A vacation tour with five birds in the fishing world

What an "interesting" year 2010 has been and after much lengthy silence I am finally getting my schedule and activities sort of "back to normal". Far too many serious family health issues to handle in one year, not to mention in just the past few months since spring!

Kicking off August was really nice as I enjoyed an annual trip to a family cabin on a lake in far Northeast Washington near the Idaho border, up north of Spokane. Eight full days with family and two dogs was just what I needed. Fishing was great as well, even if I lost the 2010 Annual Fishing Derby between the Bauer Pa vs. Bauer Son 8-3.

At least I caught the longest trout! But we weren’t the only creatures fishing the lake. Indeed, I enjoyed watching and photographing five bird species who were working the lake constantly just like all summers!

The occasional Great Blue Heron shouldn’t surprise anyone. Double-crested Cormorants were a bit of a new one on the lake for me, even after 22 years of visiting it every summer. A pair of Belted Kingfishers were eagerly working the waters of the bay every morning. But the stars of the show annually are the Ospreys nesting on the lake as well as numerous families of Red-necked Grebes! It is a challenge to photograph the ospreys but they are so active you just have to wait for a fly-over or be lucky to have a dead snag on your property they use to perch and hunt from.

The grebes, well they are busy out in the water 24 hours a day. So this year again I kayaked out into the lake as approaching them from the water is very easy on them and allowed me many chances to photograph their behaviors with the ½ grown young! It was very enjoyable…one youth was so vocal all of the time while the adult near it seemed to care less! And guess what…every one of these five bird species humiliated us Bauer Boys in our fishing abilities! It was stunning to be in a kayak and watch what it looked like seeing a red-necked grebe swimming underwater. That was a new sight for me and one I’ll not forget soon!

Masters at fishing

OK, having just returned from a very long and wonderfully relaxing annual vacation to a far off lake shore in the Inland Northwest near the Idaho border, I feel great! And we even caught some fish in our lazy times - lovely 10-12" rainbow trout on multiple days, played with catching the little bluegill by the docks, and even came home with a grand story of "Bruce, the monster 18"+ trout that got away"! As is the case every year, it was enjoyable to watch the "Fishing Masters" of the lake perform their tricks, and these tricks came both from the air as well as from the surface of the waters!

A tree within 100 yards of where I stayed was successfully again home for a family of ospreys. So from early morning until dark four ospreys (two young now learning to fish with the parents) were calling, soaring, and diving. What a show!

Along with them working the more shallow waters of the lake were numerous families of red-necked grebes. What a treat to be at a lake which serves as a successful breeding location for such wonderful birds!

All is quiet from the Inland Northwest

Ah, so it's been very silent here in blogsphere lately from me, eh? Hello from the tail end of a long get-away vacation in the Inland Northwest. The lake we've been hanging out at has been refreshing for much fishing, swimming, playing, bird watching - and the bird watching turned fishing with the Red-necked Grebe population that exists there! Ospreys as well - I'll have to follow up with more from them. First, time to get back to the office and catch up soon!