We had a wonderful start to the week spending the day with Cathy and Carless touring the refuge. We saw plenty of cranes and other critters on this 4 hour tour.
Lauren was excited to record his first Blueberry Digger Bee when we entered the North Gautier gate.
One of the parent Eagles was perched in a tree keeping an eye on her Eaglets. The Eaglets weren't very active until after we turned around and drove back by. One of the parents was in the nest feeding them. After their meal, one of them put on a show, flapping his wings. That must have been some good grub!
We had a gang of 11 cranes when we returned to HQ. No matter how many times we see this, it never gets old.
We did a little bit of shopping Monday morning. The afternoon we had a leisurely stroll around the Dees Trail and fixed a few more deer buster corn feeders.
Tuesday we spent almost 2 hours on the phone with IT getting our PIV cards to work, the rest of the day was spent piddling around getting a few things accomplished.
Wednesday we had a long, hard workday clearing the underbrush at the empty Camp Crane campsites. We thought we were going to have the fire crew come help. Due to unexpected happenings, the crew turned into one person. By the time he got there we were wore out. His help was greatly appreciated.
Thursday we worked our butts off. We decided to go to the Ocean Springs pen and cut the grass. We loaded up the mower and a couple of brush cutters. When we saw how wet the ground was, we never unloaded the mower. I had my first experience of using a brush cutter. The song What doesn't kill you makes you stronger was playing in my head for the next few hours.
Afterwards, we spent the afternoon getting out our itinerary for our field trip tomorrow and cleaning up the van. While we were out and about, we checked out recent burn in the Coke Savanna where we saw 5 cranes eating the roasted grub, one of them put on a show with his elegant dance. After looking at our pictures we found 2002 dancing for Jabba and VI19. Wonder where Wiley, Jabba's mate is???? The Crane World is fascinating!!
While checking out the Dees Trail for our plant walk tomorrow, we found our first carnivorous plant starting to bloom for the year, a Yellow Butterwort. A nice find before a plant walk.
Friday was a busy day. We had the OLLI group and a home school group visit the refuge. Lauren did 2 Crane Tours and I did 2 Plant Walks for the OLLI group. This afternoon, I manned the visitor center while Lauren did brush cutter and weed eater training for Thresa and Jake.
Mist was the only crane that showed up at the visitor center. During the tours, Lauren saw some of the HQ gang hanging in the North Gautier Unit. He also got to see Banana and Coconut.
As we were wrapping up for the day, the Gray Ghost was flying over the HQ savanna. Such a pretty sight!
Saturday, we wrapped up our last day of being married for 40 years by doing a Sparrow Sweep with the Gulf Coast Audubon at the North Gautier Unit. We caught 3 Henslows Sparrows that were banded then released. Afterwards, we headed Northwest to see David and get the mail. It was another great, but tiring day.
