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| Becky recently learned from a local magazine that we live 2 hours from the largest wintering ground for bald eagles in the United States. They come for the mild weather and the abundant food and water. The magazine article raved about the eagles, boasting of seeing 200-300 eagles in a day. This sounded too impressive to miss so we headed out Saturday for a day trip to find the bald eagles. After a couple of hours driving and trying to approach the refuge from a couple of directions, we learned something the article neglected to mention-- the refuge is closed to the public. |
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| Although the eagles were off limits, we were right in the middle of the Pacific Flyway, a migratory zone that stretches from Alaska to Argentina. We took a few hours to look around. Hundreds of birds dotted the rivers, lakes and irrigation canals. All the white lumps behind Sophie and Helen in this photo are fat, fluffy swans. Becky looked unsuccessfully for eagles on every tree and telephone pole. |
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| The kids' favorite spot was a boat dock on the edge of a lake. There weren't a lot of birds here, but lots of space to run around and plenty of rocks to throw into the lake. |
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| Gibson carried the binoculars most of the day. He likes to look through them backwards so everything looks tiny. We headed back home as the sun started to set. We were settled into the car, listening to a story and eating dinner, when Brandan spotted a bald eagle flying east across the highway, the only one we saw all day. No doubt it was headed home to roost in its well protected refuge. |
5 comments:
Love to hear about your adventurous spirit and how you made the most of it - even if it turned out a little different than expected.
That is too bad that you didn't get to see more eagles. When we lived in Utah we used to go out every weekend and go birding. There is bird refuge in Farmington where the eagles go to get an easy catch of fish. The fish die as they go from fresh water out into the waters of the Great Salt Lake.
They are such neat birds.
Still sounds like a magical day--you built memories together even though you didn't see swarms of eagles. Love that you spent the day looking together!
Where was the refuge? We have seen bald eagles every year for the last 3 years at Lake Briton in Burney Falls (Northern CA). That's a 2.5 hour drive from here. They fight with the Ospreys and take their fish.
This reminds me of the time we were told abundant clam beds, spent an entire cold and wet day digging for clams and all we had to show for the day was a handful of clams. Still one of my favorite memories.
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