Wrapping It Up

Greetings to all!  It's me, Maggie!  Today, we're wrapping up our trip to Cheyenne Bottoms.  (If you need to get caught up, click here, here, and here.)  Let's get serious now, get down to business, and take a look at what else we saw ...

This is my serious face

Here's the entrance to the road through the refuge:

Mom got one of her more remarkable shots early in the drive:

Left to right:  Great Egret, Cattle Egret, Snowy Egret, Cattle Egret, and another Great Egret!

She took multiple shots of those railings, but the Cattle Egrets were only in that shot.  They must have thought high water was coming or something, because ...

Cattle Egrets!

She did get this Cattle Egret, posing by some cattails.

Cattle Egret

Am I the only one who thinks cattails look like corn dogs?  Hmm...

Mom was focusing on a Snowy Egret who was fishing, then this guy photo-bombed them:

Snowy Egret - photo-bombing another Snowy Egret

That guy went past, then another one came in for a landing:

And another Snowy Egret photo-bomb!

Eventually, that Snowy by the water flew up onto this post and struck a nice pose for Mom:

Snowy Egret

Now THAT'S a cooperative birdie!

Mom took this shot up in an observation tower:

Green Heron!

She was very excited!  Green Herons are not overly common here and have been known to be fairly reclusive.

Speaking of herons ... this Great Blue zoomed right by Mom:

Great Blue Heron

And Mom liked this Cormorant flying against the sunflowers:

Double Crested Cormorant

A lot of the area looked like this:

Mom said she likes the way the light is hitting the corndogs.  I mean cattails.

While Mom was shooting something else, these guys surprised her:

American Avocets

She got a couple shots of some Coots before they took off:

American Coot, on the run!

We saw some Pelicans do a fly-by:

American White Pelicans

And though we didn't see as many as we did at Quivira, we did see some Ibises:

White-Faced Ibis

When we got back around to the Kansas Wetlands Education Center, this guy was hanging out right by the parking lot!

Cattle Egret

I hadn't realized they were fellow redheads!  How cool!

That's a wrap for the trip.  Dad said he knew how to get home, and Mom was still riding shotgun, so I took a little siesta as we headed back.

"I still think it would have been fun to play Othello, Maggie!"
"Zzzz...."

Thanks for coming with us!

Yours sincerely,
Margaret Thatcher

PS: If you'd like to see more photos from Cheyenne Bottoms, please click here to visit our FlickR album.