On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 7:40 AM, ws <> wrote:
> Nice shots. This area reminds me more of northern Missourah
> with rolling hills than the flat Iowa I remember.
Northern Missouri and southern Iowa look like two peas in a pod. Ken
and I saw a couple flat areas yesterday, but not many. Eastern Iowa
goes up and down enough to make a farmer wish he'd bought a farm
somewhere else until the crop is in and he's spending the money. I
don't get how people call Iowa flat unless they just mean there aren't
mountains here. Perhaps a sea of corn and/or soybeans creates the
optical illusion of actual flatness. It's also possible that my
photos are misleading too in the sense that I like hills and
undulations. I included at least one photo of a very flat field and I
could have found many others here and there. I also like a short
telephoto as a landscape lense and so my photos probably show some
compression of the undulations.
> In December we traveled home to Kansas City, the airport
> is out in the country and surrounded by farmland. I was
> surprised by the number of hawks we counted on the way to
> Independence.
>
> I would assume there are similar populations of hawks in Iowa?
> But I wonder if all the chemical usage has an affect on birds,
> rodents and other wildlife there?
They're all over the place. Not sure how anhydrous affects
non-aquatic wildlife, but the eagles have come back very strong so
far. I saw my first one flying down the river only 15 years ago and
yesterday, as Ken said, we saw 50 in one location.
Redtail hawks are common as dirt. There was one living on top of the
gold dome of the historical capitol building on the University of Iowa
campus. Squirrels were less plentiful for a while on that part of the
campus.
Joel W.
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