1 October 2014 - Hunting Season, Birds and Antelope Island

I haven't had a chance to go out looking for birds in quite a while. The paper today had an article about duck hunting season starting this Saturday. It dawned on me that if I wanted to go out to the lake or marsh areas, I'd better do it before the hunters start shooting and scare everything away. 

After considering my options, I decided on Antelope Island. First, I haven't been out there since early May and second, people on the bird list were reporting an Oven Bird down at Garr Ranch. After all the rainy cold days we've had, it seemed like a good idea.

I was shocked to see how low the lake is. There are places where I'm sure you could actually walk to the island if you could handle the seven mile distance and the extremely sticky lake bottom.

Didn't see a great variety of birds. On the causeway there were some big rafts of gulls and large numbers of avocets already in their winter plumage. A handful of long-billed curlews and assorted smaller peeps. But the scenery was magnificent. 

In all the times I have been out there, I have always seen ravens on the causeway. He looks like a metal sculpture.

 

 The buffalo were out in big numbers. Going south on the island they were up near the ridge, but coming back north they had moved down to the road. 

These are spring babies. They were busy bumping heads, running around, and executing stiff-legged jumps. Very cute. 

I also ran into mule deer and pronghorn antelope. 

Only fitting that a jack rabbit is hiding under a rabbitbrush. 

You can usually count on finding Great-horned owls in the barn. I wasn't disappointed. I caught this guy in the middle of a yawn. He never opened his eyes. That is some gaping maw.

 His friend was tucked in the side beams. 

I had to get out and do some hiking. Nice path. Great views. 

 
On my way back across the causeway, it looked like plumes of black smoke were rising up along the sides of the road. It was towers of insects. Not sure if they were mosquitoes or brine flies. 
I pulled over to the side of the road to check out the shore birds and my car was immediately surrounded by flying things--as though I were in the eye of a bug tornado. 



I wanted to get the effect of the plumes, but no way was I getting out of the car. This is a bad picture, but you get the idea. The camera just did not want to see the towers of insects. These plumes were probably 10 feet or more high and about three feet apart for several miles. That's a lot of bugs. The swallows were busy flying through them, like whales and krill.

Then one last look and back to civilization.