I drove down to Wright County on Saturday to visit family, float the Gasconade with my brother, and look for birds and butterflies on the farm.
Close encounter
Saturday was a beautiful day for a road trip, and the drive was, as usual, mostly uneventful. There was a bit of excitement, though, in Falcon when a Red-shouldered Hawk carrying a black snack in its talons shot across the highway toward the windshield. It appeared suddenly—there was nothing I could do to miss it. It swerved upward—I heard a thump and looked in the rearview mirror expecting to see the elegant bird crumpled in the road behind me. But, I was thrilled to see it flying into the trees, clearly unharmed. It had been the snake, still clasped in the hawk’s talons, that had struck the car.
Floating the Gasconade
Since my brother, Dan, bought a canoe several months ago I had been looking forward to my first float trip. Early Saturday afternoon, he, his granddaughter / my grandniece, and I put in at Jerktail and drifted down to the Kinchloe access, a two-and-a-half hour trip. What a blast! Apart from a group in three canoes that paddled quickly past us and out of sight, we had that stretch of the river to ourselves.
Wildlife was abundant. We saw gar, sunfish, and others that we couldn’t identify, crayfish, snails—and a swimming snake that submerged when we paddled over for a closer look.
I had been hoping to see birds, of course, and wasn’t disappointed. I was very pleased to see two Yellow-throated Warblers, a Prothonotary, and a Northern Parula (a female near the end of the trip, who was feeding from dead vegetation that had caught in over-hanging branches during a high-water stage), as well as two Yellow-billed Cuckoos. Northern Rough-winged Swallow youngsters perched on a limb overhanging the river begging to be fed were a treat. We heard Common Yellowthroat, Indigo Bunting, and White-breasted Nuthatch and were never out of earshot of singing Tufted Titmice. We also heard Northern Bobwhite and saw Great Blue and Green Herons.
The two-and-a-half hours went by too quickly for my brother and me (but not for my grandniece, who at six-almost-seven found the trip to be far too long and uneventful).
Ozark yard birds
One of the cuckoos we saw on the river was vocalizing, and Dan said that he had heard one calling at the house. After we got back, the family was sitting under the trees in the yard and we heard, but didn’t see, a cuckoo overhead. I’m hoping that they’ll get a look at it before long.