Wednesday birding

Wednesday morning Terry and I left Logan, Utah and headed up over the mountains to Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. It's a beautiful little ride that takes a little over an hour.

Once at the refuge, we stopped at the headquarters (which wasn't yet open) and then drove the 12 miles west to the refuge proper. Birding at the headquarters and along the drive to the actual auto loop tour was excellent. The auto loop itself is 12 miles long. The number of individual birds we saw was astronomical. American Avocets, White-faced Ibises, Yellow-headed Blackbirds, Western Grebes and others were present in huge numbers.

Here's the full list of the days tally. Only the species is indicated because the numbers were too large to attempt an actual count.



Location: Bear River Bird Refuge
Observation date: 5/13/09
Notes: A great place to go birding. Cool, clear morning. Twelve miles from the headquarters then another twelve mile auto tour. Too many birds to count individuals.
Number of species: 50

Canada Goose X
Gadwall X
Mallard X
Blue-winged Teal X
Cinnamon Teal X
Northern Shoveler X
Northern Pintail X
Canvasback X
Redhead X
Ruddy Duck X
Ring-necked Pheasant X
Pied-billed Grebe X
Horned Grebe X
Western Grebe X
Clark's Grebe X
American White Pelican X
Double-crested Cormorant X
Great Blue Heron X
Snowy Egret X
Black-crowned Night-Heron X
White-faced Ibis X
Northern Harrier X
American Coot X
Sandhill Crane X
Killdeer X
American Avocet X
Spotted Sandpiper X
Long-billed Curlew X
Bonaparte's Gull X
Franklin's Gull X
Ring-billed Gull X
California Gull X
Caspian Tern X
Common Tern X
Forster's Tern X
Mourning Dove X
Western Kingbird X
American Crow X
Common Raven X
Tree Swallow X
Northern Rough-winged Swallow X
Cliff Swallow X
Barn Swallow X
Marsh Wren X
Red-winged Blackbird X
Western Meadowlark X
Yellow-headed Blackbird X
Great-tailed Grackle X
Brown-headed Cowbird X
Bullock's Oriole X

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

We finished by returning to the headquarters and looking at the great displays they have there. I took lots of photos and some even came out pretty good. I'll post those and some from our little jaunt through Wyoming a bit latter.

It wasn't until nearly one in the afternoon before we were on the road again heading northwest to Idaho and eventually into Ontario, Oregon. Without the wind to blow us about and dropping several thousand feet in elevation, the truck seemed to enjoy the ride as much as we did as it posted its best gas mileage on the trip. Even while hitting 75 and 80 mph for long stretches, the Tundra got 19.4 mpg.