March Alredy

Cormorants waiting for me to make a move . We are  doing Salinity testing  and they are always annoyed by our intrusion .

Willits feeding on one of the back area marshes where we go to do more testing . On our average test day we travel 97 miles inside the refuge to get at 92 test points .

There are just thousands of birds in the Refuge right now . Every where we go we stir up large groups of just beautiful birds of all kinds .

A Roseate Spoonbill just loving the warm days here . 77 today .

Snow Geese and Ibis , adult and juvenile take wing as we roll by .

Cute face on this little guy

More Roseate Spoonbills on Shoveler pond .

Caught this Blue Heron flying off as I walked into one of our check points in the main refuge

A White faced Ibis giving us the bird eye as we passed .

As the Turtles come up from the cold waters of the marsh we do spend a lot of time stopping and moving them off the road .



Just a little annoyed at me .

Caught this Hawk getting ready to make a nest along side of one of the access roads in the Refuge .Hope she keeps a lower profile later  on.

This is one of the harder spots we do for Salinity testing . a long walk through the cow poo out to the water control structure .

A couple of quick throws and the numbers are ready to be recorded .

The cows are all so nosey when I'm in their field . These are all free range cattle on the refuge .

A walk back through the poo and on to another area .

The fishing is good by the outlet and the Cormorants are lined up .

A Great tail Grackle fishing on the other side of the outlet and doing well .

This year we have a good number of Northern Crested CaraCara on the Refuge and one pair has taken a liking to one of the Solar water pumps for cattle .

Seems like a good spot ?

Didn't like that piece of grass in the nest .

This piece is so much better .

More birds as we move through the non public areas of the refuge .

And sometimes we just have to move very slow as these girls are in no hurry to let us pass .

Maybe e can get them in a row so as to slowly go by .

So many little ones every where that it's hard not to just love their little faces .

One of the really cool jobs we do is the Salinity testing to make sure that the Marsh is healthy . The salinity is important as the shrimp and crabs and many fish species cannot breed unless there is the perfect mix of both.