Red Rocks Lake National Wildlife Refuge

I read about a new wildlife place to visit while we were up in the Yellowstone area, the Red Rocks Lake National Wildlife Refuge. When I learned that the last of the trumpeter swans in the Yellowstone National Park had died and none had come in to replace them, I was especially eager to visit this refuge.

We drove out of the park yesterday, did the mundane (laundry), and finally were ready to head over there this afternoon. Since late afternoon and sunset are good wildlife viewing times, this seemed ideal. And if it was going to be a productive area in terms of photography, I thought I could get back tomorrow as well. We had looked on the map and it did not look too far away so off we headed.

The map said we would have some dirt and gravel roads, and shortly after we left state highway 87 the pavement ended. We clocked the mileage coming back at 50 miles from our campground to the refuge. Half of that was unpaved. The scenery was beautiful, glacier carved mountains, the wide Centennial Valley, and beautiful lakes. There were lots of "bluebird" houses along the road occupied by both mountain bluebirds and tree swallows. Since I don't see tree swallows in the Hutto area, I really enjoyed seeing them as we went down the road. There were other swallows as well - I did not get all of the swallows identified.

We stopped at the Refuge headquarters and got the pamphlets about the refuge and the bird lists. It was late in the day and I knew we did not have a lot of time. The roads were far from the lakes and I was not seeing the trumpeter swans. We decided to go over as far as the Marsh campground before heading back. Finally we were close to the water! And I saw white birds. With the binoculars up - YES! They were trumpeter swans with two babies!

We saw another duck with babies but the lighting was not good enough for me to see the markings on the birds for identification. In addition we saw white faced ibis both flying overhead and feeding in the water. There was an American Avocet.




As we were getting in the car, we noticed a killdeer chirping nervously at us. It had a slightly distressed sound. I suspected we were near her nest. When Henry went closer, we got the broken wing behavior. Yes, there were four eggs carefully positioned on the ground. We left quickly not to disturb her nesting.

We saw two raptors flying and as I got a closer look through the binoculars I realized these were not hawks! They had owl faces! I had to dig out the Sibley's out of the back seat. In thumbing through the owl pages, the short eared owl met all the descriptions - from coloration to behaviors. It was flying over the sage very much like the northern harrier. We saw one perched farther down the road and got a pretty good look at its face. Definitely the owl. Later we saw a northern harrier - the difference was obvious. The harrier had the tell tale white rump - but the behaviors are certainly similar.

I don't get to see that many owls in the wild, so seeing these short eared owls made my day.