11 April 2015 - Crazy for loons

Last month when I was in San Francisco I saw my first loons. I was ecstatic.  Now, I find they are migrating north through Utah--and they are in their beautiful breeding plumage. There was nothing for it. Road trip!  They had been sighted at three reservoirs. My plan? Simple. See all three and do it on the back roads. 

It was a great plan. I started at Rockport Reservoir. When I was young it was called Wanship and we used to go boating up there on weekends. We would do a little water skiing, have a picnic on the boat, catch leopard frogs in the inlets. What's not to like? Somewhere along the line the name was changed to Rockport.  Wanship is a little town on the spillway side of the dam. It is still there. 

Rockport was a great start to my day. There were Common Loons and Common Mergansers. Sandhill cranes and Osprey also showed up. Many platforms have been erected around the lake for Ospreys to build nests on. I saw six Ospreys. Two were working on building a nest, not on a platform, but on a telephone pole, two were mating on a nest and another two had a nest staked out. 

 I spent quite a bit of time watching this pair bring sticks to bridge the gap between the the two horizontal boards. I have seen so many little birds build nests by carrying materials in their beaks that it had not occurred to me that raptors would carry the branches in their talons. 

Definitely one of those well, duh moments. 

Many of the sticks they brought in fell between the two boards. 

Makes you wonder why they start from scratch when so many platforms are available. 


This pair has the nest finished and they are busy taking the next step for babies. 

I have seen a lot of bird sex this spring. On the other hand, I haven't ever been out looking for birds this early in the year before. 

Obsessed? 

Just a bit. Um--that's with birds, not bird sex.

And my third pair?  Just hanging on their platform. I'll be checking back for babies. And with any luck more pairs will show up. 

The mergansers look very loon-like. These males made me laugh. Eight of them parading in a row past a bunch of females who were clustered on the shore. 



Here are a couple of the girls watching the boys go by. 

I moved along to Echo Reservoir. Only saw two loons, a handful of pelicans, ducks, grebes and gulls. More interesting, or perhaps alarming is a better word, was how low the reservoirs are. 

Echo is very pretty, tucked in a little valley of red rock. 

You see many outcroppings of red rock as you wend your way around the lake.

 The last lake on my list was East Canyon Reservoir. 

The lagniappe on this trip was finding two Golden Eagles building a nest in the cliffs. Again, I was startled to realize that like the ospreys they were carrying stuff with their feet. And look at the size of the branches they are using in the nest. 

Tucked in the rocks around the nest you can see remnants of swallow nests, little gourd shaped mud houses. I bet they don't come back to these since the eagles moved in. 

About one hundred feet down the hill from the nest, I watched a badger prowling around the rocks. Wow. First live badger I have seen! This was really an amazing day. I love it when you are in the right place at the right time. 

On my way up the canyon I saw quite a few nests like this--all with a head at the top. I am fairly certain this is a Red-tailed Hawk, but I wouldn't bet the bank on it.

East Canyon Reservoir is also very low. 

 

But it had loons galore. I counted up to 75 in the part of the lake I could see. By the time I reached this third lake it was after six. The loons were calling. I was mesmerized by it. Beautiful, eerie, haunting and lonely. Another first for me. Just writing this gives me chills. 

And if this wasn't enough, we had a rather rare bird show up on the lake, a Red-necked Grebe. I found it too. Frabjous day! Callou callay, she chortled in her joy. 

It's a good thing I travel the back roads. I need a sticker that says I brake for birds. I was driving on a bridge over the Weber River when something flashed in front of me. I screeched to a stop in time to see a Belted Kingfisher dive into the water. He came up with a fish. 

How many ways can I say what a wonderful day? 

4 April 2015 - Roadside Delights and Back Roads, Part 2

Years ago I read a book called Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon about traveling on the roads marked in blue on road maps. I loved it and highly recommend it if you are looking for your next good read. He wrote about his journey across America going from one small town to another, often because he just liked the sound of their names. He always ate in local restaurants (no fast food for this guy) and met a lot more interesting people that way. 

This book resonated with me because Jack and I usually traveled with no destination in mind. We would just see where we ended up and always had amazing adventures. We loved the back roads and I still do. It is a part of America you don't find on the freeway. 

It was a bit shocking and scary to see how much urban sprawl has taken over the valley. I happened to drive by the Lehi Roller Mills so I stopped for a photo. This was where the prom took place in Footloose.  Speaking of shocking, do you realize that Footloose was filmed 31 years ago?  In the movie, the Roller Mills was surrounded by fields. Now it is packed in tight between fast food restaurants and other detritus of the ever burgeoning suburbia. 

So the Mills work for me because I collect painted signage and it is part of roadside America. In the first picture I am standing in the parking lot of a Subway sandwich shop and in the second, I'm in a MacDonald's parking lot. Crazy. But they still sell flour and baking mixes.

 In the I-brake-for-painted-signs category,  next up was

Heading west finally got me away from the new housing developments and strip malls. This is how I remember what most of the valley looked like when I was growing up.  Lots of land. Ranching. Farming. Open space. And always the mountains.

Happy to find it has not all been eaten up.  This road took me through Tintic, a tiny mining town. Hazel and I always stopped in Tintic for lunch. My plan was to do the same. There was one little diner on the main street that had seen better days 20 years ago, but the food was great. It was disheartening to find that every storefront was empty. Small town, we are talking only six or seven buildings but still. 

I think they were actually fixing up the City Hall and Fire Department. I hope. 

Hard to see, but the Gatley Bldg still has a beautiful old clock on the front. 

