We were to gather cattle in the steepest, rockiest pasture, which left Reagan and I on the outs. Reagan needs more experience before handling that place, so she was left at my house while everyone else had an early day of gathering. We, instead, watched the Falcon Heavy launch with the new Mary Grace Roman telescope. Then she had a snooze before we finally decided to head up the hill to meet the cowboys.
Along the way, I questioned her about her bat houses and whether she had bats. Reagan has been officially bat-crazy since a special guest speaker talked with her kindergarten class. I showed her my new bird book and how excited I was when I saw three cormorants at a pond a few days before. Now, I know many of you have cormorants in your area, but we don’t see them here in the high country of Wyoming very often. “Oh,” says Reagan, “I don’t like birds, I just like bats.” Well, little missy, pick up that book and we talked birds for the next hour!
She read the names of the birds and for quite a few, I had stories… western meadowlark: state bird and my ringtone on my phone, flicker: those orange-ish feathers she often finds, killdeer: one of many birds named after their calls, birds with Lewis or Clark at the beginning of their names, and so on. We’d covered most of the pages by the time we arrived on top. With no cowboys visible, I suggested we drive over to see if the cormorants were still busy fishing on the little pond.
Well, by golly, two cormorants were still there! Way over on the far pond. There was a bald eagle there as well, but we see eagles all the time!
We couldn’t get close in the side by side so we decided to walk and see how close we could get.
I kept hoping they’d fish so Regan could see that but they simply hung out on the bank until we spooked them.
It was a good little adventure and we’re glad we got to see them. They’re on the edge of the pond right above Bravo. It was time to go find the cowboys and see how that was going.
Reagan might still like bats the best, but she found some new cool birds to look for, too… shrike, American kestrel, nighthawk, screech owl, and rufous hummingbird. And… we’re off to help the cowboys!
