Mea Culpa

I know it’s been too long since I posted here, but there are several reasons for that lack of publishing. Most importantly, I’m getting older, and it suddenly seems much harder to get things done.

It doesn’t help that our house is apparently aging as well, resulting in me having to spend an unusual amount of time working on home projects. First, our relatively new Kohler shower started dripping steadily and needed to be fixed. I really like the faucet setup, but it’s new enough that I had no idea how to repair it and ended up spending time on YouTube figuring out what parts to order for my model. It turned out to be relatively simple, much easier than I had anticipated.

That problem was barely solved when our Craftsman garage door opener decided it had had enough. I wasn’t about to tackle that on my own, so Leslie talked to someone who had worked around the house before. He said he had installed four of his own, and said he worked on it if I would help him since it was a two-man project. We worked on it most of the day, and still didn’t finish it, but it works well enough we can charge our electric vehicle.

Once I’d finished those jobs, I set out to ensure that our drip-irrigation system had survived the winter. It had, but as usual, parts of the system had to be repaired. What was unusual was that the part of the system that runs under the patio wasn’t working, and that was a bitch to fix, mainly because the screws that hold the deck down would come loose. Several were stripped, and others just plain wouldn’t move. Eventually, I discovered that the mice had chewed holes in the lines, and I replaced one of the lines. I never could find the other line and finally had to route it over the top of the deck.

The hardest job, though, was digging out a flower bed in the front yard and replacing the soil with sand and rocks, really heavy rocks, too heavy for an 84-year-old who is still recovering from Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The actual time spent on these projects wouldn’t have kept me from posting more often than I usually do, but by the time I had finished them I wasn’t up to spending hours at the computer working on polishing photos and trying to write something that made sense of them.

Luckily, part of the problem is that I think I got the best shots of American Avocets that I have ever gotten before. After hours of editing, eliminating the obvious, and not-so-obvious mechanical errors, I still have 38 shots that I need to narrow down to 12 or so pictures. They’re good enough that I didn’t want to just paste them randomly on my blog.

Exploring Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

When visiting National Wildlife Refuges, it’s easy to forget that, no matter how long the auto tour is, you are only seeing a small part of the refuge, and there’s no way of knowing what the habitat is like in other parts of the refuge. Our recent trip to Bear River was a good reminder of that.

As Chat GPT points out, “Interestingly, the alternate route goes through areas usually closed to the public, including the O-Line and D-Line canal roads closer to the Great Salt Lake itself. That may actually provide some unusual birding opportunities this spring and summer, especially for nesting shorebirds like avocets and stilts.” It was right on both points.

We saw more ducks than I can remember seeing on previous trips, and some we had never seen there before. I suspect part of the reason for that is that the water was shallower than on the old auto tour. Consequently, we got a lot closer to ducks like this pair of Gadwalls,

Two ducks swimming in a tranquil pond, surrounded by tall grasses.

this male Northern Shoveler,

A male duck with a green head and brown body swimming in a calm water scene surrounded by tall, dry reeds.

and this male Ruddy Duck,

A brown duck with a blue bill swimming in a calm waterbody, surrounded by tall reeds.

who didn’t seem to want his picture taken.

A bird taking off from the water, creating splashes as it lifts off, with tall grasses in the background.

It’s easy to see why some visitors, particularly those who live nearby and visit often, would find the temporary, alternate auto tour even better than the regular auto tour.

I’ll have to admit that I thought that the reeds provided a spectacular backdrop for some of these shots.

Birdwatching Tips at Bear River Refuge

Historically, the best shots I’ve gotten of Western Grebes and Clark’s Grebes have been taken on the auto tour at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. I realized we would probably be too early to get my favorite shots, babies riding on the back of adults, but I hoped to get shots of the grebe mating rituals.

Unfortunately, we only saw four or five grebes on the entire alternate route. If I hadn’t had such high expectations, I might have been satisfied with this shot of a Western Grebe

A grebe swimming on still water, showcasing its distinctive black and white plumage and orange beak.

and this shot of a Clark’s Grebe,

A close-up of a Clark's Grebe swimming in calm water, featuring a distinctive black tuft on its head and a white body with gray accents.

but I didn’t drive 850 miles without expectations. Luckily, Expectations are exactly what keep me motivated to keep coming back year after year.

Chat GPT tells me that

The regular main auto tour route is currently scheduled to be closed from Saturday, April 4, 2026 through “mid-September” 2026 for a major maintenance and water-control structure replacement project.  

The refuge states that the normal route and Unit 2 are expected to reopen by the start of Northern Utah’s youth waterfowl hunt weekend, which usually falls in mid-September.

so I will have to wait until next year to see if the grebes will return in the numbers that were previously there.

The good news, according to Chat GPT, is

Interestingly, the alternate route goes through areas usually closed to the public, including the O-Line and D-Line canal roads closer to the Great Salt Lake itself. That may actually provide some unusual birding opportunities this spring and summer, especially for nesting shorebirds like avocets and stilts. 

As it turns out, I originally came here after fruitlessly looking for American Avocets in other areas for a couple of years. Even if I had never seen a grebe here, I would still return year after year just to see the American Avocets, and, luckily, we did see more Avocets than we ever have before. After hours of editing and deleting, I still have 55 photographs of Avocets that are good enough to post. But, I promise I would never post that many photos of a bird in a single post, or even a string of posts.