[Birdtalk] Utah Lake birds

[Lu Giddings]

I began this late this morning by paying a quick visit to the southeast 
end of the Provo airport dikes, moved on to
the Utah Lake State Park for an hour, and then spent the bulk of the 
afternoon at Lincoln Beach on the southern end of Utah
Lake.

The lake has dropped several feet in the last few months and there are 
some good mud flats around the southeast
end of the airport dikes, but you will almost certainly need a scope to 
see anything - which, alas, I did not have. There were American avocets, 
black-necked stilts, willets, and killdeers, all of which could be 
determined using binoculars, but there were also many peeps several 
hundred yards out on the mud that could not be seen with binos alone.

The state park did not hold anything noteworthy. It was pretty quiet 
except for a covey of California quail and a mish-mash of gulls.

Lincoln Beach had more shorebirds and peeps than I have ever seen on 
Utah Lake. We're not talking Antelope Island
causeway numbers here; I drove as far out on the beach as the lake would 
permit, stopped my truck, and sat
quietly for several hours. By the time I left at around 5 p.m. I was 
surrounded by 4-500 hundred gulls, terns,
pelicans, cormorants, waders, and shorebirds, mostly peeps. I counted as 
many as 57 killdeer within 50 yards
of me at one time. There were also semipalmated plovers, snowy plovers, 
and a Utah county first for me, a
black-bellied plover. A flock of dowitchers flew over but did not stay 
long enough to get a look at. There were a
variety of sandpipers, including spotted, western, least, Baird's, and - 
I believe - two semipalmated sandpipers.
Many bathed at the lake's edge, some simply laid quietly in the water, 
escaping the heat, and others
plopped down in the mud and snoozed. Two other noteworthy sightings:

- a completely leucistic swallow, I believe a bank swallow because of 
the company it kept; it's markings were so pale as to be nearly 
impossible to see, even in good light
- 14 cattle egrets on fence posts on one of the farms just south of 
Lincoln Beach

Lu Giddings

Total Count: 51 species
Gadwall  
Cinnamon Teal   
Ring-necked Pheasant  
California Quail
Clark's Grebe  
American White Pelican
Double-crested Cormorant    
Great Blue Heron
Snowy Egret
Cattle Egret 
White-faced Ibis
Turkey Vulture  
Northern Harrier
Cooper's Hawk  
Swainson's Hawk
American Kestrel
American Coot   
Black-bellied Plover  
Snowy Plover    
Semipalmated Plover   
Killdeer  
Black-necked Stilt    
American Avocet 
Willet    
Spotted Sandpiper
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Western Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper 
Baird's Sandpiper
Franklin's Gull 
Ring-billed Gull
Californian Gull
Caspian Tern   
Forster's Tern  
Eurasian Collared-Dove  
Mourning Dove   
Rufous Hummingbird    
Tree Swallow    
Bank Swallow   
Cliff Swallow   
Barn Swallow    
Marsh Wren
European Starling
Yellow Warbler
Vesper Sparrow 
Song Sparrow    
Red-winged Blackbird  
Yellow-headed Blackbird
House Finch
American Goldfinch    
House Sparrow   

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