When was the last time you saw an actual elk's head on your local B.P.O.E.? Other questions worth asking, was it a working clock before the B.P.O.E. took over the building? 

The sign is all that remains of the lumber yard. It has been reincarnated as a liquor store. 

 And like a proper old town, there was painted signage. 

 You can kind of date this sign by the term waist overalls. At some point in the 1960s waist overalls became known as jeans.  And it has been longer than that since they offered a new pair if they rip. I love this stuff. 

Off the main roads are other interesting things to see. Utah has many remnants of buildings.  Doesn't seem as though there was enough room for a gas pump here.  I think some enterprising soul should fix this up, keeping all the doors, signage and corrugate siding and make a coffee shop or something out of it. It deserves a new life.

Leaving Eureka on the way to Tintic you get a glimpse of a structure up on the hillside. 

 This was the Tintic Reduction Mill. What remains of the mill are foundations for water tanks, crushers, roasters, iron boxes, leaching tanks, and drain boxes. Silver, gold, copper and lead were mined in this area.  With my zoom, you get a better view.  

When you get into farm country it seems like there are two kinds of people. Those who abandon old equipment where it stopped or line it up on the edge of their fields or those who hang it on the barns. I am in favor of hanging. 

Continuing on, the big surprise was a Utah Highway Patrol check point in the middle of nowhere. Fifty officers, a couple of large vans and many cruisers ready to take off after anyone deciding to turn around rather than go through the check point.  What the heck? 

Well. I had totally forgotten that this was Easter weekend and many schools close early on Good Friday. The state road I was traveling turns out to be the major route to Little Sahara. I have only been there once when I was maybe eleven. All I remember are beautiful pink sand dunes and interesting beetles. 

Little did I know that on Easter weekend it becomes a destination for anyone who owns an ATV or dirt bike. The officers were checking for drunk or drugged drivers. They had me take off my sunglasses to check my eyes.  Okaay. Turns out the vans were for drug and alcohol tests.  The officer told be to be careful there are crazies out there.  She was right. Two lane road with nothing but pickups and huge trailers hauling ass through the desert.  

I made a mental note to get to the Little Sahara again, but not on a holiday or a weekend.  Stay tuned! 

3 April 2015 - Roadtrip Delights: Vintage Gasoline Station Artifacts

I had a plan for the day. Nothing much, take a 240 mile drive in a big circle: South to Payson, then take a right to the west side of the Oquirrh Mountains then north past Tooele and back east to home. 

Naturally birding was involved, but that was just a sideline for a favorite route. My grandmother loved this trip and I used to take her on this drive every time I came to visit. But like most of my road trips, it had several unexpected twists and turns. 

I was heading toward the third birding stop in Provo when I had to do one of my patented slam on the brakes and hit the side of the road.  Whoa. Now this was just cool. There is a very large storage center whose owner collects gas station memorabilia.  What fun is this?  Next up are a lot of photos that I hope make you smile! 

This wonderful little kid's fire engine is mounted on their sign post.
My inner child still wants one of these. It even has the pull cord for the bell.

Here's a better look at the plane.

I have never seen so many old gas pumps in one place. They are just amazing!  These six are just a few in the collection. 

And aren't the colors cheerful?  Wonder what the subliminal message is. Buy gas, take a trip and be happy? Works for me!

How many of these companies do you remember?  When I was very young UTOCO was the gas station of choice for my parents. My sister and I always wanted them to stop at Mobil because we loved the Pegasus logo.  And how many of you ever played on the green dinosaur at the Sinclair stations? 

Needless to say, this stopped me in my tracks and brought back many memories. 

1 April 2015 - An April Fool for Spring

April. You never know what you will get. Today, the first of the April Fool's Day tricks was that the temperature took a nose dive. Yesterday it hit 78 degrees and combined with the high temps in the 70s for most of the month it made March 2015 the hottest March on record. So far today the high has been 43. That's a bit of a shock to the system. 

But oh my, the yard looks like Spring. 

Every year the hummingbirds arrive when the quince blooms. The quince is in full bloom, but no little birds yet.  

If I'm lucky I actually get a couple pieces of fruit from this very old bush. 

My two crabapple trees are so full of fat flower buds that the color is almost bursting without even being in bloom. 

 When the buds on the left open the flower will be white, faintly tinged in pink, while the buds on the right will open into a darker pink than the buds show.  You can't judge a flower by the bud color. 

Forsythia is providing a cheerful yellow  as are the Oregon Grapes--a plant people either love or hate. Not much neutrality on that plant, but the blooms are so welcome in the spring, they smell great and the little bees need them. 

In the evening when the wind is quiet, their spicy scent can fill your entire yard. Magic. 

When I look across the street I have a beautiful view of a magnolia tree backed up by the ever-so-awful Bradford pears. Okay, the Bradfords are pretty in the spring, but seriously, with so many trees to choose from, why get one that surrounds every shopping mall in America?  Don't you want something that isn't planted by the dozen along the curb of every house in every neighborhood?  Geeze. End of rant. 

Along with the flowering trees, daffodils, hyacinths and myrtle are in full bloom. The tops of lilac bushes have dark purple bud spears poking up around the edges. Cleaned out a flower bed and under the leaves discovered peony shoots seven inches high. All of which make me very happy. 

Surrounded by this Spring beauty, Mother Nature has decided to play her own April Fool's trick. We have the possibility of snow tonight and at least two nights with hard freezes.   Just one more reason to enjoy every minute you get.

April 2nd Update. A skiff of snow and a hard freeze.