Feathers and Fins

Last weekend found us venturing over to the Sacramento Valley. Our first stop one of my favorites was the auto tour at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. The ponds on the south end of the refuge were mostly empty. They were refilling the ponds on the eastern end which led to some great flight images of the Snow Geese as well as some fun images of Great Egrets feasting on crickets and other insects trying to escape the rising waters. Among the Egrets were a flock of Whimbrels.we spotted a lot of other waterfowl as well. That evening we watched the CSU, Chico Choral Ensemble perform "Hear the Joyful Noise". It was an uplifting evening for my soul. The following day we drove up to Battle Creek near Anderson, Ca. The largest salmonid hatchery in the United states is located here. Chinook Salmon some weighing fifty pounds or more come upstream here to in an attempt to spawn. They are guided by a fish weir up a fish ladder into the hatchery. Here they are stripped of their eggs and sperm. Their bodies are used to make fish meal and fertilizer. The eggs are nurtured until they are big enough at which point they are placed in raceways of water to grow until they are big enough to be released back into Battle Creek or other places along the Sacramento River system. Our guide through the hatchery was Jane Dysert. Her photography is well worth the effort to look at and can be found on Facebook and Instagram. God's blessings upon your weekend, chris All images were created with a Canon EOS 7D MkII camera. The two lenses used were a Canon 100-400IS V.1 lens and a Tamron 150- 600mm G2 lens. #teamcanonusa, #withmytamron