Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

Lanquid pond at Sac National

Dawn, through her birding blog network, and Larry Jordan, an expert birder from Redding, organized a great outing to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, located 90 miles north of Sacramento. Sac National is one of the premier birding refuges in the central valley playing winter home to literally 10s of thousands of migrating fowl. Snow geese and many species of ducks are the predominant birds at the Refuge.

Click on pic for enlargement

The boidin' gang - Jeff, me, Cheryl, Dawn (Kathy in front), Larry, Eric, Scott, and Heather

We meet at the parking lot by the visitor center. While we gather and get ready for the walking tour, we watch literally thousands of snow geese flying overhead.

Neat V-formations of snow geese fly over (above and below)

Click on pic for enlarged views


Quiet ponds on the walking tour

Norther pintails where here by the thousands

Another beautiful pond on the walking tour

There's snow on Snow Mountain. I hiked it last year (see 6/15/08 entry in archives for hike blog entry).

The observation tower at the Refuge. Unfortunately closed to visitors.

Veeery intense viewing searching for the great horned owl. It was well hidden in a willow tree.

You can barely see it with the spotting scope.

Butt Crack Ridge overlooks the Refuge

Snow geese and long-bill dowitchers (in foreground)

Snow geese and Snow Mountain . . . how appropriately named

A couple red-tail hawks

Wheee!! Ducks or mosquitos!!?

Click on pics to enlarge

The great lift-off . . .snow geese by the thousands


2 comments:

Dawn Fine said...

Holy mackerel..I just came to look at your blog and you have been busy..yikes..I need to catch up with you..but I don't think tomorrow will be the day..I will do my other Sac refugee posts soon! Great pictures..
What a fun time!

Larry said...

Wow Geno, you have some great photos here! The flocks of geese and ducks are cool but your landscape photos are truly beautiful!

It was great to meet you and spend some time together. I hope to see you again sometime.