![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Goose-Canada_MG_54991.jpg\" "\\"Goose,")
<\/a>Not only will the leaves be turning red and gold, but the lakes, ponds, and wetlands will again be filling, hiding the mud and plants that were exposed during the dry summer.\u00a0 The ducks and geese will again be covering the skies and many parts of the grasslands.\u00a0 The refuge will have a fresh new look, completely different from just a few short weeks ago.<\/p>\nMigration is an interesting phenomenon,\u00a0 At whatever moment, throughout the year, day or night, there are birds wending their way high in the skies of the Western Hemisphere, migrating.\u00a0 But it is in the spring and fall, when the continent\u2019s sky is swarming with billions of birds, that migration becomes apparent even to the most unobservant.\u00a0 And yet, not all migration of birds is done by wing.\u00a0 When the first winter snow comes, the Blue Grouse leave the warmer foothills of the Western mountains and migrate, by foot, up to the bitter wind-driven cold of the high country, searching for a diet of conifer needles.<\/p>\n
I have only mentioned a few of the many migrants that spend a few months each year enjoying the Ridgefield Refuge, whether it be summer or winter.\u00a0 Of course, though, there are a number of birds that enjoy the refuge year around as permanent residents, but that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n Come out this fall and notice the changing populations of the refuge.\u00a0 Notice also the colors of fall.\u00a0 This is the time of year when the refuge is on display.<\/p>\n Some of the unusual and rare birds that were seen this past month are Greater White-fronted Goose, Green Heron, Black-crowned Night Heron, Red-shouldered Hawk, Merlin, Semipalmated Plover, Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Stilt Sandpiper, Red-necked Phalarope, Barn Owl, Black-throated Gray Warbler, Lazuli Bunting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s Autumn time at the refuge!\u00a0 And once again, it\u2019s the changing of the guard.\u00a0 We say good bye to the friends of summer and welcome back our old friends of fall and winter.\u00a0 Late summer and autumn is migration … Continue reading <\/a>Among our migrating summer refuge birds, the Rufous Hummingbird is one of our smallest visitors. We don’t see these birds every day, so even in the summer it is listed as unusual. It is the feistiest hummingbird in North America and it breeds farther north (Alaska) than any other hummingbird.\u00a0 It migrates south along the mountain ridges to its traditional winter home in northern and central Mexico. But, more and more over the last quarter of a century, these little tykes are finding their way to the southwest and many places east of the Mississippi. Before this time it was unheard of to find a Rufous in any of these locations.<\/p>\n<\/a>Another distinctive, migrating, summer bird seen at the refuge is the Yellow-headed Blackbird.\u00a0 Its brilliant yellow head together with its loud rusty-hinge call makes this a conspicuous bird during the spring\/summer at the refuge. It is less cold-tolerant than its cousin, the Red-winged Blackbird, and retreats farther southward. Yellow-headed Blackbirds leave most of their breeding areas and occupy a winter range that stretches from the extreme southwestern United States to central Mexico.\u00a0 At the refuge this year, it seemed as if they began their migration a few weeks early as the last one was seen on July 20.<\/p>\n<\/a>Among our winter refuge birds, the Canada Goose, a.k.a. the Cackling Goose is the most numerous and, because of its numbers, the most vocal of our winter birds.\u00a0 At one time the Cackling Goose was a sub-species, along with ten other sub-species of the Canada Goose, but since 2004, it can boast that it, along with three other sub-species is now its own species, collectively called Cackling Goose.\u00a0 Cackling Geese breed in western Alaska along a narrow strip of coastline primarily between the Yukon and the Kuskokwim Rivers.\u00a0 They generally migrate to the Pacific Northwest in winter. In fact, it was this past week, September 24 -26 that they made their first appearance at the refuge\u2014around three weeks earlier than usual!<\/p>\n