22 February 2019 - Colombia Part 1

In January, I took another trip to Colombia with the same group of birders who went two years ago. In 2017, we flew into Cartagena and did most of our birding in the Santa Marta Mountains.  This time we flew into Bogota and spent time exploring a new area: the Eastern Highlands and Orinoco Basin. We birded in three highly diverse habitats: the llanos, which are similar to our Great Plains; the paramo, in this case the Sumapaz National Park which is the world's largest paramo--an alpine plateau above the treeline more than 12,000 feet, and finally some birding on the edge of the amazon. 

Here is the crew:

Final stats: 397 species of birds in 14 days. During our trip there in Jan 2017, I saw 308 species in 12 days.  

It was a whirlwind trip of dawn to dusk birding. Colombia is on or very near the equator so year-round the sun rises about 6 am and sets about 6 pm.  I must admit, I like having our much longer days as the sun moves north and back south again.

In addition to fabulous scenery, we saw many exotic birds as well as anacondas, crocodiles, caiman, capybaras, monkeys, the rosy river dolphins and even a great anteater. 

The landscapes were incredible. We took two side trips, one to the City of Rocks and the second to see the oldest pictographs in Colombia. The experts believe the pictographs are 20,000 years old. They can't use carbon dating as these were painted with iron oxide.  Getting to them involved a hike up a very steep canyon. So steep it was like climbing stairs without the stairs. Strenuous, but worth it. The wall is so large I could not get the entire work in a single photo. 

The hike up to the petroglyphs was right after we saw one of our top target birds, the Cock-of-the-Rock. This day-glo orange bird is spectacular. He has a feathered headdress that completely covers up his beak, giving the head a distinctively odd look. 

Our other side trip, the City of Rocks was full of interesting formations. The paths winding through it made it seem like you walking down streets lined with buildings. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. On our first day, we went to a hummingbird reserve. This is the only place in Colombia where you can see both the Black-tailed Trainbearer and the Green Trainbearer. Not only did we see both, but we also were able to get good looks at a Sword-billed hummer! What a thrill to see so many little jewels up close. Here are a few of them. 

White-bellied starfrontlet

Sword-billed hummingbird    

Blue-throated Starfrontlet                  Coppery-bellied Puffleg

Glowing Puffleg

Blue-throated Starfrontlet, female             

This is a Black-tailed Trainbearer. Its tail is twice as long as the body. 

Green-tailed trainbearer

Day 2. We left Bogota, a city of 10 million people. It took us over an hour to get out of the city. Too many people, not enough roads or public transportation. We finally arrived at our destination Chicaque National Park, a high Andean cloud forest. It was gorgeous. We started at the top and hiked down to a lodge where we had a late lunch.Another fairly steep hike, but slow going because of birds. 

The first bird we saw was a Collared Inca Hummer.

We were surrounded by tall mountains with sheer cliffs and incredible views. 

When they talk about being in a cloud forest...this is what it is like. 

This is an orchid only found high in the Andes.

There are over 4000 species of orchids in Colombia and about 1500 of them are only found here. The Cattleya trianae orchid is a national symbol of Colombia. Orchids always seem like such an exotic flower, but walking in the forests you could look up and see them growing on trees. 

That was one of the many 'We aren't in Kansas anymore' moments. 

I love this group of friends. We go for the birding, but we look at everything! Tiny frogs. We had two local naturalists with us on this day. One of them was an ornithologist and the other was a young student from Tennessee who was studying frogs. According to him, the smaller the frog, usually the more poisonous it is. 

Turning over rocks looking for scorpions. Yep. officially crazy. 

Try to catch up with butterflies. Not easy. 

And you know we aren't moving very fast when the group stops to ponder an interesting shaped snail on the road. This guy was about 2" long. 

13 January 2019 - Another rare bird road trip

Had another rare bird show up in Utah. Road trip!  Max, Bryant and I piled in my car and hit the road at 6:30 am for a trip to Flaming Gorge Reservoir in the northeast corner of Utah, where Wyoming sits in the cut out. Took us three hours to get there.  Round trip was 391 miles. Our route took us through Wyoming. In Evanston we hit -14 degrees.  Brr. We drove through many heavy fog patches—so heavy that frost was forming on the hood of the car and on the inside of the windows.  The coldest we got was -18. It wasn't easy to use the camera when fingers are really cold. The high for the day was 16 but it didn’t last very long.  

This was one of those miracles where you pull up to the reservoir and as you are getting out of the car you say “There it is!”  We stayed about 20 minutes trying to get a decent photo.  Hard to do through the fog and snow. 

Our target bird was a Great Black-backed Gull. It is the largest gull in the world. 30 inches in length with a 54 inch wingspan it is only slightly smaller than a small eagle.  Amazing.  They also like to eat ducks.  They are usually found along the Atlantic Ocean. Don't know how it got here. 

