Trumpeter Swans Amid Ice Floes

Al Bundy, I mean Ammon Bundy, honest mistake there, put out this urgent call for help. Those brave, rugged, American patriots who are defending a bird sanctuary in Oregon against the government and by proxy the rest of us too, have requested aid in the form of “more snacks”. A subsequent call for help, this time disseminated by Ammon’s mommy had a more diversified list of goods. Items range from the mundane, like eggs, which are apparently “needed badly”; to the questionable, like cigarettes either Marlboro Red 100’s or Lights 100’s. I’m pretty sure that this proposed mass transportation of cigarettes across state lines is a violation of the law. I’m just saying; to the really bizarre, like ice scrapers, really, really? What they really need is their own Go Fund Me page and avoid all of these snarky remarks.

We were able to free our own local bird sanctuary today. Since late December, it had been held hostage by flood waters. The Audubon center there was not flooded, but was an island for a while. The main causeway was overtopped and as the flood waters receded it acted as a levee and held the flood waters back, but on the wrong side. Many of the sloes were more flooded than I’ve ever seen them. There was debris everywhere. If you’ve lost a duck blind recently, contact the Riverlands, they have it available for your pickup. Probably the clearest sign of the flooding’s extent were the two navigational buoys that were both lodged in a thicket, a good half mile from the channel that they used to mark.

It was bitterly cold today, with a negative wind chill. The most common bird of interest were the Trumpeter swans. There were hundreds of them. When they flew into the stiff wind, they moved relatively slowly and were easier to photograph than when they flew with the wind and went sailing past you too fast for a picture. There were more than a few bald eagles too, but they usually hung out too far away for a decent photo.