BOGS Jasper Millrace Trail
April 29, 2021

The Jasper Millrace trail is a popular place, and for good reason.
This is very nice habitat, with two streams, a small lake, access to the river, plus woodland patches and open meadows. Until the city put in this trail around 2016, the land between the old residential area and the river was accessed only by fishermen and a few equestrians. It was pretty wild and was known to be home to Cougars and Bobcat.
The addition of the trail has done little if anything to change the native bird population and patient, quiet, slow-moving birders can see quite a large number of species.

This was my first BOGS bird walk since we stopped having them in March 2020. I missed the one on April 22, 2021. I had seen Steve's plan to start up again in April, but did not get the announcement the Tuesday before the walk and thought it had been cancelled.

For those first two bird walks we were wearing protective face-masks. With my hearing challenges, the masks made it very difficult for me to engage in conversations. I also did not feel safe getting as close physically as the main group were doing, but it looked to me like people were really happy to be out birding again together. People were actively engaged in birding, and of course, there was some socializing going on as well.

We actually had a lot of entertaining bird activity. Green Herons were especially active and flying to and fro with their crests raised. That's always fun to see. Green-winged Teal and Ring-necked Ducks were a few of the less-often seen birds that we saw and Common Mergansers were seen in the river. The native Northwestern Pond Turtles were out in good numbers too. I've not yet seen any of the non-native red-eared pond sliders at the Jasper Millrace.