Ogden Bay WMA

Ogden Bay Wildlife Management Area provided good birding from 12:00 to 5:30 today and lots of exercise as gates are now closed to vehicle traffic. Walkers and bikers are still welcome. I birded from the south entrance along the canals and open water on either side of the road that heads due north, then cut west, south, and east along dikes lined with towering phragmite and low cat tails leading back to the parking area. I saw Yellow-headed, Red-Winged, and Brewer's Blackbirds, European Starling, Western Meadowlark, White-Crowned, House, and Song Sparrows, Red-Tailed Hawk, Northern Harrier, Bald Eagle, a second-year Golden Eagle harassed by a pair of Common Raven, heard a billion or two Marsh Wren and saw five or six, Sandhill Crane, Great Blue and Black-crowned Night-Herons, Eared, Pied-billed, Western, and Clark's Grebes, American Coot, Canada Goose, Tundra Swan, Mallard, Common and Red-breasted Mergansers, Green-winged and Cinnamon Teal, Gadwall, Northern Shoveler, Canvasback, Northern Pintail, American White Pelican, Ring-billed Gull, Ring-necked Pheasant (heard), Double-crested Cormorant with Halloween-orange chins, and Tree Swallow. A male Red-breasted Merganser entertained me as he grappled with a 6-inch carp; he must have dropped and recovered it seven or eight times before he finally manipulated it headfirst, and down the hatch it went. His kind of sushi.