Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

Doug and I had a fun day today. Life has been way too busy and stressful lately and I knew we needed a mental health day. I wanted to find something to do that wasn't in the Salt Lake area or South because Doug has to make that drive so often that it's not a stress relief to head down there. I don't know what made me think of the bird refuge but I'm glad I did. We've lived this close to it all these years and have never visited there before. We loved it and will definitely be going back over and over. We've talked in the past about birdwatching or birding and what a fun hobby it could be. Well, in some ways neither of us need another hobby but in other ways it's something we could do together so this may be the start of something fun!

We stopped at the visitor/education center first. It's got some great displays and then we watched a short 30 minute movie about the refuge, its history, and some of the birds we might see there. The volunteer I talked to said every day is different there and I can see that since it's a migratory spot so the population of birds is going to be ever changing.

We drove out to the auto loop, a 12 mile loop about 14 miles west of the center. We picked an absolutely gorgeous day to go. The weather was cool and beautiful and we basically had the loop to ourselves and could stop whenever we wanted to look around and take pictures. I've already forgotten the names of most of the birds we spotted but there were some beautiful ones. We saw several different Great blue herons, such big beautiful birds. I wish I could've gotten a shot of one in flight but at least I was finally able to get a few pictures of one standing in the water. Doug was happy to see several snowy egrets. I had hoped to see some of the tundra swan migration but no such luck. We took a picnic and just took our time and had such an enjoyable day. It's huge, 80,000 acres/124 square miles and as far as we could see there was nothing but beautiful wetland, birds, and mountains in the distance. I felt such peace there.