Category: Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

The most common bird I saw at Bear River this visit had to be the Western/Clark Grebe, and luckily, they were also the most entertaining, though it’s hard to show why they were so entertaining with still shots. I really do need to sit down for a while and learn how to take movies with my Canon SLR and then buy something to edit those movies.

I don’t know enough about Grebe behavior to know what all the different grebes were doing, but it looked like they were in very different stages of courting and mating. Heck, I saw at least one pair with two large babies, another pair seriously â€?”necking,” others running across the water as they’re supposed to do during mating (though it seemed odd that there were four of them running at the same time), and these two who look like they might have just been flirting with each other.

This strip is made up of 9 sequential pictures taken over 40 seconds or so (don’t look too closely because Photoshop wasn’t able to blend all the waves correctly). I was waiting for them to get up and run across the water and dive together after this initial flirtation, but they apparently weren’t ready for that serious of a commitment.

These certainly seem to be Clark’s Grebes, so I wonder if they perform different mating rituals than the Western Grebes I’ve seen so many films of. Watching them wasn’t quite as fantastic as watching the Sage Grouse courtship in Malheur last year, but it wasn’t far behind. I spent hours photographing the grebes, which is why it has taken me so long to trim them down to the best shots and still convey a sense of the magic that was happening in front of me.

Another bird I always enjoy seeing at Bear River is the White-Faced Ibis because we never see them on the west side of the Cascades. There were large flocks of them at Bear River, but they seemed unusually shy this time. As I approached them the closest birds would fly off and before I could reach the next group they, too, would have taken off.

Trying to get shots of birds flying overhead while still rolling forward on a steeply banked gravel road is not conducive to great shots,

but at least two of the birds seem to be in focus.

What’s strangest about this is that I’ve never noticed White-Faced Ibis to be so flighty before. Most of the time they’re just plain indifferent to birders in their cars. This ibis which was in a field with Avocets and Stilts, and not with a flock of White-Faced Ibis seemed totally indifferent to me, just as the avocets were.

If it hadn’t been so distant and if the sun hadn’t been behind it, this might have been â€?”the shot” I was looking for. The brilliant breeding colors are clearly there.

The grass was still short enough in this field that you could see the White-Faced Ibis’ distinctive beak and see how well they blend in with their habitat.

Strangely enough, I had nearly the same experience at Malheur where I went right after leaving Bear River. Both places had large flocks of Ibis but they were so flighty that if I didn’t know better I would have thought it was hunting season. Coincidentally, this is the first time I haven’t seen the Ibis dispersed with avocets and stilts, and I can’t help but wonder if that doesn’t have something to do with their sensitivity to intruders.

This failure to get a single excellent shot of a White-Faced Ibis, one of the most numerous birds on the refuge, was one of the few frustrating moments at Bear River.

The Snowy Egret is a favorite photographic subject of mine because of its feathery beauty, its masterful Tai Chi-like grace while hunting.

I’m sure, though, it’s prey must have a very different image of the bird, and I’ll find it difficult to ever see just that aspect of the egret after taking this sequence of shots.

I was watching this egret fishing, waiting for it to strike a graceful hunting pose. I certainly didn’t expect this.

Faster than a Canon can focus, it flew to the top of the dam to confront another Snowy Egret that had dared to intrude on its personal fishing hole.

The intruder obligingly left the scene

which normally defuses the conflict and the winner is content to go back to hunting, but this Snowy Egret didn’t seem content at all,

pursuing the offender until they were both long out of sight.

Apparently it takes more than beauty and grace to thrive in the real world, unless, of course, we expand our definition of beauty and grace.

Yesterday’s picture of the avocet chasing away the Wilson’s Phalarope reminded me of a phenomena I have experienced several times: you’re totally focused on one bird for quite a while and suddenly you notice other birds that you had entirely missed. It seems to be a corollary of the rule that the best way to bird is simply to stand silently in one place and the birds will come to you. I think both are related to a heightened sense of awareness. Too often we get caught up in our thoughts and ignore what’s happening around us.

In this case I was focused on getting shots of the American Avocets, the birds I had come to photograph. Until the avocet lunged at the Wilson’s Phalarope, I hadn’t even seen them, and it wasn’t until my attention shifted that I noticed there was more than one phalarope,

the out-of-focus female Wilson’s Phalarope in the lower left-hand portion of the picture. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even see it when I took this photograph.

I probably didn’t see it until it began to come into focus as the male phalarope landed.

Once I knew they were there, I shifted focus and got this shot of the pair,

perhaps the first shot I have ever gotten of a pair of Wilson’s Phalaropes.

Of course, once I was aware that the phalaropes were in this area, I noticed them right away while birding the area the next door,

though I might well have missed seeing the pair again if I hadn’t expected them to be there.

The transformation from a back-yard bird watcher to an experienced birder has been an interesting one for me. I’m still amazed at all the birds I’ve seen nearby that I missed seeing for the first sixty years of my life and wonder how I could ever have been so unaware of my surroundings.

Of course, I would like to think that taking up birding has increased my awareness in other areas, too, but maybe I’ve just tuned out other channels of information so I can focus on one that I enjoy more.