Birds!

We were so thrilled to have my grandparents, Nonny and Bob, stop in Logan on their way to the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City! We always love to see them and it seems like our visits come too far between.

They arrived on Friday night, so the boys visited them for a lovely evening of swimming at the RV park and visiting together. The boys LOVE Bob, especially because he will let them climb all over him!


Any time you throw a pool into the mix, my kids are happy. So happy, in fact, that it's difficult to get them to hold still for a picture!



On Saturday morning, my mom met us at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, just West of Brigham City, where we had arranged to go on a guided tour of the refuge. For those of you near this area, I would highly recommend this activity. Right now, they are doing construction on the road into the refuge, so we didn't get as complete a tour as we normally would have, but it was still great. The tour is currently offered twice a week and you go in an air-conditioned van (an absolute must-- and don't forget your sunscreen) to an area of the refuge that is off-limits to the general public. The tour lasts about 3 hours and you see some incredible birds. Plus, the education center is only a couple of years old and very nice, and the whole thing is completely free (they do accept donations, of course). It's a very fun, very educational family-friendly activity.

Anyway, back to our day: we had a great time! My mom and Nonny decided to dress alike. They said it was unintentional, but you never know. ;)


The boys LOVED looking through the binoculars! We brought our own little cheapies, but Nonny and Bob had some fancy Swarovskis, and the tour guides had some even fancier scopes. The really nice scopes were mounted on tripods and everyone took turns. It was very cool.



This picture doesn't do an awesome job, but you can kind of see the vast amount of birds feeding on the marshes in the refuge. I haven't been a birder to date (though I could see how you could get into it), so I'm not sure if I remember everything we saw. I do know that we saw a lot of funny avocets, spindly stilts (my favorite-- they're so cute!), snowy and great white egrets, pelicans, blue herons, white-faced ibises, grebes, and Canada geese. I'm positive I didn't mention everything!

Nonny and Bob, who are expert birders, were thrilled to see some baby coots at the end of our tour-- they had only seen adults to this point. I'd say our adventure was a success!



The construction is supposed to be complete in October of next year, and according to Chris, who did a feature story about the refuge last year, the best time to go is early in the morning in the Spring. We've been talking about planning an early morning bike tour of the 12 mile loop in May of 2010-- a long way off, but I'm still excited about it!