Grebes x 4

So grateful to have gotten to see 4 different types of Grebes at our local wildlife refuges over the years!

Let's go birding!

 

Grebe Photography ☼ Western, Clark's, Pied-billed and Eared

Enjoy this collection of my some of my best Grebe photos (so far!) featuring Clark's Grebe, Pied-billed Grebe, Eared Grebe, and Western Grebe...

Birds of Tule Lake NWR

The Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge is located in northern California near the Oregon border. It covers almost 40,000 acres in the Tule Lake basin. These are some of the birds I've spotted during my visits to the refuge throughout the seasons...

For more photos of Tule Lake NWR sightings, visit my website's archive here.

Let's go birding!

Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge - Part 5

Here are a few more of the ducks and grebes (and cute little babies) we saw on the auto tour at the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge...

Tomorrow, I've got some sky-high cormorants for you...

Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge - Part 4

Happy 4th of July!

As promised, here are the photos of our first-ever sighting of a Western Grebe chick! We spotted this cute little gray puffball hanging out with its parents on the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge auto tour...

What a cute little family!

Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge - Part 2

We couldn't have picked a more beautiful day to drive through the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge auto tour. Then again, I find myself saying that a lot about our visits to the refuge because they are simply beautiful places full of nature and all its wonderfullness. (Yes, I'm aware that isn't technically a word. As an author, I often make up words to suit my writing needs :)

Here are some of the cool-looking grebes we saw...

Tomorrow, I'll share some of my best Ibis photos yet...

The Beauty of Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge

After sharing pics from our visit to the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, I thought I'd put together a little video so you can see just how pretty the refuge is!

Lots more birding videos on my YouTube channel!

Birding Quandary

Before I get to the quandary I promised you yesterday,

here are some more pics from the

Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge

Auto Tour:

Western Grebe

Pied-billed Grebe

Red-tailed Hawk

Here's a cool pic of one of the canals on the auto tour...

That's a Great Blue Heron standing on the silver pipe!

Okay, yesterday I said I was going to post a quandary for you--and here it is...

We saw our very first Great-tailed Grackle (you can read that post here) the other day on Road P. It was a female and she was a beaut! Fast forward to our trip to Klamath. We saw this bird on the auto tour and instantly thought it was also a Grackle. (Once you see a bird once, that species seems to pop up again and again!) When we put the photo into the Merlin ID app, it confirmed our guess.

But there's something missing from this Great-tailed Grackle...The GREAT-TAILED part!

What happened to her tail??? These photos look like some kind of optical illusion or something and I can't explain what I'm seeing.

 Here's the one we saw on Road P so you can compare...

So, any theories? We're scratching our heads over this one and would appreciate any input you might have!

Up next on tomorrow's post: No quandaries, just egrets...

The Grebe Whisperer

Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge

Auto Tour

I've dubbed my hubby The Grebe Whisperer.

From looking at these fantastic photos he took in Klamath, I'd say he deserves the title!

Somehow, when faced with an entire lake of grebes, he's able to snap away with one incredible shot after the other...

(This is the first juvenile Western Grebe we've ever seen!)

In comparison, here's the only shot of a grebe I managed to get that day...

Yeah, not so great, is it?

From now on, I'll let the master take care of getting the grebe photos :)