Every winter the California Department of Fish and Wildlife North Central Region puts on swan tours in the rice fields of Marysville. I'm not sure why I waited until 2014 to go on one of these tours, but finally, from the urging of my swan-loving mother, my adventure-seeking brother, and my own constant drive to be outside watching birds, I signed us up for a tour on January 4th. January is the best time to go, as it is the heart of the winter migration through the Sacramento Valley. While traveling back roads from the Sacramento area to Butte County via Marysville, I had seen agricultural fields blanketed white with hundreds of tundra swans, with no time to stop, so I was glad to dedicate a whole day to it.
Wintering and migrating waterfowl such as swans were once sustained by a vast, connected complex of wetlands throughout the Central Valley of California. However, with about a 90% or more loss of wetland habitat in this state, these birds adapted to making their living at this important migration stop-over in flooded agricultural fields. The crop type most suitable for migrating swans is rice, because rice farmers routinely flood their fields to control bacteria, and many of the farmers participate in wildlife-friendly agricultural practices through conservation easements or their own sense of stewardship. Marysville is a hotspot for such waterfowl friendly agriculture, and District 10, a 23,000-acre expanse of privately-owned rice fields and restored wetland habitat, draws one of the highest concentrations of swans and other waterfowl in all of the Central Valley. So we were definitely privileged to have access to these private properties by joining this tour.
We met the other participants and the guide at the big rice dryers on Matthew Lane, just north of Marysville off Woodruff Road. After a short walk to where groups of swans and other birds were gathered near the meeting spot, the group followed the guide in a caravan along the narrow checks and levees between the flooded fields, heads and binoculars hanging out of our windows. Besides the graceful white tundra swans, we saw white-faced ibis, great blue heron, American crow, pintails, red-tail hawks, snow geese, Brewer's blackbird, red-winged blackbird, great white egret, northern shoveler, American coots, killdeer, American widgeon, turkey vulture, and heard a marsh wren. We had the advantage of a naturalist/professional wildlife photographer join us on the tour, and he saw and pointed out what we didn't see, and gave us a lot of good stories and information. Even the landowner (rice farmer) came out to say hi while we birded one of his levees. Not bad for a day of birding.
When the tour ended, our birding didn't end. We said adieu to the crew and went on our own back-road birding drive to the city of Marysville. On Kimball Lane, we saw the most gorgeous spread of swans in the wetlands with the Sutter Buttes in the background (so awesome I made the photo my Facebook banner), and on Hallwood Blvd. we caught a few more birds such as western meadowlark and American kestrel. In Marysville we had lunch at the 100th best Asian buffet in America. Well, it was OK, maybe why it's the 100th best. Then headed home as the sun started setting. It's nice to live so close to such birding hotspots.
