On Monday the 24th I began the birding of my return visit to Kansas, kicking off my morning at the Tuttle Creek State Park Fancy Creek Area, where I quickly added Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Eastern Bluebird, Field Sparrow, and Fox Sparrow to my Kansas list. Then, with the additions of Purple Martin and Tree Swallow at the Randolph Area, Kansas became my fifteenth state this year to reach the century mark. Before departing Tuttle Creek I swung by the Dam, where I spotted a pair each of Horned Grebe and Common Goldeneye as well as heard a singing Carolina Wren.
After Tuttle Creek I headed to Milford State Park, which yielded my first-of-year Franklin’s Gull and new-for-Kansas Bonaparte’s Gull, American Herring Gull, and Common Loon at the park itself and Hooded Merganser at the Outlet Park and Nature Center. I then called it an early day in terms of birding, and the next morning headed to the Geary State Fishing Lake, where I heard a couple calling Northern Bobwhite. I then decided to bird the backroads on the way to Wichita, having a fantastic time as I made my way to Lake Herington, which treated me exceptionally well. There I had Cackling Goose, Golden-crowned Kinglet, and my first-of-year Baird’s Sandpiper. My next stop, the Herington Reservoir, treated me even better, and produced one of my very few ever checklists with both Chipping Sparrow and American Tree Sparrow, along with a couple American Pipit and thirty-nine other species.
From there I continued birding my way through the backroads, and after a couple more miles I faced another potentially major issue – as has been the tone of March – when suddenly my car’s tire pressure sensor alarm went off. When I looked at the display my rear passenger-side tire was at 27psi, then 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21… all in the span of a couple seconds. When I opened my door to get out and check the air could be heard gushing from the tire, and upon inspection I found some sort of thin metal spike embedded four inches into the tire. I assumed that the tire was going to be utterly unsalvageable, but regardless I now was faced with the more-complicated-than-usual problem of putting on my spare. The wooden platform that serves as my bed has allowed me greater comfort and a far better setup in the back of my car, but the unfortunate side-effect is that to get to my tire I need to take everything out of the back of the car in order to take that platform out and get to the spare well. Eventually I got to it, changed the tire, loaded everything back up, and began to drive south towards Wichita and concern myself with what came next.
“What came next” turned out to be a series of phone calls to different tire shops in the area to see if anyone had any Michelin Cross-Climate 2 tires in stock – and it turned out that Discount Tire had exactly one. I then needed to confront the issue of how I was going to logistically manage going to Discount Tire – and fortunately after reaching out to Wichita birder Tom Ewert, I had a solution: I would drive to the house of a birder I have never met, and hand him literally everything I own to keep safe at his house while I headed to get my tire fixed. While it’s not like I had much else in the way options, situations like these are why I love the birding community so much; I mean, when I first got ahold of Tom he even said he had family living not far from where I’d had my tire issues and might be able to have someone assist me, and was more than willing to help me out with storing my stuff temporarily. Tom’s generosity wasn’t the end of the good news for the day, as after spending a couple hours at Discount Tire I was blessed with the news that the tire was, somehow, fully repairable – meaning the day’s potential catastrophe cost me nothing but an early end to my birding my way south towards Wichita.
I then headed back to Tom’s house and he generously took me out to dinner, after which we made our way to the Chisholm Creek Park, where Tom and I met Cheryl Miller and Gary Northwall to try for American Woodcock in one of the western-most places in the country where they can be found. We did end up having success with hearing some displaying Woodcocks and even having rare success in finding one on the ground, but before that we heard the earliest Gray Catbird Kansas has ever had according to eBird. There have been ones that have overwintered through the first half of March, and ones that have arrived as early as the first week of April, but there are no eBird records ever from the second half of March – until now. After this great end to a day that started equally fantastically before going off the rails, Tom and I headed back to his house where I settled in for the night in his spare bedroom.
The next morning we met up with Tom’s friend and fellow Wichita-area birder Rodney Wedel and headed to the legendary Quivira National Wildlife Refuge. We first stopped at the Little Salt Marsh Observation Tower, where we spotted a few dozen Snowy Plover and a boatload of ducks. From there we continued to bird the refuge, driving along the Little Salt Marsh, then working our way along Sterling Road to Migrant’s Mile and then Warbler Grove. Then after heading along 140th Street to 170th Street along the Big Salt Marsh, we drove the Big Salt Marsh Wildlife Drive. As we drove away along 170th Street just outside the refuge we spotted a Loggerhead Shrike, and around this time the Harriers which had defined my first visit to Kansas began to define the second as well. We began to work our way towards the equally-legendary Cheyenne Bottoms, first stopping at the Wolf Pond Park to unsuccessfully try for Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, which are a summer resident at the spot but evidently have yet to arrive.
Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area was truly remarkable; hundreds of Snow Goose, Northern Shoveler, Green-winged Teal, Blue-winged Teal, Lesser Scaup, Ruddy Duck, and American Coot – plus well over a dozen Northern Harrier, a bunch of shorebirds including American Golden-Plover, Baird’s Sandpiper, Pectoral Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs, and Greater Yellowlegs, and a mix of other great birds including Eared Grebe, Horned Grebe, Ross’s Goose, and Cinnamon Teal. I have generally come to learn that when in the Kansas/Oklahoma/Arkansas area, anywhere with “Bottoms” in the name has a tendency to be fantastic, but Cheyenne Bottoms was the mother of them all.
