Two old ‘coots’ go a birding

Dorothy and Bob have been volunteering here on the refuge since I left on my cruise at the beginning of November, but Dorothy has spent her entire time working in the VIS.  She has heard me talk about what I see when I do my bird surveys on Wednesdays, and wished she could see some of the more remote areas of the refuge.  Since we both have Mondays off, I asked if she would like to take a ride with me back into the East Unit. 
I told her to bring her camera and have it ready for some great opportunities.  I think I’ve gotten some pretty good pictures while I’m doing the surveys.  Ha!  Pride goeth before a fall, they say.  We headed out this morning as soon as the frost melted off the windshield, and headed for stop number one that always has hundreds of waterfowl on the flooded moist soil unit.  Guess what?  There was not even one duck on the water.  Dang those birds for having wings!  :)
As I looked in the ditch beside the vehicle, I saw this male mallard.  That was the only duck we saw at this stop.  :(

We then headed to one of my favorite spots on the refuge.  I think it’s called rail marsh, but we certainly weren’t going to see any rails today as the wind was really blowing and the entire marsh was engulfed in smoke.  I later found out it was from a fire in Louisiana.  How disappointing.
About all we could make out were these American coots.  We felt right at home.  :)  On a side note, could anyone tell me how to ensure that when you click on one of these pictures that it actually enlarges?  Each time I try clicking on a picture in one of my posts, I get the same sized picture, just in a separate frame.  This would be a good pic to click on to get a larger version to fully appreciate  how these coots seem to run across the water.

I asked Dorothy if she was game to help me search out the other route I had been told about to reach those 3 survey spots that I haven’t been able to get to for the last two weeks.  She was all for it, so we went to try to find the road.  All I was told was to take the third gate west of the East Unit main entrance.  We scoped out both the third gate and the fourth gate, and neither of them were in a condition that I felt comfortable driving down.  We could both imagine getting stuck in them with no way to turn around.  So much for that idea!

Later in the afternoon, Emma and I drove to the VIS to see if I could get a picture of one of the two bobcats that seem to be in that area.
We took a quick trip around Shoveler Pond while waiting for the construction workers to leave the VIS area, but didn’t see much.  There was a pair of blue-winged teal floating by, and one rather sickly snow goose.  My guess is that this goose was probably injured during the hunt yesterday and is just hunkering down trying to recuperate.  Good luck to you, old goose.

Overcast skies rolled in, and there was just too much commotion around the VIS, so we headed back to the rig without seeing any bobcats.  Maybe tomorrow, I’ll go look for periwinkle snails.  At least they can’t fly away.  :)

Thanks for stopping by…. talk to you later,  Judy