I’ve never liked having family spread out across the country, especially before Leslie retired and there was never enough vacation to visit everyone. The one good aspect of Tyson and Jen living in Colorado is that I’ve ended up seeing places I would never have seen if they didn’t live there. I’m not going to drive 3,000 miles without stopping and seeing local sights. Historically, those have been places like Yellowstone, The Grand Tetons and national parks in Utah.
In the last few years, though, I’ve always stopped at The Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge near Ogden, Utah, a favorite place to see American Avocets, White-faced Ibis and Grebes. Of course, what we see depends on when we get there. Last year was a little disappointing, but this year was definitely not.
In fact, we saw American Avocets,
White-Faced Ibis,
and, best of all, Wilson’s Phalaropes
before we even got to the refuge tour.
I haven’t seen Wilson’s Phalaropes for several years, so long that I can’t remember whether it was at Malheur or at Ocean Shores.
As we were driving to the refuge I saw a car precipitously hanging off the edge of the road. When I slowed down to see what was happening, I noticed a photographer with a 500 or 600 mm lens taking pictures of several birds in a very small pond right next to the road. As it turned out, we returned to this spot four different times in the two days we visited and got some of my favorite shots of the visit.
This auspicious beginning was followed by two days of exciting birding, and more than 2, 000 photographs — which I am still trying to process.