It’s Fall. The equinox was this week and the weather has cooled. Just yesterday we had our first frost.
It’s not snowing, yet . . .
Mornings are still mild and we continue to have warm days ahead, but still, . . . it’s feels like Fall.
The trees around our house fill with a different species of songbird nearly every week. A gang of Jays has been stalking the area and V’s of Canada Geese honk their arrival overhead.
Before duck season fills the parking sites with RV’s, and chains close off loop roads, we like to make a seasonal visit to Summer Lake.
It’s just an hour’s drive, so if there’s no activity, we’re not giving up much of the day. That was not the case this day.
The refuge was filled with activity and a wide variety of birds.
Year around there’s a least one Squadron of Pelicans, a Great Blue Heron, some raptors, and a smattering of the hardier song birds to populate the marshes of Summer Lake.
Then, a couple of times a year, seasonal migrations bump those numbers and bring in a lot of different species. These are ideal times to visit.
Before we even got to the refuge, there were a couple of Sand Hill Cranes resting in a field along the road. We spotted a few more pairs at various points during our regular loop drive.
In managing the refuge there is a seasonal shifting to water levels in the various ponds. In the fall it seems the ODFW attempt to give hunters some easy access points, but also offer more protected spaces.
On this trip the pond on the west side of the dike loop road had just a thin layer of water. This seemed to be just what the shore birds wanted. The place was filled with a huge variety.
Once again we enjoyed the space without any other people. This makes it easy to stop on some of the narrow roads to get a photo or put the binoculars on an unfamiliar group of visitors.
We’ll be back, of course, but not before winter takes hold and then it will be a very different landscape . . . beautiful in a different way.
Fun bird filled day!