I write from the High Plains.  It is 36 degrees F, rain is falling, and the rig shakes from the wind.  The folks here think that's great.  We're doing laundry and catching up on chores.  There are bills to pay, even when on the road.  With Internet access, I post blogs prepared in earlier days and compose this one now.  The temperature is forecast to fall today.

We made a final visit to Black Rail Marsh on our last night in Quivira Refuge in Kansas but found no Black Rail.  On April 29 we left without seeing any of our hosts at the campground.  They had told us they would be away.  We checked ourselves in and out.  The weather was lovely and the fields and trees were greening with the spring.  The wheat was lawn green and six inches tall.  But, as we gained altitude the foliage became straw brown and the trees were scarcely budding out.  We were coming into drought.  Passing numerous sprinkler circles (irrigation fields with diameters of some 600 yards) we saw most of them plowed and ready for planting.  A few of these were green with wheat.  The water comes from the Arkansas River which is reduced to a mere trickle by the diversions.  The surrounding ranchlands were bone dry.

We entered Mountain Time before reaching the Colorado border.  I guess the folks in western Kansas are more aligned with Colorado, but I hate the silly zigs and zags of time zone borders.  Gaining an hour we arrived here about Noon.  The Country Acres Motel and RV Park is just south of Lamar.  The new community center is almost just across the highway.  It is our storm shelter.  I don't think we'll need it for today's storm.  Last week there was a furious dust storm here.  The clerk at the state wildlife office showed us a photo of its approach on her cell phone.  So 21'st Century. 

On our first day here we visited the game office and visitor's center, but could find no one to tell us if Black Rail had arrived.  I was given the phone number for the local game biologist and left a message, but he has not called back.  I did call about the Boulder owl walks and was given good information about where to find owls there.  We will check at those locations in a couple of weeks.  Then we had an early supper and drove 30 miles west to a wildlife easement along the Arkansas River.  There we found a vast cattail marsh famous for black rail.  It is at the upstream end of the John Martin Resevoir.  Normally the water would reach to the marsh, but the level is currently down some thirty feet.  Still the marsh looked good.  It had been burned over the winter and is just beginning to green up.  Red-winged blackbirds have already established territories there.  We found good spots before dark and then relaxed waiting for total darkness. 

The remote road became eerie as darkness set in.  Very close by is Fort Lyon, a prison, and we could see its floodlights and illuminated flag.  We would not learn until yesterday that the prison was now inactive.  "No prisoners there to escape and bother you."  Still the signs warning you not to stop along a section of road gives you the willies.  I worry less about the prisoners than suspicous guards.  I guess they are gone too.

Before complete darkness came we began to hear the various calls of Virginia Rail and then the wonderful whinnies of Sora.  But darkness became full without prompting the calls of the Black Rail.  We played recordings of its calls a few times hoping to inspire a response, but got none.  Seems this bird is holding back this spring.  With the weather, no wonder, but on this night a warm wind was blowing from the south.  Perhaps tomorrow night, we thought.

But the weather forecast was for a rising wind yesterday and passage of a strom today followed by a cold front.  That is not good for finding small birds that seek warm weather.  We left downhearted.  We went to bed after 11, but still woke early yesterday.  With a lousy forecast for the next day (today), that was to be a day of birding. 

We stopped first at the nearby community college and checked out their riparian woodland and trail there.  We enjoyed a few local birds and saw our first Audubons's Warbler.  This is the Western variety of Yellow-rumped Warbler which sports a yellow throat and generally more handsome suit in spring than does the eastern race. 

Then we began following a back road west up the Arkansas River Valley to the dam that makes the reservoir that provides irrigation water for the region and spotilly greens up this valley.  We found only a few birds before we reached the dam.  Most fun was an all male flock of Lark Bunting, our first sighting of this species in a few years.  This is the Colorado State bird and we welcomed them home.  This was clearly their first morning here and they were on the move.  At the dam Anne spotted a Roadrunner hiding in a patch of tumbleweed at the edge of the road.  We parked and waited for it to move.  It sat a long time and was finally inspired by a passing truck.  We moved on and spotted a Bull Snake that had probably been killed by the truck.  So sad.  We spotted our first Western Grebes of the year on the reservoir, but they were not making their wild dance.  Perhaps we will see that elsewhere.  We were told that just a few Least Terns had arrived but spotted only Forester's Terns coursing along the shore.

We continued West to Bent's Old Fort, a National Historic Site.  Here the Bent brothers established a fortified trading post at a point on the international and tribal boundary in 1833.  The main product for export was buffalo robe for which they typically paid 25 cents.  The fort housed troops ahead of the invasion which removed the national boundary by hundreds of miles to the south.  The owners demolished the fort when they moved their trade west, but a diligent army engineer had made plans of it and the government rebuilt it in 1976.  We arrived just in time for the daily tour led by the fort craftsman, one of the few folks left while the owners carry wagons of robes east to St. Paul twice a year.  We heard much of the trade and saw the luxurious accomadations available to travelers of the Santa Fe Trail who stopped here before crossing into Mexico.

We, of course, were interested in this location because it is the first where Black Rail was discovered in Colorado a few decades ago.  We scanned the marshes there with our glasses before driving into what was once Mexico and dining out at Boss Hoggs Saloon in La Junta.  The clerk at the bookshop in the fort had recommended it.  She did well.  We returned to the fort, parked outside the gate, and napped.  Awaking at dusk we walked a few miles around the marsh along the river and past the fort.  A stallion has the run of the property at night and charged toward us when we started our walk.  This made us nervous but it ran on by along the fence line calling.  That must be its evening routine.  It ignored us completely.  Having been mugged by horses, I was glad of that.  We found a nice assortment of waterfowl and watched a pair of marsh hawks course the marsh.  Before dusk the Red-winged Blackbirds harrassed them, but they retreated into the reeds as darkness came.  They are not afraid of the Northern Harriers, but they don't want to be in the open when darkness brings out the owls.  We had seen a wonderful pale western Great Horned Owl perched on an irrigation pipe during our drive earlier in the day.  It was big enough to grab small cats. 

We returned to the car to wait for full darkness.  The wind was now blowing fresh unfortunately and was noisy and cool.  We put on jackets and listened.  We heard more Virginia Rail and a few frogs but no Black Rail.  Giving up here we drove back east ten miles and then off the highway to the Fort Lyon area where we had listened the previous night.  The wind was awful but we did hear Virginia Rail and Sora again.  Anne stubbornly stood out a long time playing the recording.  I sat in the car and could here the little I-pod speaker even when she was fifty meters away, but there was never a response.  We returned to the rig late.  I tucked the doormat under the step to keep it fro blowing away.  I had tied in the tire covers when I set up camp, so I knew they were OK.  We went to bed and awoke "late" this morning to a cold house.  Anne turned on the little ceramic heater.  I opened the shades and found the window covered with drops of water.  No dust thank goodness.  The forecast is for snow this afternoon.  The residents pray for any kind of precipitation.  The more the better. 

We are planning to drive into the mountains tomorrow.  We may reconsider that, but it is getting late for the sage grouse display and we have come to see that.  Decisions, decisions.  We'll see how cold it is forecast to get in Gunnison.  I suspect we will go and suffer the cold.  We'll have to disconnect the water at night, but that is S.O.P. in the cold.  We do like it warmer than the 50's during the day.  Oh well, serious birding is not for wimps.