The Last Grebe

Shelly and I had the opportunity to view a Red-necked Grebe under perfect evening light. It was the last of the U.S. Grebe species on our list. I had visited Little Dell on Tuesday to check it out thinking that we had seen this species before. I was confusing it with the Red Phalarope. When I discovered by error(after entering the trip data in eBird), we planned a trip for Wednesday evening after Shelly got off work. In addition to the Grebe, who was in beautiful breeding plumage, we had matched pairs of Killdeer, Eared Grebe, Ring-necked Duck and Spotted Sandpiper. Also present was a lone Common Loon.

 

A New Mexico Bird

I somehow missed this bird while review of our photos taken on our trip to the Yucatan, Mexico. It was at the Magnificent Frigatebird rookery near Punta Allen. I think we mistook them for juvenile Frigatebirds. They are Brown Booby.

 

 

Box Elder Birding Highlights

I had some business to attend to in Tremonton, and managed to do a little birding along the way driving from Salt Lake with stops at Bear River MBR, Fielding and Farmington Bay. I had a number of personal first sightings of the year including:

 

Willard Bay(from I-15)

Osprey

 

Fielding(small farming community north of Tremonton)

Eurasian-Collared Dove

 

Bear River MBR(travelled from Visitor’s Center to approx. 3 miles down the Refuge road)

Willet

Long-billed Curlew

Eared Grebe

Turkey Vulture

Golden Eagle

Western Grebe

 

Farmington Bay(Glover Lane)

Caspian Tern

 

The highlight, however, was watching a Marsh Wren build a nest right outside the Bear River Visitor’s Center. It was a noisy affair punctuated by the horde of Coots that domianate the marsh, and the occasional splashing by Muskrats. If you haven’t done so, spend some time at the Visitor’s Center(I had not, previously). It’s a great place to see exciting stuff up close.

 

I also saw a bunch of Ring-necked Pheasant in Fielding. Is anybody familiar with the impact game ranchers have on the population of this species in this area? Are these operations largely responsible for the birds we see in the wild? The Eurasian Collared-Doves were viewed about 1/4 mile from the Pheasants. According to Cornell’s All About Birds, “The Eurasian Collared-Dove is often kept as a pet. The occurrence of the species in some areas of the United States can be traced not to the dispersal of wild breeders, but to escaped or released cage birds.” Maybe it is more than coincidence that I found the two species in such close proximity.

 

Good Birding,

 

Jay

 

 

March Roars Like a Nuthatch

Last night’s early spring snowstorm stirred things up a bit but instead of producing the feeding frenzy we had in February after a heavy snow, things got a lot quieter. Are the birds in bug-eating mode? It seems like they are. We spend yesterday afternoon scanning Lee Kay ponds, hoping to find a reported Black-necked Stilt. No luck. However there was plenty of bug-eating birds, specifically Bank, Cave and Tree Swallows!  A couple of male Yellow-headed Blackbirds and Double-crested Cormorants also signaled the arrival of spring–but not Stilts.

Sugarhouse Park was particularly quiet today, although the Common Goldeneye first sighted more than a week ago remained in the pond. Despite the abundance of trees in the park, passerines are hard to come by, especially in winter. It seems like they’re would be a variety of species similar to those found at the area cemeteries, specifically Salt Lake and Mt. Olivet, where we regularly see and hear Nuthatches, Cross-bills and occasionally, Pine Siskin.  That changed today. I heard and saw a Red-breasted Nuthatch while walking in the southeast corner of the park. A great way to end March.

 

On the Trail of the Quail

Posted to Utahbirdnet:

I was surprised to learn that California Quail were introduced to Utah in 1869 as a game bird and northern Utah appears to be the only area where their introduced and natural ranges are not contiguous. Their historical range  is from southern Oregon and western Nevada, south to southern Baja California. In addition to Utah, they were apparently introduced into southern British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, and northern Oregon. A covey of up to thirty birds regularly visit my backyard in the Sugarhouse area. I’ve seen them at dozens of locations around the Salt Lake valley in residential areas, at Wheeler Farm, Red Butte Gardens, etc. I discovered another covey inhabiting the Salt Lake LDS Temple grounds while watching the resident Peregrine Falcons last summer. I don’t think the range of Gambel’s Quail overlaps in Utah. My observations of Gambel’s Quail in Utah are limited to Lytle Ranch, St. George(Tonaquint Park) and Zion NP. So, would the DWR release try to establish Gambel’s outside their southern range? It seems like they’d be intolerant of the harsher conditions which exist in northern Utah, much like the Bobwhite in the eastern U.S. Also, what about private breeders? Could your hybrids have been released or escapees?

Good Birding,

Jay

—– Original Message —–

From: Ryan O’Donnell

To: birdtalk@utahbirds.org ; topofutah@utahbirds.org

Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 8:51 PM

Subject:[Birdtalk] Horned Grebes, Lesser Yellowlegs, etc. in Cache Co.

Thanks to a tip from Keith Archibald, I and several others found TWO
HORNED GREBES at the ponds just west of the Landfill in Logan this
evening.  Here are a couple digiscoped shots:
 
http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n105/Tsirtalis/HOGR2.jpg
http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n105/Tsirtalis/HOGR.jpg
 
We also saw a Lesser Yellowlegs there, not a rare bird but my first of
the year:
http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n105/Tsirtalis/LEYE.jpg
 
On the way back home, I stopped by the church in Benson and saw two
coveys of quail, the first of about ten birds and the second of at least
25.  I must assume these have been recently released by DWR.  I read on
the DWR webpage that quail have been established along the Wasatch Front
but have not taken hold in Cache Valley, despite repeated transplants.
Some of the birds I saw today looked like they might have been hybrids
between California Quail and Gambel’s Quail, while others looked like
pure California or nearly so.  Does anyone on the listserve know any
more about this?
 
