On Sunday we went to the Merced and San Luis National Wildlife Refuges.
We stopped at Merced first. There are usually a lot of birds here but it really varies from month to month. The last time we visited there were sandhill cranes and Canadian geese everywhere. They must have flown south because there weren't any this time. There were plenty of egrets, northern harriers, stilts and white faced ibis though.
Then we drove over to San Luis. It had started to rain and there were crawdads crossing the roads. We saw a lot of deer, egrets, and hawks. Then a great horned owl flew right over the truck. I think it was perched in a tree along the roadside. It flew off and landed in a tree about 100 yards away. We sat and watched it for about 10 minutes. A while later a coyote crossed the road about 50 yards in front of us. It passed though a gate and trotted about 100 yards out into the field, then it turned around and came back. It wound up coming within 10 yards of the truck before it sauntered off into the field that it had originally come from.
I've posted the pictures in reverse order, because the coyote was the star of the show.
GroovyGeek wrote:
DIdn't know that egrets are meat eaters, I had them as pescatarians.
Is that some variant of a curlew on #5? Looks like one, but I have not seen them that colorful
"Fish are the great egret's main meal. But they will eat frogs, snakes, amphibians, grasshoppers, aquatic insects and small rodents and mammals" Source: https://www.fws.gov/story/2024-02/great-egret-fish
Thank you all. I think I'm a decent photographer. It isn't easy shooting out the window of a car. I really enjoy the hunt for wildlife though. I look at each trip like an adventure. What will we see today?
