Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area

There are a plethora of websites for Cheyenne Bottoms. One of them begins:

"All wildlife watchers should make an annual pilgrimage to Cheyenne Bottoms…" say Bob Gress and George Potts, authors of Watching Kansas Wildlife.

While it has been several years since I visited Cheyenne Bottoms, I can hardly disagree with that statement.

More from the same site:

Cheyenne Bottoms is a 41,000-acre lowland located six miles northeast of Great Bend, Kansas. The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks operates 19,857 acres as a wildlife management area. The Nature Conservancy owns and manages 7,300 acres adjacent to Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area.

For the most part, the roads through the area are atop the dikes that separate the area, so you look down into the water at the birds.

Other websites are here, here, and here. Some photographs of the area are here.

I saw what is most likely to have been a White-faced Ibis, though it took me awhile to settle on that. This is a cropped photo



A white faced is supposed to have a white and red face and red eyes. The Glossy Ibis has a brown face and brown eyes. However, in non-breeding plumage they both have brown eyes. Since a glossy is not supposed to be in Kansas, I have to go with white-faced. I did really hope it was a glossy, as that would have been a lifer for me.

My Cheyenne Bottoms photos are here.