To the Sacto and Colusa Refuges, 12-16-19

I got up with the alarm at 5:30 am and was out the door with Esteban by 6 o’clock to head over to the Colusa and Sacramento National Wildlife Refuges. It was sunny, clear and cold: 35ºF when we headed out and up to about 49º by the time we got back home again.

Start Time: 8:00 am at the refuge
Start Temperature: 35ºF
End Temperature: 49º F
Weather: Clear, sunny, a slight breeze
Total Hours in the field (includes travel time): 8 hours
Miles on Auto-tour Routes: 10
Number of Individual Species Noted Today: 49

It was so clear outside, you could easily see Mount Lassen in the distance, and it featured as a backdrop for some of my photos.

I took my dog Esteban with me. This was only the second long trip he’d been on with me, and he’s still not the best traveler yet. I think just taking him out more often will help him build his traveler’s legs and confidence.

Esteban in the car. He spent a lot of time standing on the center console looking at the birds. The big flocks of geese freaked him out, though.

At the preserves, Nature was kind of playing “keep away” which frustrated a lot of my photo-taking. I’d see something like a bird or a deer, get the car stopped and focus the camera, and the subject immediately moved out of range. This was most frustrating when I saw a chubby Striped Skunk waddling along the edge of the trail. It was obvious to the car until I stopped it, then the skunk immediately turned tail and scrambled into the tules out of sight. Dang it! I

CLICK HERE for the full album of photos.

There were hawks in the trees and along the roads both going to the preserves and coming back to Sacramento. I got up to 25 before I stopped counting! Mostly Red-Tailed Hawks with a few Red-Shouldered Hawks and a Prairie Falcon thrown into the mix.

A pair of Northern Harriers sharing a meal

At the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, I saw a pair of what I think were Northern Harriers (hawks) sitting on a tussock in the middle of the wetlands with some Turkey Vultures sitting nearby. The hawks were eating something, but I couldn’t see what it was. I was able to get some photos of them, looking at one another, sharing their meal. I inferred it might have been an adult with her offspring. Even with bloody bits on their beaks, I thought they were lovely.

As I mentioned, there were thousands of Snow Geese in both preserves, intermixed with Greater White-Fronted Geese and Ross’s Geese. During my walk at Effie Yeaw on Saturday, fellow-walker Alice had mentioned that the last time she been to this preserve there wasn’t a goose in sight anywhere. But she was there when it was raining, so I surmised that the geese hadn’t come into the preserve because they were waiting out the rains and hunkered down in their night roosts (in the agricultural fields around the refuge). Today, the geese were everywhere.

Nearing the “white out” conditions with all of the Snow Geese rising up off the ground and into the air.

At one point, I saw a Bald Eagle lift off from a tree on the side of the auto-tour route and buzz-bomb the geese. The geese scattered in all directions, wave on wave of them, until there were so many bird in the air I was actually “snow blind” for a minute or two. It was incredible. That Bald Eagle was the only one I saw today.

Snow Geese scattering in front of the Eagle.

I saw a lot of Great Egrets and Great Blue Herons along with the usual waterfowl I normally see at the preserves, including a pair of happy Gadwalls. The male kept elbowing the female, but she wasn’t in the mood. Hah!

And because the “naturalist” in me won’t shut up: Those stiff feathers on the Great Blue Heron’s chest are called “powder down”. The bird has a special claw on its foot that it scrapes over these stiff feathers, shredding their surface into a fine powder that it then transfers to its skin and other feathers with its beak to keep them clean.

I also saw a few Audubon’s Warblers, a few Ravens, young and nonbreeding Western Meadowlarks and several American Pipits. I also caught sight of an American Bittern trying to make itself inconspicuous among the tules, but I couldn’t get any good photos of it. Where it was situated, I could only see it through my windshield, and my camera takes shitty photos through glass. So, it was neat to see the bird, but frustrating as far as the photo-taking went.

A juvenile Black-Crowned Night Heron, Nycticorax nycticorax, sitting in one of the day-roost trees.

It was nice to see the full flock of Black-Crowned Night Herons hulking en masse in the trees at the end of the Colusa loop again. The big flock had been absent for a while with only a few stragglers hanging around the refuge. Today there must’ve been about 50 birds out there, adults and juveniles.

I drove through the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge auto-tour route and then headed over to the Colusa refuge and drove through there, too. Esteban and I lunched in the car along the way, and we got back home around 2:00 pm.