Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge

This past weekend, my husband and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary by visiting the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge: https://www.fws.gov/refuge/Shiawassee/visit/plan_your_visit.html

More specifically, we took their Wildlife Drive. It’s well worth the time if you happen to be in the Saginaw area. If you’d like to make a day of it, you could easily combine a trip to the Wildlife Refuge with a stop at Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland: https://www.bronners.com/ , the Birch Run Outlets: https://www.premiumoutlets.com/outlet/birch-run/about, Frankenmuth: https://www.frankenmuth.org/, or all of the above.

We arrived at the refuge early on a misty, foggy morning. The glass half empty view of it was the damp chill.

But the glass half full view of it was the assortment of delicate spiderwebs brought to life by the clinging dew.

This one reminded me of one of those Native American Dream Catchers.

When I was finally able to pull myself away from the spiderwebs, we were treated to a really spectacular array of wild birds. With the help of my Merlin bird ID app, I’m guessing my first shots here are of a Pied-billed Grebe.

Whatever he is, I watched him struggle for about ten minutes with a fish nearly the size of his own head. I wish I’d been able to get a better shot, but my zoom wasn’t up to the challenge.

Some of the birds were so large and flying so low, I was reminded of the pterodactyl scenes from Jurassic Park.

This beauty was the supermodel of the day. She waited patiently while three carloads full of bird loving paparazzi took aim, my husband and I included.