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Letters to the Editor

Submissions reflect readers’ opinions and may be edited for length and clarity. Email Magazine@mdc.mo.gov or write to us:

Missouri Conservationist
PO Box 180
Jefferson City, MO 65102

Photographer Fan

Noppadol Paothong, thank you for your outrageously beautiful and breathtaking photos. Each and every one has such spectacular qualities. I am a ginormous fan.

Glenda Valentine, Nixa

Cheers for June

Thanks for a particularly beautiful June Missouri Conservationist. Reading it always puts me in a good mood. It is one of the things, including the Missouri Department of Conservation as a whole, that makes me proud to live in this state. Keep up the good work.

John Huxhold, via email

Herons

Thanks for an informative and beautiful June issue. I enjoyed learning more about great blue herons [A Good Place to be a Heron; Page 16]. I always love when I see them, whether they are flying, standing stock still, taking off, or hunting. They are captivating creatures!

I appreciated the sidebar regarding some of the other species of herons in Missouri. My family and I have been keeping tabs on a large rookery of mixed species in north St. Louis since 2017, just west of the Contemporary Art Museum on Washington Ave. They fill the trees and fly low between the city streets looking for twigs to bring back to their nests (if parents) and practice flying (if young). This is a vibrant and surprising community of birds, given that the Mississippi River is 3.5 miles east.

For years we would spend our summer nights at dusk in our backyard calling out the names of the birds that flew overhead en route back to their home — dozens upon dozens of little blue herons, great egrets, and snowy egrets all traveling back from the Mississippi River together. Their numbers seem to have dwindled in the last couple of years, but checking on them recently, I counted about two dozen great egrets and little blues lazing around in the mid-day heat. It’s worth checking out.

Susannah Eisenbraun, via email

Hunters with Disabilities

I have enjoyed the Missouri Conservationist for years and have always been impressed with the wide range of conservation activities you protect and promote, but you knocked it out of the park with the article in the June issue, More Than the Harvest: Hunters with Disabilities Connect with Nature [Page 11]. Kristie Hilgedick not only described the many efforts underway to provide individuals with disabilities opportunities to connect with nature, but reminded us all of the joy and healing power of nature. The volunteers who support this effort deserve our respect and admiration as do the hunters who have not given up on their desire to seek this vital connection.

Janet Desnoyer, Kearney