Malheur NWR, Burns, OR

While we were in Burns, we also made a couple of trips onto the Malheur Wildlife Refuge south of us about 30 miles.  Not a lot of bird activity this time of year but we did manage to find a few and see a coyote not to mention some nice colorful scenery.

After we left Burns, Wednesday of last week, we drove to Crater Lake National Park hoping the smoke from all the wildfires around would not be too bad.  Unfortunately, yet another fire had sprung up in northern CA and the smoke blowing into our area was awful.  So we left after 2 nights and spent a few nights in Fairview, OR near the Columbia River Gorge which was nice but expensive and noisy!  We are now in Woodland, WA, where we will be spending the next 5+ weeks near family.

Here are a few pics from the Malheur Wildlife refuge:

A female great horned owl.  She was so talkative!!! Did not sound like your typical owl (hoot)

some of these pics were taken from afar and unfortunately not clear but this is a male and female(below) of some type of prairie chicken

look at the size of this fish!!!  We were not able to watch him swallow it as he flew away with it

we did see egrets, herons and white faced ibis among several duck species

coyote