Quite an experience

This morning I was back at Jane's ranch. She and I had our blinds right next to each other and were set up before daylight.

I will remember this morning for the rest of my life. The birds came onto the lek and were all around our blinds before it was light enough to see anything. They were booming and making their lonesome call and dancing by quickly stomping their feet on the grass. The birds were so close we could hear their feet hitting the earth. I knew it was too dark to try to photograph anything so I laid in the bottom of my blind and just listened.

I would hate to overstate this but hearing those birds that close definitely had an effect on me. I could lay there and imagine unknown Native Americans over thousands of years waking up listening to that call. The photographer for the Missouri Department of Conservation wrote, "they sounded lonely and sad. The calls penetrated my soul like a spirit whispering in my ears." Wow, I could not agree more. This is one of those things that might sound cheesy unless you experienced it for yourself.

I will write more about this experience later. For now I will just say that it was one of the more meaningful moments in my life and I will never forget it. Jane said it all when after exiting her blind she said, "I cant think of a better way to spend Easter morning." I could not agree more.

These are two of the photographs that I got. I'm just spent a few minutes looking through the 300 shots I got this morning and picked out two to put up on this blog. I have several that are quite good IMO.