The dog woke me up a little bit before 5:00 am, and once I’m up it’s almost impossible for me to go back to sleep, so… I just stayed up and then headed out to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. It got up to about 80º today, but was overcast all day as well. Weird. I like the overcast though; it makes outdoor picture-taking a lot easier. You don’t have to fight against glare and harsh shadows. It also confuses the wildlife a little bit (they think it’s earlier in the morning than it really is, so they’re active a little while longer than they normally would be.)
CLICK HERE for the complete album with videos.
The drive to the place was uneventful, and I got there a little before 7:00 am. When I stopped at the first park-and-stretch area, I was taking some video of a little Marsh Wren at its nest and could hear the woop-woop-woop calls of Pied-Billed Grebe and the deep cello-call of bullfrogs all around me. For a long time, I was the only person on the trail, so it was just me and critters…
There were lots of jackrabbits and cottontail rabbits everywhere. At one point along the auto-tour there were about 10 of them running helter-skelter all over the road and into-and-out-of the tall grass. I got a video snippet of some their antics. It just made me smile to watch them having so much fun… I came across one little Cottontail that had both of ears “cropped”; the tips were totally gone. I’ve seen some rabbits with one damaged area, but never one with two. It looked like something had bitten them off… and in another spot, at the park-and-stretch area near the viewing platform, I found a Cottontail who didn’t seem too concerned about my walking around it. It even stretched out on the gravel to warm its belly. (Well, it WAS the park-and-stretch area afterall. Hah!)
I saw a lot of otters on the road ahead of me, but didn’t get any close-ups of any of them (they move so fast!) And one spot, it looked to me like the otter was rolling in either otter poop or raccoon poop. To each his own…
One of the big surprises of the morning, though, was coming across a Bald Eagle. They’re somewhat common at the preserve in the winter, but by the summer they’re usually all a little further north or up in the mountains. When I first saw it (at a distance) I thought it was just a Turkey Vulture; all I could see were its dark back and shoulders. But then as I got closer to it, it raised its white head and I could tell it was an eagle. I took dome distances shots of it, and then moved the car up closer, inch by inch, hoping it wouldn’t fly off before I could get some decent photos of it. I was lucky. It sat right where it was for several minutes and let me a bunch of pictures before it got bored with me and flew off. Later, as I continuing down the auto tour route, a women drover he car up next to mine and said she had spotted the eagle on the little island the cormorants and Pelicans often rest on and was heading up to take pictures of it. I told her it had already posed for me, but I’d go check out the island, too, when I got closer to it. The woman drove past me and hurried up the road… but she didn’t stop for very long once she reached the spot she wanted, so I assumed that she didn’t get the photos she was hoping to.
I had stopped my car where I was because I was trying to get photos of some juvenile Widow Skimmer and blue Pondhawk dragonflies that were flying among the weeds and tules along the shore of the permanent wetland pond. It’s a tiny bit early in the season for them. Over the few months there should be tons of dragonflies and damselflies out there… Among the other insects, I also saw some Yellow-Faced Bumblebees, lots and lots of Painted Lady and West Coast Lady butterflies, Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies, Common Buckeyes, Cabbage Whites, some Sulphur butterflies, White-Lined Sphinx Moths and a tiny Crescent butterfly. Among a crop of phacelia, I also found a large group of what I think were Salt Mars Caterpillars (which grow into large white moths with black speckles on the wings). It’s so hard to tell, though. I haven’t found a really good book on caterpillars yet; they are so many species…
By the time I got to the spot where you can see the “Pelican island” it was totally vacant; not a single bird on it. And that VERY unusual. There are normally lots of birds gathered on it… But if the Bald Eagle had flown over it or actually landed on it (as the woman who’d driven past me had suggested), then I wasn’t entirely surprised by the vacancy. Most of the birds in the refuge will duck-and-cover if a hawks flies over. But when the eagles show up, everything scatters…
My other big surprise of the day was when I found a Muskrat swimming in the water, munching on water vegetation. It was pushing its way into some tules, and in doing so dislodged a small garter snake that had been sunning itself there. The snake fell into the water right in front of the muskrat. The muskrat startled, but didn’t stop eating and the snake swam away. It was the second of two snakes I saw today. Like the otters, though, the snakes move so fast it’s hard for me to get any pictures of them…
It took me about 5 hours to do the 6 mile loop, and then I didn’t get home until around 1:30 pm… During the last hour or so of my drive I could feel my throat getting really and scratchy, and by the time I got the house, I knew cold was coming on. Dang it!
