[Birdtalk] Fish Springs and James Fitzgerald WMA

[Eric Huish]

Tuula Rose, Ned Bixler and I took the old pony express route out to Fish 
Springs yesterday morning. On our way out Ned spotted a Burrowing Owl near 
the Tooele-Juab County line.  We did a quick U-turn and I was able to get my 
first Tooele County Burrowing Owl.  We also saw a Prairie Falcon, Golden 
Eagles, Lots of Horned Larks and a flock of Pinyon Jays on our way to the 
refuge.

At Fish Springs, after getting great looks at the Painted Bunting, we took 
the tour loop through the refuge.  There were many Snowy Egrets, 2 BC 
Night-Herons and 1 GB Heron, some coots, a few distant brown ducks, some 
cormorants, 1 pied billed grebe, some WF Ibis, a few unidentified Sparrows 
and 3 BN Stilts.  The Stilts were the only shorebirds we saw.  I'll admit we 
went around the tour loop fairly fast but I had expected to see more water 
birds. At the refuge headquarters we looked through a few Tanagers but they 
were all western.  Other interesting birds at Fish Springs were a 
Great-Tailed Grackle (listed as rare on the checklist) and a now-everywhere 
Eurasian-Collard Dove.

On our way home we stopped at James Walter Fitzgerald WMA near Faust.  
JWFWMA did not have the great passerines Fish Springs had but had many more 
water birds.  As we walked up we saw our first killdeer of the day, soon to 
be our first 50 killdeer.  Other shorebirds included Lesser Yellowlegs, W 
Phalarope, Dowitchers, Spotted Sandpipers, Am Avocets, Western Sandpiper, 
Baird’s Sandpiper and a possible Least Sandpiper.  Other water birds that 
were new for the day included a flock of Canvasback, Western and Clark’s 
Grebes, American White Pelican, Caspian Terns, a Black Tern and Franklin’s 
Gulls.



Eric Huish
Pleasant Grove UT
poorwill_ at hotmail.com
801-360-8777

_________________________________________________________________
http://liveearth.msn.com