Cities in Summer

Stayed a few nights in the Cities to spend time with family and snuck a walk in one warm afternoon. The Kane Meadows was populated with some songbirds, waterfowl, wildflowers and pollinators.

2025 Arizona Video

Threw together clips from the recent trek down to Arizona. I didn't take a lot of video, but this shows a few of the lifers (birds, bugs and otherwise) and local species I don't normally get to see up north.

Garden

Sunflowers enveloping the feeders again. The goldfinches and chickadees will be happy.

More sunflowers of some other species.

Got a few New England Asters as well.

Got a lot of Wild Bergamot flowers this year which the bumblebees and other pollinators have been enjoying.

Summer Catchup

As stated in my last post, I've done a little birding in wake of the Arizona trip. First, on the twenty-first of June, I went down to the park to feed some waterfowl and see what else was hanging around the ponds.

About a week later I went to the city's tree disposal and nabbed a few observations and pictures.

Rest of the Trip (Arizona 2025, Part 11)

The Muddy Creek Wetlands was one of the best stops of the trip. I saw my first several Cinnamon Teal and plenty of first birds for the trip, including Brewer's Blackbirds and a wary adult Sandhill Crane with its young. I would like to have spent more time at the wetlands, but the crane was not relaxing wherever I went along the backtrail, so I snapped a few quick photos of the main body of water then headed back for the car.

My last night on the road would be spent at the Rocky Point Campground in South Dakota. I got there as the sun was going down and people were loading their boats back onto their trailers. The campground was quite busy, so I was a little concerned how the noise would be overnight, but the noise issues would not be people-based.

Sometime in the middle of the night, a decent storm showed up, stirring some wind and rain, both of which bombarded me with noise and guaranteed another near-sleepless night. As soon as the sun started to show, I was up, birding, and eager to get home.

The drive home was smooth. The whole trip went well. So, before the trip, my goals were 25 lifers and 100 total species. I ended up one lifer short of 25 but crushed my total species goal with 163. I also shaded some states on my eBird map (Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming) and got a good break from my usual routines. Overall, it was a good trip. I don't have any other big birding plans for the summer but have done a little local birding which I'll add updates for some time in the near future (probably).