Waterfowl Field Trip

George Jameson led a Blue Mountain Audubon field trip to the west side of the county to see what ducks and geese we could find.  Highlights included thousands of snow geese – in the fields eating, flying overhead, calling.... Such a wonderful sight!  There were also thousands of canada geese and several hundred cackling geese and white-fronted geese. The geese were seen along Hanson Loop Road, Humorist Road, and at McNary NWR Headquarters.  Also at Headquarters were over 20 tundra swans, a nice variety of ducks including redheads, canvasbacks and ring-necked ducks. We saw more ducks at Two Rivers HMU. A special treat was a great egret sitting by the side of Humorist Road just past the intersection with Highway 12.  Interesting though, when we returned through the same area an hour or so later there were no geese in the fields and no egret.Our timing was good!  There were several bald eagles scattered  along the Columbia River.  We came home via the back roads south of Touchet and Lowden looking for raptors, but found very few.  We did see several great horned owls.

A Slow Day at Bennington Lake

There were 23 tundra swans flying away from Bennington Lake as MerryLynn arrived for our Tuesday walk on February 18.  Even though the lake was open, there were only a few mallards on the water.  It was very quiet walking the trails.  We did see 2 great horned owls and heard a third one.  Near the parking lot we came across a small flock of black-capped chickadees that included a golden-crowned kinglet.  The wind didn't pick up until we were back in the parking lot and it didn't rain, so all in all it was a good walk. We saw or heard a total of 20 species. Ginger