Utah Wrap-up

I definitely saw a lot of life birds on the trip. A few notable birds that didn't make the other posts include some boring looking birds like this Gray Flycatcher.

Gray Flycatcher

And this Gray Vireo.

Gray Vireo

And this new species of Crossbill that is only found in the Idaho mountains. Cassia's Crossbills are non-migratory and have recently been "upgraded" from a race to a full species. They are specialized to feed on pine cones which they open with their crossed bills. We found these flitting around the trees in a state park after a pretty rough ride in the van.

Cassia's Crossbill

On our way to see the Crossbills, we stopped at a spot that has hummingbird feeders to watch some little gems of the west. We spotted a few of the more common species and then found the one that I was hoping for - Calliope Hummingbird. This is the smallest of our hummers in the US and one that I haven't been able to see until now. Look at the gorget on this guy!

Calliope Hummingbird

Here is a juvenile male that is just getting stubble on his chin like a teenager.

Hummer

On our last day, we found a family of Sage-brush Sparrows.

Sagebrush Sparrow

We also saw some great animals on the trip. One that I was really happy to see and photograph was Long-tailed Weasel. We watched this fast critter dart around the sage brush. I was lucky to snap this shot which shows how long the weasel is.

Long-tailed Weasel on the move

He finally stopped for a few seconds and looked right at me!

Long-tailed Weasel

It wasn't just little critters. On Antelope Island, we found the large mammals. This Mule Deer was the king of his domain. They count the points on the antlers only on one side. Tim said that this was a 6 pointer. Hunting is only allowed by lottery that costs more than $100,000 so this guy might be safe.

Mule Deer

Antelope Island is known more for it's Bison than Antelope. Here are a few roaming the grasslands.

Bison

And here is what we refer to as Antelope but it is actually called a Pronghorn. We spotted a few that didn't run off.

Pronghorn

That's a wrap for this trip. I would do it all again and recommend that you go too.

Phalaropes

You might be asking yourself "what exactly is a phalarope?" Great question. A phalarope is a type of shorebird. There are 3 species in the world: Red, Red-necked and Wilson's and all occur in North America. We occasionally have Wilson's phalaropes stop by in New Jersey on their way to and from the arctic where they breed. Red and Red-necked can be seen off the cost of of New Jersey flying and swimming offshore. Yes, swimming. All phalaropes swim. You can see Red-necked and Wilson's phalaropes swimming in this video that I shot in Utah.

They spin around in the water to trap food in a little whirlpool. Pretty cool. We saw a lot of phalaropes on Antelope Island. They are already finished breeding and heading back south for the winter and its only July. We stopped along the causeway to admire the throngs of phalaropes in the water and along the shoreline when all of a sudden, they all took flight. Our group of birders spotted a Peregrine Falcon chasing after the birds. Birds often fly in "murmuration" to confuse the predator. I've seen murmurations before but this one was spectacular.

You can hear our tour guide say that he estimates 250,000 phalaropes in the area. Wow. Unfortunately for the shorebirds, there were only 249,999 after the Peregrine flew through. We watch the falcon have lunch on on the mudflat while the other birds settled down. I don't think I've ever seen a flock of birds that large before.

Seeing that many birds is really incredible but you can't really get a good look or photo of any individual bird. On another day, we did get close up to a few shorebirds including a few Wilson's phalaropes.

Wilson's Phalarope

Here is a phalarope with a Long-billed Dowitcher.

Long-billed Dowitcher and Wilson's Phalarope

And here is another fraternizing with another Wilson. This time, Wilson's Snipe. 2 of the birds named after the father of ornithology, Alexander Wilson on the same pond. Neither of them gets the irony of their human-given names.

Wilsons facing off - phalarope and snipe

We spent a good bit of time at the pond watching other birds as well including White-faced Ibis.

White-faced Ibis

And a few Common Nighthawks that wouldn't call it quits even after the sun was up in the sky. I caught a few photos. You can see the mountains in the background.

Common Nighthawk

The trip was pretty great. Although we raced around between 3 states, we also got to spend quality time with many of the birds that we saw.

