[Birdnet] our Utah birding vacation

[Connie Norheim]

We're coming towards the end of our birding vacation in Utah, and would like 
to thank all the people who have been so gracious and helpful in either 
suggesting places to go for certain birds, or referring us to others.

Thank you Betsy Benecke from Bear River Refuge for suggesting Beus Pond at 
Ogden for the Western Screech Owl. We did find 3 owlets sitting on a branch 
directly over our head at 9:15 PM on the east path around the pond, just 
where she told us they'd be, and we didn't need to use any tapes to call 
them in.

Cars can drive into City Creek Canyon in Salt Lake City for $3 on even days, 
and we drove all the way to the end and birded. We heard, but never did see, 
Virginia's Warbler, our second lifer.

Then we joined Bill Fenimore and Kristin Purdy for an evening of Flammulated 
Owls, and added lifer #3. That was great, to see a Flammie 25 feet away. I 
have no idea where we went, I was lost.

We struck out on the Juniper Titmouse at South Willow Canyon, but still had 
a delightful day of birding, and enjoyed the Black throated Gray Warbler and 
the Blue Gray Gnatcatcher we saw there.

Thanks to Kristin's excellent directions, we had no trouble finding the 3 
Toed Woodpecker at the Monte Criste campground, lifer #4 for Lew. What a 
lovely campground, we spent several hours there and also saw both the male 
and femate Williamson's sapsucker there.

The road to the Albion Campground is not open (won't open until June 30th we 
were told), so to go to Secret Lake we had a much longer hike than 
originally planned, over 5 miles round trip, and no Black rosy Finches to 
reward us. Did have a flyover Goshawk though.

Bill Fenimore had suggested we try Bridal Veil Falls in Provo for our lifer 
Black Swifts. We struck out on the first attempt, and instead spent 1 1/2 
hours watching 3 crazy teenagers climb the rock face WAY higher than the 
sign said they were to go. We were in the parking lot at the bottom of the 
falls and could only see the kids with binoculars. They even knocked off 
loose rock that was still a foot in diameter when it struck the ground. They 
did make it safely down, but should be grounded the rest of the summer - no 
water, no hiking gear. We were successful however at finding the Black 
Swifts on our return trip this morning at 6:15. We watched about 10 or 12 of 
them fly around above the top of the cliff above the highest waterfall, with 
the blue sky behind them.

It's been fun to see birds that we don't get in North Dakota, like the 
Burrowing Owl, the Western Tanagers, the Black chinned hummers and the 
Broad-tailed Hummers, the Stellars Jays, the Black-necked Stilts, and the 
California Quail that have been running along the dike behind our tent in 
Provo.

Thursday we'll make one more try at Bald Mountain for the Black Rosy Finch. 
Hopefully we can find them with the scope, I'm not sure my legs have another 
long hike in them. Today we did the 3 mile round trip hike up to the Mt 
Timpanagos Cave tour.

Again, we've enjoyed our Utah vacation very much. Anyone planning a North 
Dakota birding trip should check out the web site for the ND Birding Society 
at www.ndbirdingsociety.com. Be sure and order the free brochure on the 
Birds of ND (click the free brochure icon on the home page). It's a 
beautiful booklet of the best places to bird, where to find target species, 
etc. There are also directions on that web site for subscribing to the 
ND-Birds listserve.

Connie Norheim
Lew Dailey