wo Treks in two days! At this rate, we will EASILY make our goal of 52!
For this one, we went down to a bird sanctuary near Olympia… The Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge (website here). We’d been there a few years ago, but we figured it’d be fun to check it out again… and we were right!
Herons and Ducks. Just after getting out of our car, we were treated to our first birds… A blue heron and a couple of Mallards.
Checking out an eagle. We noticed a juvenile eagle sitting on a branch, scoping out the water.
The clan…
Mallards. We saw some wood ducks here, also, but they were too far to get a picture. The boys used Bino’s though, and got an up-close view of them.
The Wildlife Area has a nice boardwalk, letting visitors tread lightly.
Or walk came with several stops to check out the birds and watch them do what they do.
It was an enjoyable walk… we had a lot of fun finding and identifying the birds.
We heard a bird… and the boys worked to be the first to find it. Fun times!
We looked for mammals, too… but they were likely holed up for the winter.
This is a beaver-friendly water diverter. Its called a “beaver deceiver.” It is designed to let the beavers build a dam, without harming other areas in the park. It has a hose that passes through the dam under water, so there’s no rushing water sounds to cause the beavers to block it. It is also set to allow the water level stay high enough to keep the beaver’s den opening to remain underwater. A lot of work went into the engineering of that thing!
We had a great time walking along the boardwalk, checking out the birds. The boys had enough fun to not notice the length of the walk, which was a good thing! The scenery was quite striking, and even in the winter, we managed to see quite a few species of birds… Peregrine Falcons, a Bald Eagle, a Blue Heron, Wood Ducks, several Mallard pairs, Canadian Geese, even a Chickadee, a wood pecker, and more.
Our Northwest Family 