Edge Wade and June Newman, two birders whom I hold in high esteem and have long wanted to meet, planned on a nice birding outing for me, to Riverlands Bird Sanctuary, on the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. I felt instantly comfortable with them…it made for a lot of enjoyment! I am very grateful to them for the lovely outing.

There was a beautiful view of the

Clark Bridge

from where we were:

We stopped at what we would call the backwaters, first: We found a lot of DOUBLE-BREASTED COROMORANTS and RING-BILLED GULLS: I was very pleased with the zoom on the SX50, because the birds were quite far away. We also saw a couple of immature BALD EAGLES, fishing: I was glad I had the zoom of the SX50: GREAT BLUE HERONS and GREAT EGRETS were everywhere. The AMERICAN PELICANS were delightful, too. A Bald Eagle got in on the act, too: and there were a couple of Broad-winged Hawks, a lifer for me. (No pics, they were too high up!) TURKEY BUZZARDS floated high above, too. We wanted to sight the Red Knot, and other birds that had been reported..but were not lucky, because a Peregrine Falcon flew over, and that disturbed all the birds, and the only shore birds we could see were some Kildeer. Barn Swallows swooped overhead; so we decided to go to the dam. Edge has forgotten more about birding than I will ever know. I called her a Spider as she went along with two legs of her own, and six extra (scope) ones: So, also, with June: We shared the coffee I'd brought: I'm going to make another post about our visit to the Confluence trail, because that was a nature trail, just the kind I like, with food, information about everything that we were seeing and passing, jokes, and wonderful weather with wonderful company...but we were short on birds. (We did see this bird at the end, against the sun, and I don't know what it is...we didn't decide...Brown-headed Cowbird,is my opinion..)

The photos are on my FB album,

here

My thanks to Edge and June for a wonderful outing!