A rare bird created a buzz in the Kansas birding community in late November this early winter. The bird is a Lewis's Woodpecker, which is typically found in higher elevation areas of the western United States. The bird is not quite as rare across far southwest Kansas, which is closer to the eastern edge of its native range, but this bird was well east of there, east of Manhattan. I took a chance to photograph this bird, a 4 hour drive from Dodge City. Low clouds covered the area where the bird was residing through early afternoon, but I felt confident enough that the low clouds would clear out quickly based on some short-term weather models I looked at. Sure enough, during the 1pm hour, the clouds broke up fairly quickly. The bird was in its previously observed location in the campground at the Pottawatomie state fishing lake on the southwest side of the lake, in the trees nearest the shore and fairly close to the dam. The bird was quite active, flying from tree to tree at times and was also noted preening quite a bit. A fun and successful chase!
Photographed from inside my Doghouse popup blind. The background for this setup shot was one of my three Dogwood 'Arctic Fire' shrubs in my wildlife garden. The bird was about 8 feet away, allowing me to shoot with my 70-200mm lens at 200mm. f/2.8 at 1/1000s and ISO 2200 with my Nikon D500 camera.
I spent the entire day (well, except for lunch in Great Bend) at Quivira NWR photographing birds. The morning shoot was very productive, including 11 Whooping Cranes in one spot! The large group was comprised of 9 adults and 2 juveniles from this summer hatch. Included in this post are two images of the entire group shot. They only congregated close in like this for a brief moment in time before scattering out again and then eventually lifting off and flying out to the south.
A arrived at Ford County lake just prior to sunrise and completed a nearly 4 mile hike around the lake with my Nikon D500 and 200-500mm lens. There were still some pockets of fall color hanging around some of the Cottonwoods and much of the Little Bluestem was in a wonderful warm orange-red hue. Birds photographed included Downy Woodpecker, Dark-eyed Junco, Cedar Waxwing, and White-crowned Sparrow.
