Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge & Mount Shasta

Day One

February 21, 2014

Soundtrack:

• R.E.M. -- Chronic Town / Murmur
• The National -- Trouble Will Find Me
• Steve Martin & Edie Brickell -- Love Has Come or You

I made another trip up to Oregon last weekend.  It's the third trip in four months.  Unfortunately, like the first journey in November I was going up to attend a funeral.  I'll get into that in a later post, but for now I'll just that it was a bittersweet event.

Snow & Ross' Geese -- Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, CA

American Goldfinch

I drove up Interstate Five and stopped for a visit at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge.  Pongo loves that place.  I thought about bringing him along for the trip, but I was afraid he'd have to spend too much at parents' house in a crate and we weren't sure how well he'd do away from the other dogs for that long.

Songbirds were apparently laying siege to to the Visitor's Center.  They made a spectacular racket, but they were difficult for me to spot.  I found some goldfinches around the feeders that are set up outside.  Some sort of defense perimeter, I guess.  I saw a few other birds, but not nearly enough to account for all of the noise.  It was a covert operation these birds seemed to be operating.  I mean, aside from all the chirping.

Coyote, Snow & Ross' Geese -- Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, CA

There was a strange scene where a coyote was hanging out with a flock of about a thousand snow and ross' geese.  The geese didn't seem to mind the presence of the predator.  Judging by the poor shape of the coyote's coat, I suspect the coyote wasn't in the best of shape.  It looked like he'd either been burned or had a nasty case of mange.  Poor guy.  Being a wild animal is tough.

Gadwall -- Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, CA

There was still a couple of big flocks of geese, but a lot of the ducks had already left for their summer homes. There were thousands of pintails at the reserve in November, but I only saw a few on this trip.  There were still a lot of northern shovelers and a bunch of gadwalls, though, as well as some other stragglers.  I even saw a few cinnamon teals.  Pretty birds.

Cinnamon Teal -- Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, CA

I made a couple other stops on the way up to Salem, but nothing too exciting.  I won sixty bucks playing roulette at Seven Feathers Casino.  I also stopped to take a few pictures of Mount Shasta.  I arrived at my parents' house around 9:00.  A new brew pub opened up down the street.  That's nice.

Mount Shasta, CA