High Plains Drifter

Overnight freezing fog and very cold temperatures yielded amazing rime ice across Southwest Kansas on January 30th! I left Dumas, TX very early in the morning on the 30th after documenting and photographing the record snowstorm across the region just a couple days prior.  My route home took me through Guymon, Liberal, Meade, and Minneola along Highway 54.  Through this entire route, the rime ice collected on exposed objects was rather thick.  I decided to stop and photograph some of this in the near-full moonlight at a rest area along Highway 54 northeast of Liberal.  Morning twilight then grew as I drove through the Meade and Fowler areas, and the rime ice became much more evident.  It was a rather amazing winter scene, so I was just hoping that it was still this good as I drove into Minneola.  Sure enough it was.  I spent a good 45 minutes to an hour driving around town photographing this amazing accumulation of rime ice, mainly on the trees.

Images 1-4: Moonlight landscape of the rime ice at a rest area along the Cimarron River a few miles northeast of Liberal

Images 5-7: Images taken in Minneola just before the first light from the rising sun hits the tree tops in town

Images 8-13: First sunlight hitting the trees with a wonderful warm pink and orange hue

Images 14-15: Zoom-in of the thick rime ice accumulation

Images 16-18: Looking down some of the residential streets in Minneola.

Images 19-22: Various other images of the rime ice in Minneola.

Images 23-27: I ended the shoot photographing some of the interesting frosted grass and this thin, golden vertical rod sticking out of the ground with rime ice accumulation.  It was interesting to note that the accumulation was on the west facing side, instead of the traditional north or northeast that is usually seen with rime ice formation in Southwest Kansas given the typical wind direction associated with freezing fog events.

Image 28: Small tree on my lawn back in Dodge City frosted with rime ice.

I met up with wildlife photographer Jim Glynn of Great Bend to photograph around Quivira National Wildlife Refuge and the Cheyenne Bottoms area the morning of November 7th.  My main motivation for this particular trip was to hopefully observe and photograph the endangered Whooping Crane, for I have never seen one before in the wild.  For those who don’t know, the Whooping Crane uses Cheyenne Bottoms and the Quivira NWR as a stopover on the way south to the Aransas NWR along the Texas gulf coast where they winter.  What is known as the “Wood Buffalo-Aransas” flock, this is the only wild, relatively self-sustaining flock of Whooping Crane with a flock population of only about 250 birds.  Their flight migration from the Aransas NWR to Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada takes them directly over Central Kansas during the spring and autumn.  Usually their stopover in the autumn is longer, but this depends largely on the weather.  Upon reports of over a dozen Whoopers at Quivira late last week, I decided I needed to take a visit to take advantage of an opportunity to photograph a Whooper.

I arrived shortly before sunrise Saturday morning and met up with Jim on the east-west sand road that cuts through the north part of QNWR just north of the Big Salt Marsh.  Around sunrise, we observed a pair of Whooping Cranes right away north of the east-west road (NE 170th Ave.) which Wildlife Drive connects to.  These two Whoopers were mixed in with a bunch of other Sandhill Cranes as well as some White-fronted Geese.  We got information of more Whoopers on the other side of QNWR about 9 miles south, so we took a leisurely drive south…stopping occasionally to photograph some white tail does and a couple bucks.   On the south side of the Little Salt Marsh, we spotted another pair of Whoopers (for a total of 4) all alone which we photographed from the observation tower that stands on the south side of the marsh.  The 80-400mm Nikon lens is only just enough length to positively identify the Whoopers, but that’s about it.  I really  need more length for much better images!!!

Afterwards, we drove back to the north side of the refuge to get my Jeep and we then headed up to Cheyenne to see if any Whoopers were up there.  We visited the new Kansas Wetlands Education Center (Ft. Hays St. Univ.) along Hwy 156 across from the Bottoms then drove around the Bottoms.  Unfortunately, the Whoopers that were there earlier in the morning took flight to the south, so we had just missed them apparently.  There wasn’t a whole lot of activity at the Bottoms other than a number of red-tailed hawk in-flight photos as well as a couple of Great Blue Herons.  I managed to get a couple keeper images of GBH take-off as well as hawk take-off.  All in all, this was a fun shoot, and I finally photographed my first Whooping Cranes — even if they were at a distance!  Thanks to Jim Glynn for the shooting company!  Below are some images from the shoot:

Two Whooping Cranes, one of which displaying, amongst a large group of Sandhill Cranes

The other Whooping Crane was now briefly displaying

A number of Sandhill Cranes in flight.  A pair of Whooping Cranes visible as well, just north of Wildlife Drive at QNWR.

Sandhill Cranes in flight with a number of Snow Geese also mixed in.

This is the second pair of Whooping Cranes we observed this morning (for a total of 4).  These two were all by themselves with no other cranes around.  This was looking due west from the observation tower that overlooks the Little Salt Marsh at QNWR.

A beautiful American Kestrel perched high atop a powerline at QNWR.

Great Blue Heron lifting off at Cheyenne Bottoms

A Red-tailed Hawk taking off from its post at Cheyenne Bottoms.

Close-up image of a Red-tailed Hawk in flight at Cheyenne Bottoms.