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.

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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)

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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!!?

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