Who We Are

Saturday, September 03, 2016

Our Adventure, The Final Chapter!

Greetings to all!  It's me, Maggie, here to wrap up our trip to the Quivira National Wildlife Refuge!  When we left off yesterday, we were about to loop around to the Big Salt Marsh.

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"Water and birdies EVERYWHERE!"
"I see some mud I'd like to step in ..."

We got to get out there to advise Mom.

Looking way out on the water, we saw a group of Coots!

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American Coots

We spotted this Egret in the reeds; check out his footy-foot!

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Great Egret

A lot of the Ibises did fly-overs.  Mom was able to zero in on this one:

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White-Faced Ibis

Speaking of fly-overs, check out this heron in front of the sunflower patch:

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Great Blue Heron

Dad spotted this Snowy Egret out blowing bubbles in the water:

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Snowy Egret

He did that for quite a while, then took off:

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Snowy Egret Ballet

Mom snuck up on this White-Faced Ibis:

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White-Faced Ibis looking for lunch

Mom was trying to take some shots of these American Avocets and a Black-Necked Stilt when a bunch of ducks crashed the party:

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Fly-over by Blue Winged Teals

Nearby, there were two tiny Grebes.  One took off, but Mom was able to get a few shots of this one:

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Pied Billed Grebe

What an incredible day of birding!  One more look at a Great Egret:

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Great Egret in take-off mode

Now if someone would make our Mom stop singing "Egrets ... I saw a few ... but then again, not too few to mention ... "  Yeah.  OK.

On the way home, we stopped in a very nice little town.  Here is a shot of Cam, Dad, and me checking out the ball fields:

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Cam, Dad, and me.  Dad's the tall one.

The town itself, Ellinwood, was very small town Kansas; Mom shot this out the window with her iPhone as we drove through:

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Ellinwood, KS

Mom would have loved to do some exploring there, but seriously.  It was time to go.

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"Another time, Mom.  Hey, Cam.  Are you buckled in and ready to roll?"
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"I'm cool, Mags!"

I need to ask Dad to bring an extra pair of sunglasses for me next time!

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"Do you want to switch off driving?  I'm pretty sure I've got it figured out now."

Dad said he was good to go, so I opted to nap.

I hope you enjoyed seeing all the extremely cool birds and beautiful scenery this week!  (Back to normal tomorrow -- promise!)  If you'd like to see more of the ten million shots, please visit our FlickR album at this link.  And hey!  Have a wonderful Sunday!

Yours sincerely,
Margaret Thatcher

7 comments:

  1. Yeah... For some reason hooomins don't like us to help them as much as we could. We totally know you'd be a great driver.

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  2. Such fabulous shots! Our favorite one today is the Great Eget taking off. The feathers on his wing and tail are just incredible! What an adventure you all had!

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  3. OMD...What a great week of adventure and birding...Thanks so much for sharing your fun day with us!!
    Smileys!
    Dory, Jakey, Arty & Bilbo

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  4. That shot with the grebe and the water looking like it's jumping up for no reason is pretty cool. If you hadn't told us that a bird had just taken off we would be wondering what did that.

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  5. All the bird pictures are so beautiful! The egrets and herons are so graceful and lovely. As are you two, Maggie and Cammie!

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  6. Oh no! Now our mom is singing the egrets song! And she is wondering if those were old coots? You girls look cool in the shades. Speaking of shades, that town had the shades pulled down pretty early!

    Your Pals,

    Murphy & Stanley

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  7. It looks like you guys had a wonderful adventure. Thanks for sharing it with us.

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