Columbia National Wildlife Refuge - Marsh Lake — Friday, Mar. 20, 2020

Today we drove to the Columbia NWR hoping to see some sandhill cranes. We stopped at the refuge headquraters on  51 S. Morgan Lake Road. The headquarters was closed, but there were refuge pamphlets available at the kiosk. The pamphlet has information about the area, a map of the area and descriptions of the hikes. We drove the recommended roads to see sandhill cranes, but saw none. We had lunch at an overlook of Royal Lake which had hundreds if not thousands of ducks! Would like to see it in the evening when there must be even more! We then took the 22 miles driving loop which takes you through the Scenic landscape of rugged cliffs, canyons, lakes and sagebrush grasslands.  At one of the overlooks we saw 400 or more sandhill cranes grazing in the very far distance. A pleasant surprise was to find 5000 or more snow geese on Potholes Reservoir as we were driving over the dam. There was a small pullout where we could watch and listen to their awesome sound!. We were hoping to see them fly, but only saw a few flying in to join the group!