Re: World Birding Center

Gyrfal (Gyrfal@aol.com)
Wed, 25 Mar 1998 16:27:16 EST


In a message dated 98-03-24 21:37:41 EST, you write:

>
>Steve Cordle
>
>Norm Saunders wrote:
>
>> Ted Eubanks of NAS was alleged by Geri and Alfred Webre to have said:
>>
>> > -"Avid wildlife observers go to the [Rio Grande] Valley while casual
>> > birders go to Nebraska."
>>

I AM an avid birder who has been to the Rio Grande probably a dozen times.  I
also went to Nebraska a year ago for Wings Over the Platte.  It was a major
disappointment.  
We paid something like $25 a pop to be carried a few miles on a bus and led to
a cement block blind about 15 x 8.  There were only about 30 of us in there
and the birds were a  hundred yards or more away.  There were so many people
that only about a third could be looking out the slit windows at a time.

The feeding cranes for the most part stay in the center of corn fields that
are a mile square.  It aint Chincoteague or Blackwater or the OC pond.

As for the Rainwater Basin lakes, they were indeed filled with ducks and
geese.  Only problem is that they are heavily hunted in the Fall and early
winter and fly or swim off as soon as you drive your car up an access road.

Yes, there are prairie chickens dancing on a lek in the area.  You can view
them from the road - again at 100 yards or more.  No blind available.

I wrote several letters to the folks who run that show and never even received
a reply.  I would not return, nor recommend the experience.  Perhaps I
expected too much.  Back to the valley for me.

Bob Mumford
Darnestown