Chasing Game Birds in the West

The American Birding Association (ABA) is in charge of telling us birders which birds are "countable" on our lists and which are not. The general rule for a bird to be countable is that the bird must be viewed within North America, alive, and wild. All of these rules are debated by birders during dull moments or over beer.

• "North America" has definite boundaries but birders try to stretch is all the time. If you are in a boat off the coast, are you still in North America? What if you are standing in Mexico along the Rio Grande river and see a bird on the U.S. side of the river? Can you count it? The ABA also changes it's rules from time to time. For instance, Hawaii was never included until last year. 
• "Alive" is pretty straight forward. Or is it? What if you see a bird hanging out of the a cat's mouth? Is it countable? I think only if it wiggles. Gross. 
• "Wild" is a tough one. Most are obvious but some birds in North America didn't start out as wild. Some were brought here as pets or as hunting targets. These birds escape and either die because they can't survive in our climate or they continue to live in their new "wild" home. The ABA changes rulings about these birds a lot. If the escaped birds establish successful breeding populations, they end up countable. 

You can read the official rules here: http://listing.aba.org/aba-recording-rules/

The ABA has allowed a handful of game birds in the west to be counted. I joined a tour run by Tim Avery, a Utah guide to search for "Mountain West Most Wanted" to see some of these birds in addition to some others that I'll tell you about later. Tim took us to 3 states to get the birds. We started in Nevada to chase (I'm not kidding here) Himalayan Snowcocks. Yes, the birds are from the Himalayan mountains. You can imagine that they are quite comfortable in the high mountains and generally stay above 10,000 feet. To get to the right habitat, we had to start our day at 3:30 AM. We drove to a parking lot in the State Park at about 8,000 feet of elevation. We hiked for over an hour and climbed to about 9,800 feet - in the dark!

Nevada dawn

 You have to get there before sunrise so that you can scan the ridges for the birds. They hide out in the cliffs at night and then walk over the ridge to feed in the alpine meadows. Here we are scanning the ridge line for the buggers.

Searching for Snowcocks

I'm not one to brag, but I did see the first bird crest the ridge :-) but once it moved off the ridge, it took all of us to spot it again. Tim found the bird and about 8 others in the meadow. Can you see them?

Snowcocks

I took the liberty of pointing them out for you.

Himalayan Snowcocks

There is no way to get closer to them without hiking another 500 feet up which is very difficult for someone like me who lives at sea level so we just enjoyed the views from a distance. We found a few other birds on our way back to the van. You can just about make it out in the photo. And WOW, the scenery!

Heading down the mountain

With mission accomplished, we left Nevada and headed to Idaho in search of more birds including another game bird called Gray Partridge. This bird prefers much different habitat. They are most often found in farm fields or sage brush areas. No need for hiking to see this bird. We just drove around scanning the fields for anything that resembled a brown softball with a head. We can play the "find-the-bird-in-the-photo" game again. Here it is:

Partridge spotting

I made it easier by cropping the photo to reveal the bird. You can just see the bird's head poking out of the prairie grass.

Gray Partridge

We spotted a few more after more searching. Tim saw them along the road but they darted into the grass when the van approached. I volunteered to walk over to the edge of the road and viola:

Gray Partridge

That was the best view of the birds that we could get. They landed and disappeared.

The last game bird that we wanted to see was Chukar. This is a bird that Connie and I saw back in the 1990's but never officially recorded on our list. Once again, we needed different habitat to search. Chukars like rocky fields with sage brush. We kept our eyes peeled every time we saw suitable habitat but didn't see any. On our last day, we headed to the quarry just outside of Salt Lake for a last ditch effort to find the birds. At the ninth hour, we spotted a Mom and a few babies! You can see the baby in the shade of the sage brush.

Chukar with baby

Mom hunkered down when she saw us get out of the van.

Chukar

She was the last of our "most wanted" species. After that, we headed for lunch and the airport. More stories to come. I am still sorting through the trip and the photos to figure out how to tell the stories.