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We spent the morning driving the loop and never saw another human being. It was sunny and the air temp held in the low 80⁰F range and did not get hot until after we left and were down the I-5 many miles and a few hours later. There was water in several fields and others were dry. The first field had a few small ponds surrounded by areas of a few reeds and colorful, tiny wildflowers. A killdeer waded around the ponds and red-winged blackbirds sang from the reeds and wild mustard.

The seasonally-opened additional drive around “pond #2” provided some really great open vistas. Where this drive finally came back to the main road, two large river otters crossed the road in front of our truck, from a deep irrigation channel to the right to the main, large flooded field to the left. I shot quickly through our bug-splattered and dusty windshield and captured what I could given the quickness of the otters. We approached the crossing point slowly to have a look. Suellen noted a “peculiar” odor and the presence of feces on the wet path across the road. Later we noted another feces-strewn path that had the same look but was dry. Perhaps these are regular crossing points and may provide photographic opportunities in the future.

A few ducks and some Canada geese were still in the ponds. While we were up on the lookout platform some adult geese with their goslings crossed the road we just drove in on. The main raptors seen today were the turkey vultures. Groups of them circled to gain altitude as the day went along. The last vultures were seen circling along the northern leg of the loop, and a single bald eagle was among them. We saw bald eagles feeding and flying with turkey vultures on Payen Road near the El Dorado County border a few months back. Some of the vultures were resting in trees along the road.

The sound track was provided by the red-winged blackbirds and quite a few western meadowlarks.




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