2022 03-12 Calif Oregon Border
After several social media posts called our attention to an abundance of bald eagles near Butte Valley on the California-Oregon border, we booked a hotel for 2 nights in Klamath Falls, Oregon and made the drive. Our day was divided into three prime wildlife locations, listed in order: Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, and agriculture fields south of Doris, CA. We set out from the hotel and gas station around 830am.
Tule Lake was not. The only liquid water was in the irrigation channels in the refuge. Nobody was in the refuge today but us. There is no hiking, and no driving loop here, only a straight gravel road the ran for a long distance from north to south. A deep channel irrigation ditch was on the left side of the road and, although we could not see the water from the road, there were lots of ducks, geese, red-winged blackbirds and raptors. Towards the later half of our visit (around 10am, strong winds gusting to at least 40 MPH kicked up). We saw bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, and rough-legged hawks here.
It's about a ½ hour drive to the Lower Klamath NWR from Tule Lake NWR. Lower Klamath advertises a driving loop. As we proceeded along this “loop,” it had several branches here and there but, using Google Maps, we stayed on the main gravel road. Along the way we saw several raptors. At a point in the driving loop that made a sharp left turn to start the next leg, a wildfire was burning and sending an amazing amount of wind-driven smoke all over the roads we were going to travel. Flames were burning mightily along a ½ mile front. We had to deviate from the planned route and even back-track to avoid the flames, soot and smoke. Finally, we were on the exit/entry road, and it was clear. Sue spotted a dark red-tailed hawk next to the road.
We headed back to Klamath Falls to find a lunch spot. At one point we stopped along highway CA139 to see at least 5 adult bald eagles mixing it up in the air along with a large rough-legged hawk (not photographed).
After lunch we drove to 3 recent bald eagle locations found on eBird. These were in the agricultural fields south of the town of Doris, CA. We found several eagles near the road on the ground, many more on the ground but in the distance. Others were photographed in flight. Once again, the very strong winds were blowing thick areas of dirt and dust off the fields. We had to completely stop then crawl slowly along the roadway several times as the dust had reduced our visibility to near zero. We did break out of it as we entered into an area with planted fields that had no soil to lose. We saw a couple of individual adult bald eagles on the ground in locations without dust storms.
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Haliaeetus leucocephalus Bald eagle on ground 2022 03-12 Merrill Oregon--037
Haliaeetus leucocephalus Bald eagle on ground 2022 03-12 Lower Klamath NWR-e-068
HaliaeetusleucocephalusBaldeagleground2022LowerKlamathNWR068
Haliaeetus leucocephalus Bald eagle 2022 03-12 Lower Klamath NWR-e-076
Agelaius phoeniceus Red-winged blackbirds on irrigation sprinklers 2022 03-12 Tule Lake NWR-f-003
AgelaiusphoeniceusRedwingedblackbirdsirrigationsprinklers2022TuleLakeNWR003
Agelaius phoeniceus Red-winged blackbirds on irrigation sprinklers 2022 03-12 Tule Lake NWR-f-004
AgelaiusphoeniceusRedwingedblackbirdsirrigationsprinklers2022TuleLakeNWR004
Agelaius phoeniceus Red-winged blackbirds on irrigation sprinklers 2022 03-12 Tule Lake NWR--002
AgelaiusphoeniceusRedwingedblackbirdsirrigationsprinklers2022TuleLakeNWR002
Agelaius phoeniceus Red-winged blackbirds on irrigation sprinklers 2022 03-12 Tule Lake NWR--008
AgelaiusphoeniceusRedwingedblackbirdsirrigationsprinklers2022TuleLakeNWR008
