[Birdtalk] more White-winged Crossbills and other sightings

[Colby Neuman]

Hi all,

Don Youso (from FL) and I went up the Mirror Lake highway early this morning
in search of Black Rosy-Finch and White-winged Crossbill.  We went to the
group camp area at Washington Lake (reached by taking the turnoff to Trial
Lake).  We had a couple RED CROSSBILLS in the general area, but no
White-winged Crossbills.  We then drove slowly through the main campground
at Washington Lake and had a couple more flyover Red Crossbills.  Finally we
gave up and headed for Bald Mountain Pass.  On the pass itself, we
encountered several small flocks of crossbills, but we only saw Reds again.
>From here we walked to the east along the south slope of Bald Mountain.
While scanning the remaining snow patches for rosy-finch, I heard a BLACK
ROSY-FINCH in the distance, and after awhile, we had two BLACK ROSY-FINCH
fly right over heads before they circled around to the south and out of
sight.  We decided to head back to the car after scanning the slope for
about 30 more minutes with no success besides two birds foraging on a very
distant snowpatch.  While walking back up to the pass with crossbills flying
all around us, we stumbled upon two immature WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILLS perched
on a branch 20 ft away at eye level.  They sat quite obligingly for several
minutes.  I'm guessing 75% of the crossbills seen today were immature
birds.  The abundance of crossbills on the pass almost reminded me of the
Black Hills in South Dakota.

Also, I was down in the Tushar Mountains (Beaver Co.) this weekend.  I had a
LEWIS' WOODPECKER flycatching from a big dead tree on private property (seen
from SR 150) about 200 yards east of an electric station that's at the base
of the canyon that goes up to Elk Meadows.  It's been awhile since I've
heard the drum, but I think I had a distant THREE-TOED WOODPECKER drumming
on Saturday evening on Big John Flat (accessed by FR 123).  Both mornings,
BROWN CREEPER and GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET sang around camp.

One more thing, while biking up Emigration Canyon, I had a GRAY CATBIRD
singing early last week just above the camp (sorry, forgot the name) that's
about 1/4 of the way up the canyon.

Colby
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