I'm pretty much piggybacking this post on the Colusa National Wildlife Refuge to my PREVIOUS THREE POSTS on the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge as I visited them on the same day and because it is one of the six complexes that make up the Sacramento Refuge.
The Colusa Refuge has a 3-mile auto-tour and I just had time to complete it before the Heavens opened up once again.
But all this very welcome rain made for happy birds which included ducks,
Red-winged blackbirds,
Egrets,
and hawks.
Thanks to the recent rains and ongoing cloudy skies, the landscapes were quite beautiful. The Main Canal runs right through the Refuge and adds a beautiful waterway for the birds to enjoy along with the ponds, fields, and marshes.
The Canal with Egrets and Black-crowned Night Herons hidden along the left bank.
And of course, you can't drive 2 miles in the country without seeing the graceful Turkey Vulture.
The next picture is full of Red-winged blackbirds, male and female.
It's easy to look past this fairly common bird, but not only are they completely beautiful, they also form a musical yet raucuos chorus when gathered in large numbers such as these. It's fun to hear and see.
Next we have a lovely portrait of a White-fronted Goose with a Mallard couple.
This next photo is a little confusing to me. The two on the left are definitely Mallards, but what about their friend on the right? He has the curly feathers above the tail and some of the coloring, but looks mixed with a Gadwall or something else. So, hybrid?
If you've been one of my readers/visitors for any length of time, you can probably tell that I love high-contrast photos. So you just KNOW how much I love this next one. I think it looks amazing.
Mallards on Logs with Bokeh
There were literally hundreds of Pintails and White-fronted Geese at Colusa.
This next photo is similar to the one above, but I really like it because, if you think about it, it shows most of the different habitat on the Refuge. The ponds in the foreground, the rushes in the middle for the blackbirds, and the trees in the back for hawks and owls.
The storm clouds were gathering in the distance and sprinkles of rain were starting to fall, so I knew that my time out birding today was coming to an end.
On the way out I saw a ton of Ibis cleaning the field. It really did look systematic as this group walked forward in almost a straight line while eating.
This Great Blue Heron hunkered down against the cold and wind...
And so I, like these geese, flew away.
TTFN!
xoxo
