25 October 2013 - Utah Lake and the elusive grebe

The bird list has been full of talk about a sighting of a rare Red-necked Grebe down on the dike road around the Provo Airport. I decided to drive down after work today and try to find it. Bad idea. I-15 was stop and go traffic for all but the last five minutes. My  40 minute drive turned into a 90 minute drive. Note to self. Do not drive south on I-15 after 3pm. It was a mess. 

The dike road was really pretty. Water channel on one side, and Utah Lake on the other. Very few birds to be seen. I watched a small kestrel harass a Northern Harrier. 

 There were a lot of butterflies busy in the rabbit brush. 

The valley was thick in smog today. So naturally I had to get out and add my own hydrocarbons to the air. 

The mountains were pretty hazed out by the smog.

 The road you see above is wide enough for one car and is rutted and full of pot holes. It is really hard to be in a place where your head wants to be swiveling on your neck to see everything, but you don't dare take your eyes off the road. 

I finally found the red-necked grebe! I was pretty excited about it, then I got closer and took a better look. Didn't know what it was.  I'd forgotten to take Sibley with me. Had to wait until I got home to look it up. 

Turns out it is a grebe, a new to me grebe, just not the elusive red-necked grebe. This is a pied-billed grebe, but the low sun was giving every thing a reddish glow, including the bird. For all of me, it could have been a red-necked. 

The sun was beginning to set, bathing the eastern mountains in the last light. I liked the pink reflections in the channel.
 

This sighting gives me four of the six grebes I'm likely to see in Utah--including the rare red-necked.  So it wasn't all bad--saw a new bird, some great new scenery and the drive home was much faster.