So this weekend is going to be awesome!  It will be a weekend between jobs and I am going with my best friend, Chris.  The main focus will probably be on birding, but also we will be taking alot of video and making a small documentary about the weekend.  We will be spending alot of time at Chataugua wildlife refuge birding and exploring some of the other preserves in the area.  We will camp at Sand ridge state forest and fan out from there.

The campground is very rustic, no electric or bathrooms-just outhouses.  The only water sources are a few scattered water pumps through-out the campground.  There are a total of about 24 sites located in an open pine forest providing lots of shade. 

Upon arriving at Sand ridge, we set-up camp right away so we could eat lunch.  The tent was set up rather quickly and lunch was tasty-tuna salad.  For our first hike we traveled down the road to____________.  The preserve is located on an old sand dune from thousands of years ago.  There was alot of liatris growing there with painted lady butterflies all over them.  Sand coreopsis and prickly pear cactus were quite abundant as well, I even ate some of the cactus pears.  Quite tasty and juicy, but loaded with seeds.  We got a little nervous when we were checking out a badger hole, but it didn’t come out.

Our second hike was a shorter one around the Chataugua visitors center.  We hiked through some trees on our way to the river.  Or, what we thought was the river.  Turns out most of Chataugua is quite dry.  The river bed, or dried up river bed was quite over grown with plants.  The cross dikes hold most of the water back and the river is only flooded on rare occasions.  We could see some water way off in the distance, which we would explore on a later hike.  We took a short drive along the river then and saw some Great egrets, great blue herons and some unidentified shorebirds.

For our last hike of the day we traveled to the south cross-dike at Chataugua and walked across it.  The dike is quite wide and easily traveled.  The hike was about 1 mile from one side to the other.  This gave us our best birding of the day.  We saw Bald eagles, which nest there, many cormorants, Great egrets and GB herons.  We saw black terns and a flock of snowy egrets flew over head.  By now it was getting dark so we returned to our camp and ate our dinner in the dark.  Luckily I had my head lamp on so I could see my food.  As we slept, a whip-poor-will was calling over our heads.