As the weather warmed a bit last week I started poking around the New Plymouth area to see if any migrants were starting to show up. I found some snow geese in the lower Payette River region, along with some red-winged blackbirds starting to stake out territories and saw my fist robins. At the New Plymouth sewage pond i saw a good sized flock of northern shovelers and a few ruddy ducks. So today I decided to hit the Boise Wildlife area to see if anything was showing up there. I was really surprised to find almost all of the usual water areas dried up. I don’t recall any discussion of this on IBLE; if there was I certainly missed it. I’m going to miss watching those large flocks of geese coming in this Spring. I did see a few FOY birds but I thought that I should let everyone that the area is undergoing a large scale construction project until at least May. The project is funded from Federal monies (P&R ?) with Ducks Unlimited doing the design work. I’m sure it will really upgrade the habitat there; just sad about missing on one of my favorite early Spring favorite places.
Fred Crase
New Plymouth