As I mentioned in my most recent post, my family kicked summer off with 5 awesome days of exploring St. Louis, Missouri! Well, kind of re-exploring. We used to live there about seven years ago, and it's where I was born. St. Louis is officially my favorite city I've been to when it comes to birding. I'm sure you've all heard of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow population there. I was frustrated that I couldn't remember seeing them when we lived there, because my mom said they were all over our yard. So I was looking forward to this trip....but guess what? Not a single one. Maybe it's true their population is dropping. I guess the upside is I've pretty much memorized every single field mark of the House Sparrow's, as I looked extra-close at every one I saw. Oh well. Maybe next time.
Upon arriving at our hotel, my little brothers had so much pent-up energy from five hours of driving that we had to find the nearest park, and fast. That park happened to be Shaw Park, a fairly large green area in the middle of downtown Clayton, MO, which is just outside of St. Louis. After locating the playground, my mom said I could walk around and bird a little. I realized to late that I had forgotten the camera, so my always well-prepared mom lent me her iPhone. I actually manged to take some pretty good photos with it. There weren't that many birds, but I occupied myself with photographing the flowers in the sunset lighting. Here are some results:
So basically, if you have great light, it doesn't matter all that much what camera you're using. :)
The next day, Wednesday, we went to the St. Louis Science Center and the Butterfly House. Again, I forgot the camera. Again, my mom let me use her iPhone.
Having been born in St. Louis and living there until I was 6, I could remember some things about the Science Center. Like the huge robotic dinosaurs, for instance.
My baby brother seemed quite taken with them. Funny, when I was his age, I was terrified of them.
My little brothers were so excited about the whole thing that they hardly looked at one exhibit for more than 5 minutes. The whole center should have taken almost the whole day. Instead, it took about 2 hours. There were fossils, computers, robots, rocks, space exhibits, engineering exhibits, and pretty much everything else. There was also a planetarium, but the boys for some reason didn't want to check it out. But we still had a pretty good time.
Then we went to the Butterfly House! I suppose I should probably describe it to you.... Well, the house itself is basically a giant green house filled with tropical plants and butterflies. It's surrounded by butterfly gardens and a big park. Near it, there is also a historic village, with buildings built during or after the Civil War. It's all very impressive. Here are some photos I took:
On Thursday, we went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Little did we know this was going on:
We'd been to that before! Years ago when it was just a few exhibits! Now it was way more than that. There were hundreds of exhibits, most of them made out of silk and wire with lights inside. Some were made out of other materials though...like this dragon:
It's huge! And it's made out of nothing but....
Plates! That's why it's called the porcelain dragon. Even more impressive: There's two of them!
There was also a sailboat made out of plastic water bottles...now that's what I call recycling.
Apparently, it took about 30 years to make all the exhibits. No wonder.
Of course, there were also plants. Here are some photos:
And there were even a few birds:
Like this molting Red-tailed Hawk being chased by a Red-winged Blackbird.
A surprisingly cooperative cardinal.
And some mallards. They were bathing in the lake in the Japanese Gardens. I wish I had gotten the top of the head in this photo, but otherwise I like it.
So just as a mid-way warning, this post is going to be extremely long. I don't blame you if you lose interest, but for the patient people out there I will continue writing.
Okay, on with the post. The next day we went to the City Museum. When you think 'museum', you usually think of fossils, ancient artifacts, etc. But the St. Louis City Museum is like a museum combined with a giant indoor playground. The roof says it all.
Yep, it's awesome. It's supposed to be strange and completely random, and it is. When you walk in, the first thing you see is a giant maze. It goes underground, over the floor, and up in the air. We all had a great time in it.
That's me and two of my brothers climbing into the maze, photo by my mom. The lighting wasn't that good on the first floor, as there weren't many windows. But it improved on the second floor, which was full of architecture, collections of specimens, and...doorknobs.
Kind of strange. But the specimen collections were really cool!
There was a whole room lined with specimens! Here are some examples:
There was an albino squirrel.
And LOTS of butterflies and moths.
This is, my little brother put it, "A pickled python!"
The City Museum was extremely fun, and we hope to return someday!
And that's pretty much everything we did in St. Louis (except for Shaw Nature Reserve, but that's what my previous post is about). I hope you enjoyed hearing about our adventures there!
