Spa Queens, Mr. Science, and the Sandhill Cranes

Filed under: Photos-Graphics, Self-Referential | By DrHGuy | March 19, 2007 at 8:21 am

This week, Hippie With Tiara has joined Princess Of Peds and the sometimes dissolute but always debonair Lady Lawanda along with eight other friends for a week of physical and spiritual renewal at the Heartland Spa. Exotically named massages will be had, exfoliations will take place, morning walks will be walked. All in all, it will be, I have been informed in no uncertain terms, a heck of a time. If their plot to kidnap the Clothes Fairy is successful, that’s a bonus.

Mr. Science¹ (AKA Spouse of Hippie With Tiara) is my guest during his wife’s initiation into Spa Queendom. Our contribution to Spa Week is remaining absent to assure that that we and our foibles can be safely utilized as convenient conversational topics at lunch and dinner between servings of modest portions of excellently prepared, delicious, healthy food.

With Mr. Science in the (Heck Of A) House and the Prodigal still attending Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, Vocational Therapy, and any other Therapy the outpatient Rehab folks can invent, this is not a propitious time for leisurely drafted posts with multiple revisions, fact-checking, spellchecking, and other such timewasters. Consequently, posts may be sparse and spare this week.

Or not.

In any case, today’s entry, as the discerning reader will have already determined, is, thus far, directionless babble. Thankfully, Mr. Science is available to effect a rescue, providing both the impressive photo below and the accompanying description.

The Sandhill Crane Layover

Mr. Science writes:

The picture below, taken last week, shows a few of the thousands of Sandhill Cranes that mass on the Platte River in central Nebraska during their spring migration from the southern border of the United States to their nesting grounds in northern Canada and Siberia. This annual event attracts not only flocks of birds (thousands of Snow Geese, Canada Geese, and ducks of various species join the Cranes) but also but also flocks of birders from around the world. The cranes spend about a month along this braided river (”too thin to plow, too thick to drink”, as the 49’s described it) eating waste corn in the fields by day and roosting in the shallow river at night, adding 20% to their body weight.

To see thousands of these ancient birds arrive at the river at sundown from a nearby blind or see them ascend at sunrise is an unforgettable birding experience.