Tom and I then parted ways with Rodney and headed back towards Wichita where at the Emerald Bay Neighborhood we spotted a Neotropic Cormorant and some Barn Swallow, bringing my Kansas list to it’s final tally of 133 species. After that we headed back to Tom’s house where I was again going to spend the night, but before going to sleep on the 26th I spent a couple hours finishing up last week’s blog post, which was already going to be late by a couple hours. When I went to go publish the post, however, I discovered that some error had occurred and all of the work I had just done hadn’t been saved, forcing me to spend yet another two hours redoing my work. For those wondering why this week’s post is just as late, any guesses as to what error reared its head again, twice? Eventually I got everything done and posted, and around midnight I finally settled in to bed to sleep.
The next morning I slept in a bit later than planned and then left Tom’s house to head to Mohawk Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma where I met Mathew Radford, the host of the Bird’s Eye View podcast, for an afternoon and evening of birding in the Tulsa area. We almost immediately started our birding with a locally-rare Neotropic Cormorant but missed the spot’s Vermilion Flycatcher which had been present for a while in recent days. Virginia Rail, Fish Crow, Barn Swallow, Spotted Towhee, and Yellow-throated Warbler were all new for Oklahoma for me there, and when we headed to the park’s Mary K. Oxley Nature Center Blue-winged Teal, Long-billed Dowitcher, Lesser Yellowlegs, Greater Yellowlegs, Baird’s Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, Pectoral Sandpiper, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, and Lincoln’s Sparrow were added to my state list as well.
Mathew and I then headed to Bixhoma Lake where we were joined by Mathew’s son Levi Radford for a nice long-but-enjoyable hike during which we were met with a staggering count of 42 Blue-gray Gnatcatchers as well as Black-and-white Warbler, Eastern Screech-Owl, and my first-of-year Louisiana Waterthrush. At the end of the day I was hit with a bout of what I can only assume was dehydration, exhaustion, and in hindsight probably the start of a sickness that would show up more apparently in just a couple days. I headed back to Mathew’s house and spent the night there, and the next morning Mathew and I headed to Washington Irving Park along the Arkansas River, where among the 40 species we had were my first-of-Oklahoma Tree Swallow, Chipping Sparrow, Field Sparrow. We then paid a visit to the Bixby Sod Farm where there was a massive flock of American Golden-Plover and my first-of-year Upland Sandpiper. We bounced around to the couple spots after that including the Leonard Sod Farm and the Haikey Creek Park, and then after being treated to dinner by Mathew we parted ways and I began my drive to Arkansas.
While my time birding with Mathew was over, this is definitely not the end of my time talking to him. As I mentioned before Mathew is the post of the Bird’s Eye View Podcast, and we are planning to have me featured on one or two episodes in the coming months, likely around June or so, to discuss my travels this year as well as my backstory, including my Michigan Big Year from 2022.
On the morning of Saturday the 29th I met up with a familiar face in northwest Arkansas: Matt Matlock, and this time he wasn’t alone. Matt had assembled a group of birders to join us for a morning of birding kicking off at the Woolsey Wet Prairie mitigation site. There Matt, Matt’s brother Josh Matlock, Kenny Younger, Taylor Long, Jon Webb, Lauren Eno, and I spent a couple hours and picked up my first Blue-winged Teal, Tree Swallow, Purple Martin, Barn Swallow, and Cedar Waxwing for Arkansas. After that we headed to the nearby Pauline Whitaker fields where there were a bunch of American Golden-Plover, a Northern Rough-winged Swallow and a surprise locally-rare Western Cattle-Egret.
A few of us then headed to the Veterans Memorial Park where we heard singing Northern Parula, Black-and-white Warbler, Yellow-throated Warbler, and Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. I also first thought I heard and then spotted a Winter Wren working it’s way along the flowing Clear Creek, and met local birders Erin Sauer and Jeremy Cohen. After spending an hour or so at the park Lauren, Taylor and I headed to the nearby Flyway Brewery for lunch, after which I made my way northeast to Berryville to try for the continuing mega-rare Yellow Grosbeak that had been hanging out at a set of private feeders there over a month now, having shown up just days after I left Arkansas in my February visit to the state.
I didn’t have to wait long for the Grosbeak, which showed itself first briefly and then more extensively just minutes after I got there. The access situation for the Grosbeak is a little complicated and as such the eBird stakeout hotspot is not exactly at the location of the bird, but the bird is publicly accessible with arranged access with the homeowner and a $25 donation. The feeders themselves didn’t yield much else besides the Grosbeak, but the property was abound with singing birds including Louisiana Waterthrush and 26 other species.
Unfortunately, despite this only being Saturday, this effectively concluded my birding for the day as, over the course of the day, I started to feel sick. At first it was barely noticeable, a bit of a sore throat and the occasional cough, but as the day wore on I started feeling worse and worse. On Sunday it hit me full force and wiped out my energy entirely, and so other than another short walk at the Veteran’s Memorial Park I’d visited with that group the day prior I didn’t really do any birding. Fortunately, come Monday morning, the sickness had already almost entirely passed but I would be faced with another issue that would sideline me for Monday and some of Tuesday.
Next week I will get started on birding Missouri after dealing with the issue that replaced my sickness – major brake problems that needed to be addressed immediately, resulting in Monday having as little birding as Sunday and then getting a late start on Tuesday. This fortunately allowed me to get much of today’s post done early – but then when I went to finish it up I encountered the same error I’d faced the week prior and what should have been forty minutes of work took me over three hours.
Despite the delayed start to my Missouri birding, by the end of the day on Wednesday I had already propelled myself to a far better start than I expected, but that’s a story for next week! In the meantime, Happy Birding!
eBird Trip Summary:
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Follow me on my journey to see 100 species in every Lower-48 State during 2025, experience some of the incredible places and events in American birding, and meet and bird with as many local birders as possible along the way.
Posts will be made every Wednesday (I will try to have them out by 5pm, but situationally they might be a bit later) and will cover the previous Monday through Sunday. Additional posts will be made periodically with no set schedule.
