It didn’t take long to survey the units around the Wildlife drive today. We started on the Seneca Trail Tower a little after 8:00 and had great lighting before there was too much glare and heat shimmer. We saw a huge number of bald eagles (6 adults/44 immature) and great blue herons (67)! There were a bunch of shorebirds in the back of the Main Pool and we saw more in the muddy areas up by the Spillway. There were about 100 shorebirds in the Visitors’ Center Wetland as well. Two ruddy ducks were still around near the Spillway (pic included).
It appeared that the older of the two Spillway eaglets has fledged. I could only see one eaglet who happened to be out of the nest perched on a limb to the right (pic included).
Bill Stewart saw the sandhill crane family (2 adults/1 chick) in the Main Pool shortly after 8 this morning. It is great to know they are still around.
We saw a cute little snapping turtle on the Wildlife Drive crossing from Benning Marsh to the Main Pool. It’s shell was only about three inches long. I zoomed it in quite a bit because I didn’t want to get too close and make it stop its progress. But please remind visitors to watch for turtles crossing the Drive and local roads. Caution them to mostly just wait for them to cross on their own or maybe very carefully assist anything except a snapping turtle by moving it off of the road in the direction it was traveling. Also remind visitors to never pick up and move a turtle by its tail and never put them self or others in danger by stopping in the middle of a public road.
See below for more pictures. One is of a blue-winged teal resting near a gadwall in Eaton Marsh. There is also a pic of a solitary sandpiper that was near the two ducks in Eaton Marsh. The last pic is a mallard hen with 8 ducklings on a muskrat mound in one of the areas along I-90.
Even though many areas are drying out without rain and the purposeful draw down of the Main Pool, there are still a lot of cool birds around.
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