28 April 2013 - Another bird and a busy weekend

We hit 70 both yesterday and today. What does that mean?  Yard work. Last year we finished putting up a fence between us and the neighbors.  Yesterday I finally got the stain on it. Wonder if there is such a thing as painter's elbow. My arms are sore! There are three more 8 foot panels off screen to the right. Last year I painted the back side of the fence a gray that matched the neighbor's house, which made them very happy, but I finally figured out I wanted a brighter color.

 It was a big spring clean-up weekend. In addition to painting: washed windows, mowed lawns, got the sprinklers turned on, blew and swept the driveway, dug dandelions out of the lawn,  just work work work. I painted the metal drip edge over the brick in the front of the house. I'm quite happy with the result.  Here are a before and after. 

Of course none of these things were on our copious to do list. But priorities and the energy to do them change. 

Yesterday afternoon I was standing in the back yard admiring the fence when I heard a hummingbird zip by. I ran downstairs, grabbed an armload of feeders, cleaned them up, filled them and hung them on three sides of the house. Today I caught the hummer using the feeder in front of the kitchen window.  Most gratifying. It is a little early for them to be coming back, so hopefully they will find a source of food here and stick around. Last summer we had three kinds of hummingbirds and were using four pounds of sugar a week during the peak after the babies were hatched. 

Bird irony. This morning I was sitting on the kitchen counter, drinking coffee and looking out the window.  Here I have been going out looking for birds, and this little jewel came to me. Luckily the camera was handy.  This is a Lazuli Bunting. What a treat to see him so close!

Then later in the afternoon there was a red squirrel on the balcony chipping up a storm. When he didn't stop, I went out to see what the problem was.  Oh. Nothing like having someone considering you for supper. 

This is one of the pair of sharp-shinned hawks that considers my yard its own personal grocery store. I am pretty sure they are nesting in the pine tree next door.  Speaking of groceries, I found the head of a rabbit in my front yard today. Most likely a remnant of a meal. I'd much rather they would catch the squirrels. 

 




The flowering trees are finally blooming up here: plums, pears and lots of ornamentals. A couple days in the 70s and the world changes. On Tuesday the forecast says cold and a hard freeze. Couldn't it have done this earlier?

 
  

26 April 2013 - Three new birds!

It was a beautiful day today, so after work Jack and I headed to the Lee Kay ponds to see what was happening in the bird world.  Not much.  There were two pairs of pelicans and hundreds of seagulls. 
It almost looks like parents surrounded by kids. 

There were the ubiquitous coots, a few avocets, lots of swallows and some cormorants. 

I'm always happy to see avocets. They are pretty, and really interesting to watch. 

The islands are packed with mallards and Canada nests. They are fairly well hidden, then all of a sudden the heads will pop up like periscopes. The heads swivel around then disappear out of sight. Fun. There were quite a few swallows as well. We wandered around the ponds for a while then decided to move on to the GSL. 

Can't decide if it is too early for the migrating birds or if I already missed them. The ponds by the marina had some lesser scaups and a few yellow-headed blackbirds. We took the road around the lake and stopped at a wetlands area. Not a single bird in sight. I left Jack in the car with his book and walked to the end of the spit of land. I saw nothing alive. Weird. 

I was very close to where the train once cut across the south end of the lake. Nothing left of the tracks but some pilings. They are encrusted in salt. The encrustations are really interesting. Here's a close-up.  

When I started walking back I saw a little bird flitting around in front of me.  I was creeping up on him as stealthily as possible. It was a horned lark! A first sighting for me. 

 Another look at the horns.

Continuing on down the road I pulled over at the next marshy area. Pulled out the binoculars and found this guy. Had to look him up when I got home. He is a Western Willet. 

 

 And finally, at yet another pond saw my third first sighting - some Cinnamon teal ducks. You can see a little piece of blue on the left duck's wing. When they fly there is a big showy patch of blue.

 
I'm not sure what was going on, but two pairs of these ducks where having quite a conversation. The males were rocking in the water and doing a complicated head bob while squawking. The females were ignoring it all. You can see here that the males are quite vocal.

 
 Rounding out the day were black-necked stilts, a raven, couple of crows, an unidentified hawk, and a few killdeer. The last unidentified bird looked like a black egret. Couldn't ever get close enough for a good look. And frogs. Never saw any, but we certainly heard them.  I had "Hear the jolly sound of frogs in yonder pond..." going through my head for the rest of the trip.

All in all? A good day! 






 

20 April 2013 - Birding

I think I have mentioned this before, that I do not consider myself a birder: that I just like to know what it is I see.  Well, hmm. I may have to rethink that. Today, for the second time in three months, I went on a birding field trip.

The DWR offered a guided tour to see the sandhill cranes on a piece of the bird refuge that is closed from April 1st to September 1st.  Wow! Sandhill cranes and getting to go into the migratory nesting area? Oh yeah. Jack and I made plans to go.  We needed to meet up with the group and leader in Layton at 8am. Layton is about 45 minutes up the freeway.  I set our alarm for six.  

When we went to bed it had started to rain. It rained all night. It was still raining, albeit lightly when the alarm went off. I decided I didn't want to be tromping around in the muck, turned off the alarm and went back to bed, where I promptly tossed and turned until 6:30.  Decided that I had to go. Kissed Jack good bye and ran. Got to Layton just in time. I was so glad I went. Our leader told us that last year 60 cars went through. People at the end of the line didn't get to see anything. With the rainy morning, we only had 8 cars since everyone doubled up.  It was great. The rain had stopped by the time we got to Ogden Bay.  The entrance to the refuge was solid phragmites. Looking east you can see the mountains are socked in with rain, but up Farmington Canyon, the sun was behind the storm.

