Bob-- Thanks for the feedback. Maybe I'll take it off my list. Steve Cordle Gyrfal wrote: > 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