Matfield Green

Today was really exciting. I stayed at a place near Matfield Green Kansas called the Tallgrass Spiritual Retreat Center last night ran by a really neat lady named Billie Blair who signs her emails "the pastor in the pasture." We had a nice evening of conversation before turning in for the night.

This morning we left the retreat at 6 am and drove to meet Jane, a local rancher who partners with the retreat to host prairie chicken watchers. Jane drove us up to the lek (pronounced like HECK) and we had not even gotten into the blind yet when we started hearing the birds. That is one thing that has surprised me about these chickens, they start their booming before the sun even comes up.

The light this morning was PERFECT but unfortunately the birds never got very close to the blind. On this trip I have either had close birds with light or light and birds at a distance. Tomorrow is looking very positive because Jane made a very generous offer to me.

She is letting me come back by myself in the morning to photograph the birds and she let me set up my blind anywhere that I wanted. I went back to the lek with Jane this morning before leaving and set up my blind and she set up her own pop up blind. I told her that for her generosity I would get a photograph printed, double matted, framed and shipped to her. That would be over $100 but still not enough in my opinion. Prairie chickens are rare and having a lek on your property is even rarer. To have someone let me put my blind where ever I wanted was a very nice thing to do.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get a fantastic shot that will grace her wall for years.

Manhattan Kansas, where I am staying, is about 2.5 hours from the lek so I am going to have to be in the car driving at 3 am.

If the good lord shines a little light on these birds in the morning I will be able to do their beauty justice for the fist time on this trip.

These are the shots that I got today.