Little Yaris on the Prairie

I got into Lawrence at about 5pm yesterday, and met up with Taylor, a new friend from couchsurfing, at his house. His back porch overlooks the KU football stadium, which was incredible! After showing me around his house, we headed out to check out the town for a bit. It reminded me a lot of Tallahassee. We got a delicious and cheap beer at the Free State Brewing Company. Taylor had to head to a meeting, so I met up with his neighbor Kim at Johnny's Tavern for some pizza. I let it slip to Kim that it was my birthday, so she ended up making chocolate chip brownies, which between 5 of us, we completely demolished.


This morning I woke up at about 6:30, and got going to check out the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. While it was cloudy and off-and-on rainy (for the 3rd day in a row), I ended up fiding some great stuff. In a tree near the parking lot, there were several LARK SPARROWS, a lifer for me. When I headed out on the trail, I flushed several NORTHERN BOBWHITES. I spent some time attempting to ID a very cooperative sparrow-looking bird. It had a yellow breast, and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. After 10 minutes, I tried pretending that the yellow was just goldenrod that had stained its feathers. Still no luck. 5 minutes later I looed in other categories of birds desperately. As soon as I saw the DICKCISSEL in my book, I knew I had found it, and grabbed another lifer on the day.


After Tallgrass, I headed back east a bit to the Flint Hills NWR. On my way to the preserve, I came across a SCISSOR-TAILED FLYCATCHER on a post on the side of the road. In the refuge, I attempted to track down both a BELL'S VIREO and SORA, with no luck on either. Now I'm heading to heading to Hutchinson, KS for the night.