Good birding,
Ryan
 
Ryan P. O’Donnell
Department of Biology and the Ecology Center
Utah State University
5305 Old Main Hill
Logan, UT 84322-5305
 
http://home.comcast.net/~tsirtalis/

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More Wayward Ducks at the Park

The Common Goldeneye continues to make its living diving in the pond at Sugarhouse Park, but the three(two female, one male) Ringed-necked Ducks that joined in the fun yesterday have left. Other than these minor diversions, birding is pretty slow right now. Western Scrub Jay, Starlings, Quail, Chickadees, Robins, House Sparrows and Finch along with our resident pair of Mourning Doves are the over-wintering birds we have in the yard–I’m ready for spring.

 

Not so Common Goldeneye at Sugarhouse Park

Last week it was a Bald Eagle, today a Common Goldeneye found its way to Sugarhouse Park.  It spent its time diving in a very small radius near the center of the pond possibly because that’s where the food was, or maybe becase it was hemmed in by about 500 or so Gulls. California and Ring-billed Gulls are always seen at the park, but this is a huge number for such a small area.

 

Among the Living

While visiting the Mt. Olivet cemetary in Salt Lake City, I noticed dozens of headstones engraved with the symbols of Free Masonry. I have no idea what Free Masonary is, but my paternal grandfather and grandmother were Masons. I didn’t realize this fact until I attended my grandfather’s funeral held 1at one of the ”lodges” in 1989. I’ll have to do some research on this subject. Birding was rather slow, except for the woodpeckers. We saw a couple of Northern Flickers, at least one Downy and possibly an American Three-toed Woodpecker.(UPDATE: The second woodpecker was also a Downy not a Three-toed.) As usual, Crows and Magpies provided the soundtrack to our visit.

Dozens of Robins foraged in the grass amidst the resident deer herd. There were numerous Easter lilly floral displays decorating the grounds which served as fodder for the deer. One of them was missing a foot, another had one set of antlers. Maybe these injuries came as a result of the deer crossing extremely busy urban streets to this feeding oasis, and perhaps the DWR(presumably) should reconsider supplying the food(cracked corn)  which attracks them during winter.

 

The Sound and the Flury

Visit the coast of main you may find Atlantic Puffin. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes them this way:

A natty black-and-white seabird with a huge, multicolored bill, the Atlantic Puffin looks like a clown of the sea. It breeds in colonies on rocky islands in the North Atlantic and winters at sea.

No one would confuse the Puffin with any other bird in the area. We need to travel to Yellowstone, and with luck, we can find similarly colored and marked birds in the swifts waters of the Yellowstone River, which, like the Puffin, is impossible to mistake for another species. 

A much more dependable visitor to our area is the Tundra Swan which makes stops around the Great Salt Lake during its migratory journey north to, you guessed it, the Arctic Tundra. A large, gracefull flyer, you can count them by the thousands. A much rarer bird is its almost identical cousin, the Trumpeter Swan.  By 1935, The Trumpeter Swan was on the brink of extinction with only 35 birds known to exist is the wild. Fortunately, concerted propogation progams has helped them to come back to much more sustainable levels, although finding them is still difficult. A site on the Madison River near West Yellowsonte used to host a two paris of Trumpeters, but predation(coyotes?) and possible theft from homeowner’s wishing to acquire a beautiful specimen to display in their yard eliminated this reliable opportunity for viewing. Southwest Idaho is still a good place to look for Swans, but around the Great Salt Lake, look at the flocks of Tundra that rest at Farmington Bay, Salt Creek WMA and a few others locations in northern Utah.

Tundra Swans in flight with Wellsville mountains in the background(Shelly Spencer, chickadeetrails.com)

Look very closely, because identifying them can be a challenge. The drawing by David Sibley(above) illustrates the distinctions between the two species. So, grab your favorite guide, you binos and/or spotting scope and take the challenge.

An excellent guide to help distinguish between the two species in the field can by found here :

http://www.sibleyguides.com/swans.htm

 

Corvid Chaos

Shelly and started our afternoon of birding at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building(Hotel Utah) to check for the nesting pair of Peregrine Falcons. One individual was perched near the nest box taking a nap. It was a too chilly to wait for the bird to become active so we headed up to the Salt Lake Cemetery. Deadly quiet, except for a Red-tail Hawk flyover as we were leaving. John had mentioned we check out the old Fort Douglas cemetery, we did, but it was a bit too crowded along the edges due to the student housing in the area. Next stop, Red Butte Gardens. That’s where the magic happened. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot Shelly noticed a group of slate-colored birds(recall it was a grey day) swirling around a stand of ornamental trees. Western Scrub Jays? No. Stellar’s Jay, yes. About a half-dozen of them along with some starlings and, after a closer look, Mountain Bluebirds. Eventually a pair of lighter-blue Western Scrub-jay would join the flock.  Suddenly three Robins buzzed the trees, flushed a small flock of House Finch and startled a Spotted Towhee who had been scratching belows the trees. The party abruptly ended when a Sharp-shinned Hawk attempt to secure a meal from the large buffet. Don’t know if the Hawk spent the day hungry, but it was unsuccessful in obtaining a meal this time.