We didn’t get to see the baby Grebes, Avocet chicks, or Black-necked Stilt chicks we went to Bear River to see, but we did see a lot of ducklings, like this (I think) Gadwall and her brood, Â
lots and lots of Canada Goose goslings (this is my favorite shot of far too many),
and, most exciting of all, this Long-billed Curlew chick as we were leaving the refuge.
I had to take the shot through the windshield so the picture is blurrier than I’d like, but I’ve never seen one before so I’ll keep this shot until I get a better one. The only reason I’m sure it is a Curlew chick is that the parent nearly flew through our windshield as this little guy ran down the road right in front of our very slow-moving car (not a survival strategy I’d suggest for other Curlew Chicks, by the way}.
I’d love to say that I got this shot of the parent as it tried to distract us,
but that would be a lie. I was so focused on the chick and the whole thing happened so fast with the parent flying back and forth and up and down that I couldn’t manage to get a single shot. This shot was taken further down the road when we spotted a couple of Curlew and they, too, circled us protesting very loudly. There might very well have been chicks nearby, but I wasn’t going to stop in the middle of the highway long enough to find them.
Since we never plan a trip just to Bear River (it’s a stop on the way to seeing Tyson’s family in Colorado), we never quite know what to expect when we get there, but we’re seldom disappointed (except the late-summer visit when there were way more mosquitoes than there were birds).
Ending this visit with the first-ever sighting of a Curlew chick made it a memorable visit.