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| Photo by Andrew |
After cruising down some very bad back roads, we finally arrived at the lek just before sunrise. We could see several males actively lekking a couple hundred yards of the road right as we pulled up, at least that was an easy lifer.
Since it was still fairly early in the morning when we left, we decided to run over to the Sun City area to check the area of the Anderson Creek Fire.
It turned out to be a great decision, starting with a Burrowing Owl we found just down the road from the lek, chilling in a Prairie Dog town.
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| Photo by Andrew |
We continued on, finding a clump of balloons originating in Colorado Springs, and more importantly, a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks and couple of Long-billed Curlews in a random wheat field beside the road.
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| Photo by Andrew |
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| One of two Long-billed Curlews. Photo by Andrew |
When we got to Sun City we were impressed by the amount of fire damage that far north. I knew about where I had taken some landscape shots last summer and thought it would be kind of fun to get a before and after shot of the burned area.
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| Before the fire |
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| And after the fire. I was surprised how close I actually got to the same view! |
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| More burned prairie south of Sun City |
We decided to stop in at Kingman State Fishing Lake on the way back home. Birdwise it was a little drab, but we did find a female Falcate Orangetip, a lifer for all of us.
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| Falcate Orangetip, note the hooked, "falcate," wingtip. |
This is a really amazing looking butterfly, although a lot smaller than I expected. They are very well camouflaged on the underside, so we would occasionally lose it when it landed.
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| Falcate Orangetip |
There were also several Olympia Marbles flying about. Although these are my best photos so far, I still haven't quite gotten that perfect shot yet
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| Olympia Marble |
It was a great morning out, and we definitely plan to do more of these outings to other parts of the state.
Joseph
It looks to me like you might have been standing on precisely the same spot to take those two pictures last summer and this spring. Did you see your tracks on the road? :) Aunt Linda.
ReplyDeleteNo tracks, but I remembered that that small hackberry tree was in the picture. It's not quite the same spot, but within ~10-15 feet. I also didn't mention how many angles I shot from to get one this close:)
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