Our first spring visit to Summer Lake was this week. It’s not much later than normal, but this has been anything but a typical wiinter/spring transition.
Regardless, it’s a great half-day drive.
Oregon is a premier birding state, not because of a single site, but because there is such a diversity of habitats.
Coastal rainforests, mountain meadows, and sagebrush steppe all situated on the Pacific Flyway.
Central Oregon is on the northern edge of the Great Basin and offers a number of alkali marshlands as ideal birding sites.
Most people think of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge when you mention birding the high desert. And while that’s a massive reserve, at 187,000 acres, it’s not our top pick.
The Summer Lake Refuge has about 29 thousand acres and an 8 mile loop road skirts around the central marsh ponds.
This narrow gravel track offers up excellent access to viewing areas right from one’s car.
As suspected, there wasn’t a great number of birds . . . groups of waterfowl and some shorebirds. JQ grabbed images of most of them.
It was a perfect spring day, mosquitos were at a minimum so we could enjoy a tailgate lunch and tour with the windows open.
There are bound to be a couple more trips to the Summer Lake, as well as Abert Lake and points east.
Hopefully . . . before the real heat of summer starts to bake the sagebrush steppe.
Perfect!