Heading back to Colorado, I decided to shift my route northward with the hope of encountering large flocks of snow geese and with a plan to visit Lacreek NWR, in southwestern South Dakota. I thus veered north on I-29 at Kansas City, eventually dropping onto the broad Missouri River floodplain near Mound City. The flat landscape of cropfields, levee bound streams and riparian woodlands stretched beneath a clear, blue sky; unfortuately, despite passing the Squaw Creek and DeSoto NWRs, two major staging areas for migrant snow geese, no flocks were encountered. In fact, on my entire trip from Columbia, Missouri, to south-central South Dakota, I only saw a few small flocks of Canada geese, generally ubiquitous across the American Midwest.
Bird sightings were certainly sparse throughout the day, limited primarily to starling ballets, numerous red-tailed hawks and a large number of ring-necked pheasants along Highway 18, in South Dakota. Nevertheless, the latter route crossed landscape that became especially scenic near and west of Winner, where the northern edge of the sandhills blends with a series of smooth-edged ridges. Augmenting this scenery were a spectacular sunset of pink and purple clouds and the brilliant glow of Venus in the southwestern sky.
Tomorrow I'll visit Lacreek NWR before completing my journey to our Littleton, Colorado, farm. Here's hoping that an Arctic front, poised to drop across the Great Plains and Midwest, will usher in the waterfowl!