It was an interesting place, many estuaries for swimming birds between large wetland areas. It is just barely starting to green up. 

 
Did we ever see birds!  Before we even started on the dike roads, our guide set up a scope and showed us a Bald Eagle's nest. The female was on the nest, and the male was in the tree next to the nest. The ranger who was with us said three babies had hatched. This particular pair has been coming back to the nest for six years. They show up in January and start fixing up the remains of last year's nest, lay eggs and by March babies have hatched.

Next we saw pelicans. Literally hundreds of American White Pelicans. They are huge--wing spans of 9 feet. Amazing. Several of us ducked when they flew overhead.

  

 At one point we stopped and our guide set the scope up again so we could look at a mess of birds quite far away. Settled down on the road was yet another flock of pelicans including a couple Canadas and two or three Sandhill Cranes. There was a large tree right next to this group with a peregrine falcon being harrassed by yellow-headed blackbirds. My little camera could hardly get this in focus it was so far away, but in the scope you could count the feathers on the peregrine. 

The American Avocets are also migrating back north and now grace the waterways around the Great Salt Lake. 

Along with the avocets, the black-neck stilts were represented in very large numbers. 

 

The grebes are also coming back. There were many Western grebes out on the water. I was lucky enough to see some mating behavour. A male grebe came up from a dive with a 6 inch fish crosswise in his bill. He offered it to a female who did not hesitate to swallow it down. I could just hear the dialog, "See what a good provider I will be? Marry me and lay my eggs!" The guy in the car in front of me said there was an eared grebe, and showed me a great picture he had taken, but (insert pouty lip here) I didn't see it. 

Grebes are an interesting bird. They can only land in and take off from water. Their legs are in the far back of their body because they are diving birds.  We had a horrible incident last week during a spring storm with with high winds and rain.  A flock of 12,000+ eared grebes was migrating back north to the Great Salt Lake. They got confused in the storm and tried to land on a wet parking lot. Thousands were killed, or injured to the point where they had to be euthanized.  This was near or on the Toole Army base so hundreds of soldiers and volunteers were out picking up the birds, putting them in boxes, crates or bins and trucking them over to the lake. 

 
 









 





The phragmites were filled with both red-winged and yellow-headed blackbirds.  They are so exotic! Not to mention loud.

And of course, where there is water, there are cormorants. 

Near the end of the trip I thought I saw an eagle in a dead tree off in the distance. I stopped to look. The people behind me were laughing and saying it was just a big knot in the tree.  I took a picture and still couldn't tell.  Back home, after downloading my photos this is what I found. 

 
I have a pair of sharp-shin hawks that often leave similar remains in my yard, consisting of a polished clean breastbone and wings. 
I wonder who was eaten by whom. In my uninformed opinion, these look like raptor wings-- not cormorants or herons. It also reminds me of Native American coup sticks. Quite a sight. 

Also saw a Marsh Wren and several Black-crowned Night Herons. 
The last thing I saw was a nest built in the rigging of a steam shovel. Great place for a nest. I have no idea who built it.


You can see what a a great day I had! Leaving the bay, it began to rain, so hard I could not see to drive. Decided to stop for lunch and hoped to wait it out.  A couple sitting several tables over were commenting how they had been on Antelope Island and it was bright and sunny, and they had driven into a wall of rain coming east. Eureka! I'll just wait out the rain on the island!

It was indeed bright and sunny. The mountains to the east were black with rain and clouds. Headed west, the lake and sky disappeared into each other. Gorgeous. Can you find the horizon line in this photo?

  
 Driving across the causeway took a long time. It is only seven miles long, but I had to keep stopping to look.  Along the shore,  cranesbill (how appropriate is that?) was starting to bloom in great swaths of purple. That is a lot of color for a plant that averages three inches high.

The shoreline along the causeway was also filled with large populations of avocets and stilts.  I had great fun watching these long-legged, long-billed birds poke around in the silt.


But better yet, there were lots of Eared Grebes. They spend most of their time diving. I was absolutely elated to see these birds.

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They are really fast divers. I got lots of pictures of tail feathers disappearing into the lake. Took me quite a while to get a good shot. 

 I am continually surprised to find how many birds have red eyes.Grebes are another in this list.

 Mixed in among the grebes were coots, red-head ducks and lesser scaups. Lesser scaup males and female below.  Love that bright gold eye.

I haven't figured out who this little bird is yet, but it is charming. 

I also saw a raven, about 20 great blue herons, more meadowlarks and yellow-headed blackbirds. 

 











 



Along with the eared-grebe, I had two other major triumphs for the day. 

One was this loggerhead shrike. 

The other was a chukar. Talk about some interesting markings. The very conspicuous red beak and eye circle, bright pink legs plus the barred sides are just beautiful.

 Quite the day!   Oh, and the funniest part? When we were all convoyed up driving to Ogden Bay, we passed a field filled with the stubble of last year's corn crop. There may have been as many as 15 sandhill cranes poking around the field.  When we got to the Bay and were waiting on the ranger to come open the gate, I mentioned seeing the cranes. Not another person had noticed. In retrospect I wish I had pulled over and taken a few pictures as they were closer than any of the cranes we saw during the trip. 

Driving home, the further east I got, the more rain I drove through, but you could see the mountain tops all had a new frosting of snow. 

I was exhausted and happy when I got home. But my eyes hurt, I was looked out.