Recently
Doug McConnell met with Lake County Land Trust board member and
Rodman Preserve Committee Chair, Brad Barnwell, for a trip up Rodman
Slough. Doug McConnell produces “Open Road,” on KQED in San
Francisco; the program should air in July.
By
Brad Barnwell
We
all met at the Tallman hotel in Upper Lake and after getting
acquainted I suggested to Doug and his crew that we paddle up the
Rodman channel holding to the west side in order to slip into the
spur channel that borders the back side of the Rodman Preserve owned
by the Lake County Land Trust; then head up the main channel to the
Great Blue Heron colony.
I was hoping that Mother Nature wouldn’t let me down and would
give us some good wildlife shots and sounds. Doug’s film crew would follow using Ray’s bass boat as a
platform for Jack and his camera and sound equipment.
After sound checks we were off.
Within the first hundred yards we sighted a group of circling
turkey vultures and with a closer look through the binoculars I
found that one of the vultures was a three-year-old bald eagle.
Doug
and crew were elated and Mother Nature started to put on a show so
intense that the camera crew focused on the wildlife for most of the
next two hours with only a few minutes of shooting devoted to Doug
and me.
When we entered the channel on the east side of the Rodman
Preserve we were able to see and photograph, Marsh Wrens,
Yellow-headed and Red-winged Blackbirds, Wood ducks, Mallards, Great
Blue Herons, Black-crowned Night Herons, Green Herons, Snowy Egrets,
Great Egrets and their nesting colony as well as American White
Pelicans, Osprey, Western, Clark’s and Pied-billed Grebes and a
low level return flight of the Bald Eagle.
Two and half hours later and having never made it anywhere
near the Great Blue Heron colony we were hauling the kayaks out of
the slough talking about how fantastic it was to experience so much
wildlife so close to home for the residents of Lake County and the
need to continue to preserve the wetlands remaining on the shores of
Clear Lake.
Hopefully,
most of this adventure will be included in a three part show on Lake
County that will air sometime this summer on Doug McConnell’s new
T.V. show Open Road seen on the Bay Area PBS station KQED and
sponsored in part by the County of Lake.
Although
it is nice to see Mother Nature on T.V. it is much more thrilling to
experience it first hand.
So take a Saturday morning and visit the Rodman Preserve and
Nature Center.
After touring the center, which is now filled with wildlife
photographs of Preserve wildlife donated by local photographers as
well as wildlife displays, then take a guided hike around the
Preserve and have a close personal experience with Mother Nature.
