Dramatic Winter Day on the Great Salt Lake

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You never know what will show up on Antelope Island in January. A dramatic day of sun and snow brought Bald Eagles and Coyotes on the iced over bay. Our big surprise was a Greater White-fronted Goose – a bird not very common to the island and a new life-bird for us. This one is a juvenile which made distinguishing it from a domestic goose a bit tough, but you can tell by the crisp markings and the lean look that it is a wild bird. Domestic geese have much more bulk.

We also stopped by the Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area where a couple of American Kestrels posed beautifully and we got our second life-bird of the day, a Rough-legged Hawk (and a shutter-hog Canada Goose). Winter is so much more bearable with wildlife and wild places to visit.

Christmas Bird Count 2010 – Look, Snipes!

Snow Buntings at Utah Lake

Who Knew There Were Birds in Henderson Nevada?

Ruddy Duck (photo)

Black Crowned Night Heron (photo)

Western Grebe (photo)

Snowy Egret (photo)

Great Blue Heron

Cinnamon Teal

Eared Grebe

American Coot

Northern Shoveler

Lesser Scaup

Grey Catbird

White Crowned Sparrow

Yellow Rumped Warbler

Wood Ducks

Fall begins with aspens, owls and a rare gull

Out on Antelope Island we went looking for owls. Both Great Horned at Garr ranch perched for us. Nature photographer Paul Higgens pointed out a tiny Northern Saw-whet Owl holding prey and staring at us (new life bird). Amazingly, we also found a Burrowing Owl standing in the open. I was not expecting 3 owl species in one day. We also watched 4 Sabine’s gulls – a very rare visitor and probably a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see this bird.

Cooper’s Hawk Chicks at the University of Utah

Since Spring we’ve been watching a pair of Cooper’s Hawks build a nest and settle in the middle of the University of Utah campus. This week 4 chicks emerged from the nest and appear almost ready to fledge. We shot some video of them feeding this morning. The mother is in the back tearing off bits and giving them to the chicks.

Download now or watch on posterous

UofUtah_Coopershawk_chicks.mp4 (12116 KB)

Say’s Phoebe

Birding the Cascades and Seattle

A trip to Seattle allowed us to try our luck at adding a few new birds to our list. We ended up with 12 new birds. I couldn’t get a picture of the Pacific-slope Flycatcher, but I did get shots of a Least Flycatcher (kind of rare for the area), a Red Breasted Sap Sucker, a Winter Wren and an Anna’s Hummingbird. We haven’t had so many new birds since our trip to Belize a year ago, although we did see a Green Heron which previously we’d only seen in Belize. I had forgotten how fun it is to see something I’d never seen before.

Seattle’s Discovery Park turned out to be a great place for birds and wildlife encounters from a raccoon drinking from a pond to a seal sunning it’s face in the sound. A Great Blue Heron and a song sparrow posed long enough for me to actually get some nice pics. We also saw a Bushtit and some Chestnut-backed Chickadees (both new birds for us) at Discovery Park, but I couldn’t get pics before they flew off into the impossibly tall trees of the forest.  Washington forests are incredibly lush and beautiful, but so frustrating for a birder.

A morning hike to Big Four Ice Caves in the Cascades turned out to be the highlight of the trip for me. You hike through old growth pacific northwest forest (where we saw the Pacific Slope Flycatcher and the Winter Wren) and emerge to a sight of multiple waterfalls plunging thousands of feet from the tops of the mountain peaks. Some fall into a snow fields and carve huge caverns through the ice. I’ve never seem so many waterfalls in one place. The meadow was full of flowers and birds of all kinds (sap suckers, wood peckers, white crowned sparrows, song sparrows, a mystery flycatcher, Yellow Warblers). I think it’s now in my top 10 favorite places in the world.

Our trip ended with a hike up to Rattlesnake Ridge and a view through Stevens Pass and out to the Snoqualmie Valley. We had hoped to see a Pileated Woodpecker and possibly heard one high up in one of those frustratingly massive Washington trees. It would not show itself. I guess we’ll have to keep going back.

New birds:

Anna’s Hummingbird

Harlequin Duck

Wood Duck

Glaucous-winged Gull

Least Flycatcher

Pacific-slope Flycatcher

Red Breasted Sap Sucker

Bushtit

Chestnut-backed Chickadee

Winter Wren

Vaux Swift

Spotted Sandpiper

Lazuli Bunting

Some days you only get one really good look a bird. At least today’s was a Lazuli Bunting – on of my absolute favorite birds. This was shot up East Canyon on the Big Mountain part of the  Great Western Trail.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird

Finally some good shots of a hummingbird! It took a lot of waiting in a meadow up the canyon. I watched this little guy chase bees and fly for nectar all over the meadow, but he kept coming back to the same perch. I just waited and snapped shots whenever he sat for a rest. How many colors can one bird have? Sometimes he was black, sometimes purple, sometimes red, sometimes green, sometimes blue.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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