Still feeling pretty tired this morning. I think I’m fighting off a cold or something, but I’m not sure… It was overcast for most of the day, and in the afternoon it actually rained… for a minute or two. Hah!
At noon, I headed over to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. Traffic in Woodland was surprisingly horrid, though, and it took me over 30 minutes to get from the office to the freeway onramp, which is literally only about a mile and half. (It usually takes me about 6 minutes to do that.) The freeway itself wasn’t bad, though, and I got to the refuge around 1:30 pm. I was going to do a really fast run through it, and ended up spending about 2 hours there. But I enjoyed my time at the refuge, even though I didn’t see much of anything new.
I did get to see a pair of Pied-Billed Grebes on their floating mat nest… But I was most anxious to see if the Clark’s Grebes’ nests had survived the wind and waves from last weekend. The one nest I saw last time that the parents were battling to keep afloat so their eggs wouldn’t drown didn’t make it. It was in pieces, and there were some Coots were fighting over it. Usually Coot nests are built from the bottom up (like a volcanic island of twigs and sticks and grass; a huge mountain under the water, and then the little peak peeking up above the surface. I don’t think the Grebe nests have that kind of solid base… It’ll be interesting to see if the Coots can make the old Grebe nest work for them… The Grebe nests that seemed to be doing well were those that were built further away from the edges of the wetland area – and I’m assuming they were built by more experienced couples.
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