[Birdtalk] Yesterday's Bridgerland Audubon field trip

[Ryan O'Donnell]

Yesterday I joined about twelve other birders on the Bridgerland Audubon
Society's field trip around south Cache County.  Someone in our group
kept a complete list of birds seen; hopefully they can post a follow-up
to this.  In the meantime, I thought I'd share some of the highlights
since no one else has.
 
We started at the Miller sewage ponds (private property) in Hyrum, which
were not very busy.  The highlight here was a large raft of BUFFLEHEAD,
about 30 or 40 I'd guess.  We then went to Hyrum Reservoir.  Several
COMMON LOONS were on the water, with a flock of gulls that were too
distant to identify.  The highlight here was a single HORNED GREBE.
Next up was another patch of private land in Paradise, along the Little
Bear River.  This was a regular spot for owls, but we couldn't find any.
Birding was slow here, but we saw several Kestrels, Robins, Chickadees,
and Cedar Waxwings.  Finally, we drove west from Paradise and then north
into Wellsville along back roads in search of hawks.  We saw many
Red-tailed Hawks and one soaring ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK, the first of the
season for many of us.  The field trip then broke up, but the car I was
in took a side trip to Sue's Ponds.  Shorebirds were way down, with only
about 18 Long-billed Dowitchers remaining (not even a Killdeer, if I
recall correctly).  Gulls were about normal, with maybe 100 California
Gulls, about 10 Ring-billed Gulls and 4 HERRING GULLS.  The four Herring
Gulls were a season high so far for me; they were all first-winter
birds.
 
Good birding,
Ryan
 
Ryan P. O'Donnell
Department of Biology and the Ecology Center
Utah State University
5305 Old Main Hill
Logan, UT 84322-5305
 
http://200birds.blogspot.com