They even put on a half hour show with selected birds that the audience loved. In addition to all the birds we mentioned above, we have photos of other birds we encountered during our vacation: Snow Geese Redhead Green-winged Teal American Wigeon Northern Pintail Gadwall Western Meadowlark Horned Lark A Cattle Drive of 200 cows that went right down the main street of a small Nebraska town! Northern Shoveler Red-breasted Merganser And, the Corn Palace in South Dakota! We also photographed the Lesser Scaup recently at the 180th Street Marsh in Hastings and included a photo of this bird in this update. Right now, Kevin and I are enjoying the new video camera we have mounted inside one of our Bluebird houses. Yesterday the female laid one egg and today she laid a second egg. We are getting a lot of nice photos and videos and will include them in our next website update. We are also busy photographing a male breeding Yellow-rumped Warbler today. This bird is super friendly and ends up coming too close to us for photographing!!!! Enjoy! Linda and Kevin Krueger www.FLIGHTofNATURE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080503/7262da73/attachment.html
