Two weeks after a last minute hiking trip to the Klamath Falls area we had a different reason to head back down to that city, my Aunt LaVonne and Uncle Ron’s 50th wedding anniversary. The celebration wouldn’t be starting until the afternoon, so before the festivities began we took a short hike with our son Dominique along the Link River Nature Trail.
After being chauffeured to the trailhead by my parents (who did their own shorter version of the hike) we set off along the trail which was actually a closed roadbed behind a chain link gate.
The road paralleled the river which flows between Upper Klamath Lake and Lake Ewauna.
From the very start the trail lived up to being called a nature trail as a number of different birds could be seen in and around the water.
At the .4 mile mark we passed the dam that created the lake behind it.
Just beyond the dam the trail crosses a canal on bridge.
At the half mile mark we left the roadbed at a post for Klamath Falls and made our way to the river just downstream from the small cascades.
After visiting the falls we returned to the trail and continued to follow the river toward Lake Ewauna through a desert canyon where there were plenty more birds.
Coots
Scrub jay
White pelican, coots, and a cormorant
White pelican
Coots
After one and three quarters of a mile we arrived at the southern end of this section of trail at w parking lot near a power station. Here we crossed Main Street near the Flavell Museum and then also crossed Highway 39 at a crosswalk into a small parking area for the Klamath Wingwatchers Nature Trail.
This trail passed underneath Highway 97 and brought us to Lake Ewauna.
The trail itself wasn’t much to write home about as it passed between the lake and the busy highway, but the number and variety of birds made up for the traffic.
After about a quarter mile on this trail we came to a fork signed “Loop B”.
This was the beginning of a .8 mile loop around a couple of old mill ponds. We decided to go around the ponds counter-clockwise so we stayed right. We saw birds everywhere – in the ponds, on the lake, and in the sky.
Mallards and other birds
Canada geese
Pelicans in flight
Great blue heron among others
Northern shoveler
Horned grebes
After completing the loop we headed back, recrossed the roads, and returned to the trailhead along Lakeshore Drive. We spotted several additional types of birds that we hadn’t seen earlier and many that we had.
Northern flicker
More pelicans
Another jay
Great blue heron on the rocks
Common merganser
Hooded mergansers (in the foreground)
Egret
Western grebe
In addition to all the birds we did see two garter snakes slither into the grass and my parents spotted a muskrat and a deer on their hike. For a short, in town hike it had provided a lot of wildlife over the 5 mile round trip.
We spent the afternoon at the anniversary party with a whole different type of wildlife :). Happy Trails!
Flick: Link River Nature Trail
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