Blog Archives

Spring has Sprung

4/27/2014

Bloodroot flowers

The Bloodroot blooms popped open on Saturday during a small window of sunshine between the storms. When the wildflowers start blooming is usually about the time that the migratory spring birds start arrive. Today I saw at least a dozen Rudy-crowned Kinglets a White-throated Sparrow, Brown Thrasher and Yellow-Rumped Warbler. I crept around the edge of the fence row and got a few pictures. I'm waiting patiently for more birds to stop in our backyard on their journey north.

Rudy-crowned Kinglet

0 Comments

The Blood Moon

4/15/2014

1 Comment

Full Moon before

Full Moon during the eclipse

It's called the Blood Moon, and happens during a full Lunar eclipse. At the peak of the eclipse when the moon is in the full shadow of the Earth the Moon turns a reddish-orange color for over an hour. I took this photo of the Blood Moon at about 3:00 AM on April 15 near the peak of the color. The photo on the left was taken a few hours earlier before the start of the eclipse. You can search the Internet and learn a lot more.
[Click the images to see larger]

1 Comment

Over a Million Snow Geese?

4/15/2014

1 Comment

Snow Geese at Sun rise at the Squaw Creek NWR

Over a million Snow Geese. That's what I read on the Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge website on March 10 and March 17. A week later on Monday the count was down to 286,000. Still a lot of birds in one place. I waited until the weekend, March 30, and drove to northwest Missouri to see the sight. Boy was I disappointed. The numbers of Snow Geese were about 1/20th what they had been less than a week earlier, estimated at slightly over 11,000. Okay, that is still a lot of birds in one place, but not the several hundred thousand that I had hoped for.

The Geese pause for a short while during their Spring migration and gather in large numbers at the Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge near Mound City, MO. It is quite a site to see hundreds of thousands of birds all lift off from the water at one time and the sound is incredible. In under two weeks over a million birds got up and flew north to their summer breeding grounds. Timing is everything and I missed it. I still got some nice photos though. Not a wasted trip.
[Click the images to see a larger picture]

1 Comment

Spring has Sprung

The Blood Moon

Over a Million Snow Geese?

Bruce's Blog

Archives

Categories