Text Box: by Dan Reed and Anita Hammann For starters, our trip to the first annual Wings of Spring Confluence Birding Festival was actually kind of a fluke. We were competing with each other and another friend in our version of the “Big Year”, a contest to see who could list the most birds in Missouri in a 12 month period. With our year ending on May 31, the event’s April 29 date was perfect for a last big push. At first, we shared out sightings and kept everything on a very convivial footing. However, as we neared the last 30-some days, the competition got more heated. Jan was birding a lot with her mother (a lady who really knows her birds) and intimating they were sighting many birds. Anita and I begin thinking Jan, competitive lady that she is, was intent on winning and we had to make up some ground, fast! Truth be told, we were forthright enough to invite Jan to accompany us to the Wings of Spring festival but, darn it, she couldn’t make it! The event gets its name from the confluence of the Missouri, Mississippi and Illinois rivers and is held at the Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary near West Alton, Missouri. It’s sponsored by the Meet the Rivers Foundation in cooperation with a number of other agencies and bird-friendly Text Box: groups. Riverlands is located in one of the country’s major migratory flyways, with some 320 species expected to pass through the area in late April and early May. Anyway, we just knew we were hitting a bird bonanza at Wings of Spring! However, the birding gods seemed to have other ideas. It began with the weather, which wasn’t exactly ideal. The forecast we saw the night before called for rain all weekend but with a possible “window” that could open Saturday morning. We left at 5:30 a.m. and were accompanied by rain, sometimes hard, all the way to West Alton, just north of St. Louis. The organizers were just setting up in the rain when we got there at 8:00, but then it slacked up and the “window” opened. While the vendors were setting up, we drove to a small tower overlooking a shallow lake. The bird activity was unbelievable! Shorebirds we weren’t familiar with were all over the place! We made one sighting after another, looking them up in our books as fast as Text Box: we could. Then more good luck! We were joined by a lady from Kansas City who, although saying she was only a novice, promptly identified everything in sight! When she left us to pursue birds elsewhere, the rain started again. We returned to the activity area and attended an interesting presentation by the World Bird Sanctuary. Here we saw a Harris Hawk and others we considered counting, but didn’t since they weren’t native to Missouri. But, hey, they were live wild birds, seen in Missouri! When the rain slacked up, we took a walk through the area with one of the local nature center volunteers. Our guide was very knowledgeable and just happened to be a member of the Webster Groves Audubon group. He has birded in many countries and has amassed a life list of some 4200 birds! The birding gods were surely smiling on us now! Alas, the weather once again chose not to cooperate. With winds blowing at 30-plus miles per hour, we didn’t spot Text Box: Birding at Riverlands… a fitting finale to our ‘Big Year’