Day: May 12, 2019

Mothers’ Day, Phase Two

After an hour or two of Bennington Lake sunrise and hiking, we head back toward WaWaWA.  But Kim decides that she wants to travel to the McNary Wildlife Refuge.  So we continue driving, heading up Hwy 12 toward Wallula for about half an hour, doing the usual “windshield photography” along the way.  Then it is over gravel and dirt quasi-roads.  Another hour or two of hiking around the Refuge ensues.  We are vigilant for ticks and such varmints as we push through the brush and around the swampish wetlands.  Kim declares this venue to be the best one yet discovered locally for birding.

P.S. The matter of the “secret cloud message” is further considered at HHR.

[rDay Fifteen-Hundred-Ten]

Mothers’ Day, Phase One

Up at four a.m. Objective: see the sunrise at Bennington Lake.  We leave while the neighbor still has his Christmas (!) lights aglow.   Even at 5 a.m., we find fisherpersons just arriving as well.  And just a bit later, we see several people illicitly swimming across the lake.  We only circumnavigate about half of the lake, instead concentrating on the bird-intense swampy areas.  I spot about three herons and some geese, and hear many more of something, but KAE has spotted and ID’d many more.  After a coupe of hours, we head out for the next MDay adventure.  Too many projects, too much backlog, too little time — I don’t have time to be more selective, so here goes a bigger batch of documentation than I had intended:

[rDay Fifteen-Hundred-Ten]