With nothing for scale, it is hard to realize just how big these birds are. Those white specks against the black back is the fog condensing and falling like light snow.  Everything was covered with hoar frost. Even cattle in the field were covered. 

Here you can see how it dwarfs a Herring Gull, which is the biggest gull we have in Utah.  

Since we were there and found it so quickly, we spent several more hours birding around the area. We drove up Sheep Creek Canyon, which was gorgeous. And true to its name, we saw sheep. A small herd of Bighorn sheep. Fun!! You can see the  hoar frost in this photo.

One of the sheep was wearing a collar with a transmitter.  Poor thing. The tag is pulling his ear down.  The DWR is trying to keep tabs on where many of our endangered species are.  

We had a herd of Bighorns on Antelope Island, but in the last month almost all of them have died from some unknown respiratory infection.  The few that are still alive will be killed to keep it from spreading. This herd was doing so well that it was  used to repopulate other areas in Utah.  I think the plan is to import some fresh non-infected Bighorns from California to renew the herd, but it will take years to get a population going again. 

We also found a pair of Pygmy Owls. At 5.5” high, they are smaller than my hand and are the second smallest owl. Biggest gull, almost smallest owl. Yes, it was a really fun day, 

1 January 2019 - New Year's Day - Christmas Bird Count

Thank goodness I'm not a drinker. I did not have to get up nursing a hangover this morning. However, I did have to get up to participate in the Annual Jordan River Christmas Bird Count which is part of the Audubon Society's annual bird count, now in its 119th year.  

In America's storied past, the big thing to do on  Christmas was to go out kill things. Instead of counting birds, people went out to see who could kill the most animals and birds. Back in 1900, the curator at the American Museum of Natural History started getting people involved in counting birds instead of killing them. This count has evolved into a huge database of information that lets scientists and naturalists follow how species are doing, or not doing as the case may be. 

I was part of the Galena team, a four mile stretch along the Jordan River that took us six hours to complete. It was bitterly cold. The breeze added to the cold factor, trying to freeze any uncovered skin. I think near the end of the count we finally hit a high of 26 but it was around 16 degrees when we started. 

The Jordan River is kind of in the middle of the valley. To the east are the Wasatch Mountains.

And to the west you can see the enormous tailings piles from the Kennecott (now Rio Tinto) copper mine.

There were ten of us on the Galena survey armed with binos, cameras and Little Hotties to stuff in our gloves and boots. We were all trying to spot as many birds as possible, and Bryant, our fearless leader, was writing down every species and how many.  

The most unexpected bird was a Virginia Rail in plain sight, letting everyone have a good look. These little birds hide in the reeds around water and while you can often hear them, they aren't that easy to find. This little guy practically posed for us. 

We were all ready to head home for hot showers to warm up. Viv and I decided we needed to indulge ourselves after the long cold walk and stopped at Gardner Village. The Chocolate Covered Wagon candy store has the best hot chocolate I've ever had. And we needed that hot drink!  Yummy and warming. 

14 October 2018 - Chasing a Booby

Oh boy! What do you do when you hear that a really rare bird--so rare it is the first ever sighting of this bird in Utah--has shown up?  You go chase it!

Someone discovered a Blue-footed Booby on Lake Powell. This is a subtropical bird and over half of the entire population breeds on the Galapagos Islands. What this juvenile bird was doing here is a mystery.  

Four of us decided we must see this bird. We made plans to go down. The first day we drove down to Kanab. That is about a five hour twenty minute drive. It took us a lot longer. Shortly after we hit the road a sinkhole opened up on I-15 causing massive delays as six lanes of freeway were funneled down to a single lane. Of course, this was during rush hour. It took almost two hours to get through this mess. 

It rained on us off and on all the way to Kanab, but it resulted in some fabulous rainbows and a gorgeous sunset. We had a double rainbow that was a complete arch from end to end. All were too large to fit in one camera view. 

We spent the night in Kanab, then drove to Antelope Point Marina outside of Page, Arizona where we rented a boat. The booby had been hanging out in the middle of the lake on a floating dump station dock.  We got rained on the entire four mile boat trip up to the dock.  But that didn't matter a bit when we found the booby preening on the dock. 

We tried easing our way as close as we could without spooking him, while taking as many photos as possible. 

Just as we were reaching a great photo range a speed boat with shrieking people and loud music pulled up to the dock and scared him off. As they piled out of the boat onto the dock they noticed the bird as it was flying away. One of the guys said to us, "Did you see that weird looking bird?" 

Nevertheless, we had a wonderful time, saw a most unexpected bird. And the scenery is stunning.