It was windy. Maybe that’s why the birds were scarce at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, near Willows, this month. The driving tour at this wildlife refuge is a 6-mile circle with three places to get out of the car. Otherwise we are to be in the car. So, it pays to have a long lens and be on the correct side of the car to photograph out the window.

Our (Ray, Richard were with me.) first trip around, there were hardly any birds. We thought it was probably because of the wind. I didn’t even see flocks of snow geese in the water. Other wildlife that usually inhabit the refuge found a better spot or were hiding.

Since it takes 1 1/2 hours to get there and a lot of gas, I was disappointed, and soon got hungry. We had a great meal in town and then went back to the refuge. It wasn’t as windy this time, and this is when I got the bulk of my pictures (Still down from previous visits.).

The snow geese were back in numbers. We were lucky to catch a fly off.

Now for the really sad part: the only bald eagles we saw were out of range for my Nikon 7100 and prime F/4 300 lens. But that didn’t stop me! You know what they say, “Garbage in; garbage out!” I worked on those eagles, but couldn’t get them to the point of putting them in the blog. I will tell you it was a pair with their juvenile.

This is why I titled this post “An uneventful photo outing!” Maybe next time we will have better luck.

I hope you’ve been having a great holiday season and will have a wonderful New Year!