We had such a great time at Hagerman NWR the day before yesterday that we elected to go again today. We had an early breakfast and jumped into the truck for the drive. This time, we stayed exclusively on back roads; not one had a dotted line down the center and most didn’t have paving. It was great.
While the weather at the Refuge was overcast a couple days ago, it was clear skies but windy today. We retraced our steps down all the passable roads and were again rewarded with amazing glimpses of the abundant wildlife there. We identified a couple more birds and took photos but great distances and near-total ignorance about birds will keep us working to identify the new guys. There seem to be plenty of terns, plovers, killdeer, vultures, cormorants, great blue herons, American pelicans, snow geese, coots and egrets; mallards and northern shoveler ducks are ubiquitous. We also scared up a variety of songbirds that were lurking in the dry spots of the enormous marshy area. All the turtles we saw were very bashful, bailing off their floating logs and into the water as soon as we got close enough to really see them. Smart little guys.
Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge is a great place to spend a few hours watching the gorgeous birds. Although there are trails at the Refuge, almost everything can be seen from a car on the auto loop. It is a superb location for bird watching.
On the way back to our RV spot on Lake Texoma, we spotted an anomaly – a Texan that had a truck parked in his yard that was taller than his house. This is indeed an interesting part of the world.
We shot a few pix that can be seen by clicking here