It's For the Birds (But Not At All Worthless)

Every winter a magical thing happens in the Willamette Valley region of Oregon...

the valley gets visitors.

To be completely honest, it gets a LOT of visitors;

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Now, during the winter, you can see these feathered visitors in quite a few places--

by rivers, in wetland areas, by a casino we drove by...

but one of the best places to see them is at a National Wildlife Refuge.

The Valley has three of them: William L Finley (south of Corvallis), Ankeny (south of Salem) and Baskett-Slough (near Dallas).

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Sunday we went to Baskett-Slough, hoping to see some of the swans I had seen there before.

No such luck this time, but we saw hundreds of geese--maybe even thousands.

This was my DH's first time here--

we stopped at the kiosk along the highway (22),

but then we drove through the refuge like we had done at Finley NWR.

Driving through a refuge is an awesome way to see any wildlife

as your car serves as a 'blind' ...

oh, by the way, during the wintertime access is somewhat limited for us humans to let the Geese get some much needed rest before they head back to their northern homes.

Suggestions? Bring a camera with a zoom lens and a pair of binoculars. Drive slowly and bring my eagle-eyed DH (OK, not that last suggestion...but it does help to have someone who can see things from miles away). Sometimes you will see the waterfowl in the grasses which are near the ponds; sometimes you will see them in the fields.

I LOVE it...

Oh--I should say that geese are not the only visitors in the refuge...

you probably already guessed that--

but they are the star attraction:)

For more information, see the link below.

Thank you God for the PNW's winter visitors!

Lenten Blessings,

Aimee

Links:

http://www.fws.gov/WillametteValley/Complex/dusky.html

(information on Dusky Canadian Geese and links to all 3 of the Willamette Valley NWR's. The Dusky Canadian Geese are there from October/November to early April)