Revisiting the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

After seeing so many flocks of Snow Geese heading south last week, we decided to take another trip down to the refuge to see what changes in the wildlife have occurred in the two weeks. We packed a lunch and this time, we stopped in at the visitor center before heading out on the auto tour. The visitor's center is small but they have some beautiful taxidermy mounts of the various wildlife that can be found at the refuge. We were a especially excited to learn that a Bald Eagle was spotted on the refuge just a few days ago . . . maybe we will be lucky to spot it. We ate our lunch so that we wouldn't be distracted before we headed out on the auto tour.

Below is a shot of snow geese as they begin to settle back down on the water after having been spooked. Keep in mind that these as just from one of the ponds!

There was a tractor that was working in the refuge that was stirring up the snow geese as it worked from pond to pond. The sound of their collective wing beats and honking was a thrill to experience.

As we were going down the road, two egrets were standing in the middle of the road. It appeared to be a mom and baby. They flew over in to the field. Who could resist a family shot?

We were lucky to have seen a couple of Golden Eagles at the refuge. Here is our best shot of this glorious bird.

One of the most frequent raptors seen at the refuge cruising the wetlands and tormenting the ducks is the Northern Harrier, easily identifiable by the white feathers at the base of their bodies before the tail feathers.

Not the closest of shots but below is a Red Tail Hawk.

Remember the mom and baby egret from an earlier shot? Well, they had moved farther through the refuge and we found them in a tree.

We had stopped to look at the waterfowl when across from us, I noticed a large bird in the tree. Well, we had to get a closer look and he/she was most accommodating. We had heard that immature Bald Eagles can look like Golden Eagles and immature Golden Eagles can look like Bald Eagles. Huh? So what did we have here?

Let's see, the bird has a white tail and if you look closely, the beak is turning yellow. The Bald Eagle has a yellow beak while the Golden Eagle does not. Looks like an immature Bald Eagle that in another year or so will have a beautiful white head and tail and will look truly majestic. Wow!

John and I sat and looked at his beautiful face through the binoculars for a long time and he had no problem in showing off his beauty.

What a wonderful day at the refuge ....... John and I feel like we hit the jackpot today :)

We returned home but first stopped at Applebees for dinner. Then we headed home and took our nightly walk up and down the driveways here at Durango RV Park. We ran into the Assistant Managers (Bob and Micki) in the Lodge and had a very nice conversation with them. They encouraged us to come in to the office tomorrow and fill out a job application that they could have on file in case we would be interested in a Workamper job next winter or some time in the future. How nice is that.