Bowdoin NWR Waterfowl

We arrived at Bowdoin NWR at around 10:30 am. Even though this was our first visit to the refuge we could tell that, like Medicine Lake, it was suffering from a shortage of water. At one point when I was trying to get a bit closer to get a better shot I found myself standing on a bed of silt that should have been part of the lake bottom.

Even with the lower water levels we still found a few waterfowl and shorebirds around.

Lesser scaup
northern shoveler
eared grebe

We were quite happy to see some eared grebe in breeding plumage in pools that were close to the road. The eared grebes where one of the main reasons that we planned our visit to Medicine Lake. When we did not get great looks at Medicine Lake we were kind of disappointed but photographing them at Bowdoin made up for it. I saw quite a few horned grebes, in breeding plumage, as they passed through this year but the eared grebe are usually pretty scarce in Minnesota.