Tualatin Wildlife Refuge

The Tualatin Wildlife Refuge is only 4.5 miles away from our house, it takes about 10 minutes to get there. We started going there when we first moved to Oregon, when we were living with my daughter and son-in-law and grandkids. It's even closer to their house. It's one of 10 urban refuges in the USA. It is 1,856 acres of wetlands and lowland sanctuary or about 200 bird species and more than 70 other animal species. Five miles of trails enable you to see many different animals. I'm not very good at identifying my birds, but I'm learning to get better. On this day there were a bunch of Cackling Geese, these are smaller than the Canadian Goose. We also saw 2 Bald Eagles, a mating pair that has lived at the refuge for many years.

   This is the wetlands, so many birds use this place.


This is at the far end of the trail where you can look out over the wetlands.

   We found a tree frog.

 Some of the trails        

   A poor picture of a raccoon from the viewing platform on the Tualatin River

   A view of the viewing platform over the river when we were kayaking last summer

  Park Rangers are more that happy to show you the "critters" living in the water.

This is a good place to go to get away from the hustle of the city, the trails are easy, the grandkids can do it, and it doesn't take all day.