Soon after I got up this morning, the sun began to peak through the heavy clouds, giving me the urge to go bird watching on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.
Despite the frigid temperatures and a blistering northerly winds that arose just as I arrived to the refuge auto tour route, today was well worth the effort to come and look for tundra swans.
I had all the intentions in the world of making a video post on my YouTube channel today, but the wind was just too strong and the temperatures were cold enough my hands were having a hard time with the camera so I opted for this quick blog post instead.
As soon as I started around the auto tour route, I could hear numerous tundra swans far off to the north in unit 1. I couldn’t get a visual of them, but I could tell from just their calls, there was quite a few of them.
This gave me hope for the south end of the auto tour route to hopefully find and photograph a few swans despite the increasing winds and frigid temperatures.
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Much of the refuge is still frozen over, but there were pockets of open water starting to appear around the refuge, in parts.
When I arrived on the southern portion of the auto tour route, I found about a third of the large body of water was also thawed out and numerous tundra swans were sitting near the water’s edge on the ice, hunkered down from the wind.
The tundra swans are definitely starting to show up in great numbers, so much so I couldn’t even venture a guess to how many I saw today all over the southern and eastern sections of the auto tour route.
The southeastern corner of unit 1 even had numerous tundra swans only a hundred yards or so from the road, making for some easy viewing and photography.
March is the when the tundra swans usually peak at the refuge, and it seems like they are moving in a bit early this year for some reason. Now is the time to check out the tundra swans on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, especially with much of the ice still around.
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The swans seem to like to hang around the ice edges for some reason, so when I see the ice start to break up, I am hoping some of the sheets of ice will be hang on a bit longer near the road for better swan viewing and photographic opportunities.
Well, I hope everybody is as excited for the large influx of tundra swans as I am. Now that they are here in good numbers, I am going to spend as much time as I can on the refuge auto tour route with my camera, well, as much time as the weather will allow me, that is.
It’s still only mid-February, and my hands continue hurt as I type this post from the bitter cold the winds brought today.
But even though old-man winter is still being reluctant to give way to spring, the urge to get out and go bird watching on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge starts to get the best of me this time of year, and I have to indulge myself despite the prevailing winter weather.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog for updates on what’s going on at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and elsewhere I frequent with my camera. Nature is a great way to relieve stress and there are fewer places I find that do it as well as the bird refuge.
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