My Christmas morning tradition does not entail waking early and opening gifts under the lighted Christmas tree but waking early and heading west to find some feather gifts at Gray Lodge Wildlife Area.

The main draw of driving the auto route is the thousands of wintering waterfowl that can be seen from my movable birding blind.

There also a lot of wintering raptors at Gray Lodge. On my visit I saw red-tailed, red-shouldered, sharp-shinned, and Cooper’s hawks, peregrine falcon, American kestrel, and bald eagle.

During my morning visit I notched up 63 species of birds including some species that I don’t regularly encounter at Gray Lodge including the secretive sora and American bittern (below).

It was a great day out! Merry Christmas!