Our camping group went to Hagerman Wildlife Refuge for a day trip on Mother's day, May 9th, 2021. Despite the weather forecast of rains, it turned out to be a perfect day for us - it was cloudy and breezy in the morning - great for hiking, and sunny and windy in the afternoon - perfect for flying kites!
Hiking
We gathered at the Butterfly Garden in front of the visitor center and started on Harris Creek Trail, which has three loops, duck pond loop, crawfish pond loop and prairie loop. As shown in the trail map, up to crawfish trail, the trail is shaded in woods, and beyond it, it is on open prairie.
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| the butterfly garden in front of the visitor center |
As we stepped into the woods at trail head, we could hear almost continuous bird chirpings, but barely could see one since the wood is so dense, and the birds are well camouflaged. By the sound, I could tell there were at least 4 or 5 different birds in the area. The group, especially moms were talking excitedly, so any birds close to the trail were scared away before I could spot them. So I fell back a bit intentionally to try to see some birds. The most vocal and thus easily spotted bird is the dickcissel. Dickcissel looks like sparrow, it has a very colorful neck, white feather under the beak and yellow chest, the male has a black patch at the throat. The most vocal bird was male disckcissels! At the far end of the prairie loop, there were quite a few dickcissels, and I was more than happy to tell others where the birds were, their features.... other birds we spotted were Northern Cardinals
Another feature of this trail is that there are many ponds, six to be exact, dotted the longest loop.
Walking and talking, less than one hour we finished the two mile long trail, returned to trail head!
It was too early for picnic, so we went on Raasch trail in impromptu, which is located at the back of the visitor center. There were even more birds, more flowers on this trail. Again Dickcissel is one of the most vocal birds. Another vocal birds are Bobolink, they are black birds with yellow back head, and white streak on their wings. They typically chirp on the top of a bush individually, I saw them fly in flock as well. Another easily spotted birds are red-winged black birds, they are less vocal than the dickcissel or bobolink.....With lake Texoma in the background, a blue bird was wandering around, and vultures glided in the sky magnificently with wings fully expanded....
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| This bird was in backlight |
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| dickcissel |
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| chirping dickcissel |
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| wild flowers dotted the trail |
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| Texas paint brush |
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| A bird house by a pond |
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| moms and a couple dads on the trail |
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| Dickcissel |
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| Dickcissel in the flight |
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| Bobolink |
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| A flock of bobolink |
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| Lake Texoma in the background |
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| A blue on prairie |
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| A soaring vulture |
Flying Kites
We brought 3 kites with us. Fortunately we tried to fly one of the bird shaped kites on Friday at home, and found that it was too worn down to fly. So we fixed it and the other bird kite using tapes and duct tapes! Not knowing if they would work or not, Lily started flying the modern design kite, which was also in the best condition. After a couple tries it soared into sky and quickly reached the length of the string. Soon the red bird kite was flying high as well. The blue bird kite was more challenging to fly due to imbalance of the tapes on its wings, but it climbed up and stayed up in the sky.
The whole group was fixated with the kites in the sky, and real birds got curious and flew close to the kites to check them out! We took turns to fly kites and everyone was taking pictures when not flying kites.
Time flew as we were enthralled by the flying kites.
White Clouds Blue Sky
Kites Flying High
Return to Childhood
Best Mother's day the Moms had
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