The Great Dip

We had been making plans to go to Quivira/Cheyenne Bottoms for a while, and then a White Ibis showed up at CB on Saturday afternoon.  So, we headed up right after church and got to Quivira at around 1:00.  We birded at various locations as we worked our way up to the Big Salt Marsh.  Nothing produced much, but when we got to the Wildlife Drive stuff started picking up.  We saw three Dunlins and lots of Snowy Plovers that had inhabited the road.  We also saw three Piping Plovers, a threatened species, one of which was flagged and banded.


Edit: Turns out it was banded last summer in North Dakota!

We submitted the tag number, so hopefully we will know soon where it came from.

8N9 is the magic combination.

A better looking individual.

I always enjoy seeing Sanderlings!

We headed out NE 170th St. to head to CB, being only briefly interrupted by a Pileated Woodpecker.  A first for us in Stafford County!

Pileated Woodpeckers are definitely expanding their range farther North and West.

On our way up, we learned that our friend Barry Jones had just been up to CB and had not seen the White Ibis.  This slightly dampened our spirits, but we decided it was still worth the extra 20 minutes of driving.

When we got there, we checked around for the Ibis for a while.  We didn't find it, so we decided to bird the rest of the refuge.  There were vast numbers of shorebirds and we found several year birds including Western Sandpiper, Marbled Godwit, and Black Tern.

Part of a shorebird flock at Cheyenne Bottoms.

 We stopped at a short walk-way where there are often rails and sometimes gallinules. I started calling and an aggressive Virginia Rail immediately responded.  I continued calling and it kept coming closer and closer.  Eventually, it came sprinting out in the open!  It moved fast enough that it was hard to keep track of, but we got some decent pics.

Rails are often incredibly hard to see.  About the only way you can see them is to call them out of their thick marsh homes.

Anthony got some really good shots with his better camera.

Photo by Anthony Miller

Finally we had to leave without having seen the ibis, but when we were just about home, I got an email saying that someone had just spotted the White Ibis bedding down for the night!  It was about four miles from where it had been seen last.  We were disappointed, but agreed that the other finds made the trip well worth it.  My year list is sitting at 210 species and Joseph has 202.

Andrew