Re: FW: brant-Bear River Migratory Refuge

["L. D. Giddings" <seldom74 at xmission dot com>]

I spent about three hours this afternoon at BRMBR, mostly checking the south
end of Unit 2, the boundaries of which are described by the auto tour loop.
There were some fun birds, including a gull or two I tried without success to
turn into jaegers, but ultimately nothing unusual was observed. The water
levels appear to be up about 10"-15" compared to those seen at the end of
August on the UOS Behind-The-Gates trip. Nearly all of the mud flats in Unit 2
are gone, as were most of the wading birds. A few American avocet were seen.
Many waterfowl are present in the south end of the unit, but generally at a
distance of 6-800 yards from the road - substantially out of shotgun range.
Pintails, American wigeon, and ruddy ducks were easy to identify at that
distance. There are also numerous Canada geese, and coots as well. Water levels
are also visibly higher in unit 3, to the east of the auto tour loop, and in
unit 1, to the north of the loop, than they were six weeks ago. Who knows what
may be hiding in the large mass of birds in unit 2 or in the adjacent units.

Lu Giddings



Eric Huish wrote:

> Birdnet Email -- from the website
>
> ----Original Message Follows----
>
> It was submitted by Karen Welch.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject: brant-Bear River Migratory Refuge
>
> Email_Address: vonwelch@sisna.com
>
> Message: The sighting was at the Bear River Migratory Refuge near Brigham
> City NOT the Bear Lake refuge as reported.
> Please forgive the mistake from a first time poster to the hotline.  Karen
> was so excited about the sighting that she didn't proof read the email that
> I sent.
> Here is a little more detail:
> If you travel to the refuge on the dirt road, you eventually come to a one
> lane cement bridge that is the start of the counter-clockwise loop. If you
> travel around the loop, I found the brant near the very end, 1 turn before
> returning to the building and bridge where you start the loop. I believe
> that was at the south end of the refuge. When my son and I first saw it, it
> was fairly close to the road--maybe 100 feet, mixed in with a scattering of
> coots. It had white on the flank which is what made it stick out. A closer
> look showed the unmistakable look of a brant--white necklace, long neck,
> short bill. I have seen flocks of them in San Diego. The bird slowly swam
> away as I was taking pictures and eventually got out of range. The pictures
> show the distinctive sillouette of a brant but not much detail. I didn't
> notice the details on the coloring, except to say that it seemed that the
> neck and belly were almost uniformly dark. We observed it for about half an
> hour.
>
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