Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is located about six miles from The Narrows, so we drove there this morning to check out the headquarters and the George Benson Museum which has almost 200 mounted bird specimens. I was hoping to be able to identify some birds we've seen locally by visiting the museum.

Upon arrival we discovered the headquarters/visitor center was closed even though the sign on the door said it opened at 8 a.m. and it was 9:30 when we arrived. There were several cars in the employees' lot, but the only people we saw were a husband and wife visiting the area from Boise. We were quite disappointed by the locked doors of the visitor center as we hoped to get an idea of the condition of the gravel roads leading into the park to see if driving in the big truck was viable.

The museum is a one room brick building with large glass cases and drawers full of mounted birds and small mammals. We were able to identify some of the birds we've seen since arriving in the area (a white-faced ibis, a northern goshawk and a mountain bluebird) and found the display of eggs quite interesting because of the differences in size and colors of the eggs of the various breeds of birds. There was a small section of bats including a couple that were hardly bigger than a large beetle and one that was a cream-color. Many of the birds we've seen in our travels but many we'll have to watch for in the future.

We stopped at the Peter French Sod House Ranch to get a picture of the sod house, but all that was left was the stone cellar with a sod roof. There were several out buildings still standing, including a bunk house for the vaqueros (cowboys), but it's currently housing a few hundred barn swallows which I disturbed by looking into the building. I don't know who was more startled; them or me!

As we were walking back to the truck we saw a cottonwood with many huge nests and were trying to figure out what type of bird would build so close to other birds of the same size when we heard several loud, guttural cries behind us. Honing in on another cottonwood, I used the binoculars to discover a nest of two young Great Blue Herons being fed by one of the parents. Unfortunately the branches hid them for the most part, but I snapped a picture of one of them standing on the edge of the nest. How many times we've seen Great Blues near lakes and ponds and creeks and we've never heard them make a sound, yet here in a great desert plain we discover they have great big noisy voices! Obviously we've never been around hungry blue herons before.

You can drive great distances through the wild life refuge but as I mentioned the driving route is gravel and since I was unable to confirm the condition of the road we figured we wouldn't take the chance as you have to drive a lot of miles to get back to civilization. I wish the visitor center had been open.