Name:
Location: Seattle, Washington, United States

What you have here is an old guy. In education for 30 years, started teaching elementary, ended as library and media director of community college. I've enjoyed mountain climbing, sports car rallying, was pipe major of a bagpipe band, played guitar and sang during the folk revival, walking and hiking later in life. Now fairly sedentary. Enjoy reading, esp. mysteries and fantasy, but my reading is pretty eclectic. Enjoy movies, giving Netflix a workout.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Stillwater NWR Birding

The only other thing of great import that we did while in the Reno area was to visit the Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge is about eighty miles east of Reno-Sparks. We stopped in Fallon for lunch. As I was paying the bill a woman came in complaining that there was a big accident. She had to backtrack to get around the roadblock. When I heard the world ‘Stillwater’ my ears perked up. She acknowledged that it was the road to the refuge and that there were state police, county sheriffs, ambulance, a fire engine and aid cars. I don’t know any other roads so I took a chance that we could get through. There were still police on the scene when we reached it but all the other vehicles were gone. I don’t know how many cars were involved; maybe only the one we saw as we drove slowly past. It looked like it might have been a sports model. It was smashed so flat that I couldn’t identify the make. If the persons got out alive they are very lucky.

The day at the refuge was very successful. I’ve been ‘birding,’ as they now call it since I was a young lad. We can usually expect to see many species of birds at Stillwater that we won’t see in the Puget Sound area. We saw 26 species, of which only a couple were birds that we would find at home. The most interesting were white-faced ibis, long-billed curlew, yellow-headed blackbirds, American avocet, black-necked stilts, white pelican, horned larks and western kingbirds. Birding is cheap entertainment. All that’s required is a pair of binoculars and a good identification book. And in recent years several very good ones have been published. We enjoyed our day at Stillwater and hope to go back again next year.

We had intended to visit Lake Malheur Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon on the way home. However, my wife fell in the bathroom of the hotel room and was dealing with a knot on her head and pretty bad headaches. So we cut short the trip and headed for home. Some other time.

2 Comments:

Blogger Cap'n Bob said...

Sorry to hear about Anna Jo's accident. I hope she's better now. As for birding, if it isn't a crow, robin, or hummingbird, I'm at sea. Oh yeah, sea gulls I can identify.

8:17 PM  
Blogger Frank Denton said...

Anna Jo is better but not well. The doctor says she may have headaches continuing for as much as six months.

As for seagulls, which species of seagulls. There are many and they are a constant source of confusion; herring, mew, glaucous-winged,Bonaparte's, California and many more. You can see the problem.

6:06 PM  

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