Category: Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

After a glorious trip to Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge last summer I didn’t want to miss the chance to check it out in the winter when our trip required us to pass right by it. As it turned out, we were about ready for a stop after driving through Salt Lake City. With a long day’s drive still in front of us and questionable weather, I knew that we would have to make a quick, early morning stop if we were going to stop at all.

As it turned out, it was actually sunnier than when I visited it in the middle of June. Unfortunately, the sun was quite low on the horizon and the light was extremely orange-colored, making it harder than usual to identify birds that I seldom see in their winter dress.

At first I thought this might be a Ring-Necked Duck, but my bird guide doesn’t show this variation for Ring-Necked. It also looked a little like a Scaup, but my best guess is that it is probably a Redhead in eclipse plumage.

When we first saw these two grebes (I realized immediately they were grebes), I thought they must be an unknown variety, but, as it turns out, they were simply Pied Grebes in winter colors, something I seldom see, especially in the bright, morning sunshine.

There was no doubt about these two because I spent over two years looking for one before I saw a whole flock of them near Santa Rosa. So it was a treat to see a pair of Canvasback ducks, even if they were much too far away to get a really good shot.

We saw so many Northern Harriers at the refuge I just assumed this was one as it swooped down and caught a mouse, but a quick look on screen made it clear that this was no Northern Harrier, though, again, I’m far from certain what it is. My best guess is that it’s a Rough-Legged Hawk.

The thrill of the day, though, came just as we were finishing the auto-tour. As we were slowly scanning the lake I happened to glance down at the ground and see a white blur. I got Leslie to hand me the small lens since there was no way she could see what I was seeing from her side of the car. Luckily, this little Long-Tailed Weasel popped up from the foliage again,

took a quick glance at me,

realized I was too old and slow to present any real danger and dashed out of the grass and retrieved a dead mouse that it must have dropped as I drove up. Unfortunately, he was right, I wasn’t nearly fast enough to get a shot of him as he picked the mouse up, even though I got a great view of him.

Although I wasn’t nearly as impressed with Big Bear as I was on my earlier visit, that two-minute adventure made my day, making it possible to bear the long drive home through, snow, sleet and hours of darkness.

I’ve got enough pictures from Bear River to post for another few weeks, but I figure if you haven’t already put it on your â€?”Must-Visit” list, I’m probably never going to change your mind. I’ve already posted pictures of the birds I specifically went to see, but I was amazed at how many other birds I saw there. So, I’ll end this series with some of my favorite shots that I haven’t posted yet.

I shot these Wilson’s Phalarope in brilliant morning sunlight, making the contrast even worse than it would have been later in the day. Still, those are the most brilliant colors I’ve ever seen on these birds.

There were whole flocks of Cliff Swallows on the reeds along the road, allowing me to get better shots than I’ve ever managed before.

I actually got several shots with better lighting than this shot of a male Ruddy Duck, but none of them did as good of a job of showing his brilliant blue beak

and this classic Ruddy Duck pose with tail feathers pointing straight up.

I saw Night Herons throughout the refuge, but this is my favorite shot of one that came bursting out of the reeds after I pulled up and stepped out of my truck.

I also spent a lot of time photographing gulls, Franklin Gulls and California Gulls. Since the California Gull is the state bird of Utah, it seems appropriate that I end with this shot.

If the story of the Mormons being saved from the locust by gulls is true, they should probably thank the Lord for creating the Great Salt Lake which attracts all kinds of gulls (and other birds).

It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago as I drove across the Salt Flats I thought to myself, â€?”What a wasteland.” Of course I had the same thought when I first saw Lake Malheur on the same trip. Luckily I’ve had the chance to discover otherwise in the last few years. I’m not about to leave Puget Sound to live in either place, but you can be sure that I’ll be visiting both areas many times in the next few years.

Although a Utah birder told me that the White Pelicans weren’t very active yet and that the best time to see them was in late summer when carp are exposed by low water and in winter when freezes kill large numbers of carp, I was fascinated watching small flocks fishing, or at least that’s what they seemed to be doing.

In fact, they almost seemed to be â€?”rowing,” or perhaps â€?”herding” fish because they would all duck their head and raise it at the same time, all the time moving steadily forward. Of course, it didn’t take long to clarify this online:â€?”Instead of diving for food the way brown pelicans do, white pelicans swim on the surface in a semicircle and herd the fish to shallower water near the shore. Then using their pouches as fishnets, the white pelicans submerge their heads and necks and scoop up the fish.”

Luckily I didn’t reveal my ignorance by saying that I had hoped to get pictures of them diving for fish like the brown pelicans do on our coast. Doesn’t take too much thought to realize that diving into shallow water like this would be far too dangerous while it would be nearly impossible to herd fish in the ocean using this technique.

Once again I felt I really needed to read the instructions on how to switch my Canon EOS 5D on film mode so that I can capture moments like this, but there are so many other aspects of still photography that I want to explore that I keep resisting spending the time on film making.

Instead of worrying about what I don’t know and don’t have, I focused on what I can do best, capturing still shots, and, luckily, this is probably the closest I have ever gotten to White Pelicans. This one was so close that I had to join two shots together to get it in the frame.

This one was further away but there was more light, which revealed a very different colored Pelican.

And, of course, with a 1000mm lens (500mm x doubler) you can almost reach out and touch the pelican’s bill, (especially if you click twice on the picture)

which certainly reminds us just how ancient these birds are.

I guess I didn’t realize how many birds I saw at Bear River Migratory Wildlife Refuge until I started posting about my visit. I was amazed at the number of species nesting on the refuge, birds I only see in the winter or during migration. In retrospect, it’s an even more remarkable place than I thought it was the two days I was there — and I already thought it was very special.

I see Common Terns in many places and I’m always trying to capture shots of them in flight,

especially hovering just before diving.

What I’ve never seen before, though, is them constructing nests. I’m sure I was anthropomorphizing while watching these two Common Terns building a nesting site, particularly since we just spent a week having our house repainted. However, it really seemed to me that this (female?) tern was berating her mate about how slowly the nest-building was going.

Eventually, the mate showed up with a rather large stick in its beak

and spent an inordinate amount of time deciding exactly where to place that stick — so I’m assuming it wasn’t just a pile of sticks, that at least one of them had some sort of â€?”plan” as to what this nest should look like — I suspect it was the female.

Once again, I really wish I’d had another week or two to see how this nest proceeded. I’m going to have to coördinate my trip to Colorado next year so that I can stop before and after my trip to have a better chance of seeing the birds while their nesting.