[Birdtalk] Sage Sparrow arrival correction

[Eric Huish]

Regarding my earliest sighting of Sage Sparrow in my previous email. I had looked up the data wrong on eBird. I had accidentally hit the 'all time records' button. My earliest (date of arrival) sighting in Utah county is actually Feb 17 2005. The exact same day as today only four years ago. I also noticed a Sage Sparrow was seen in Salt Lake on the Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend. So I guess this is a normal time for them to show up in northern Utah.


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

 
 On Feb 17, 2009, at 8:07 PM, Eric Huish <poorwill_ at hotmail.com> wrote:
 
 >
 > Ned Bixler, Matt Mills and I drove the Provo Airport Dike this 
 > afternoon. In the fields East of the East end of the PAD the were a 
 > few hundred Canada Geese. At the Southeast corner of the loop there 
 > was a lot of waterfowl. They would fly up, spend some time in the 
 > air, then disappear into the marsh, then fly up again and land 
 > again. They kept flushing and settling over and over. We finally 
 > found a couple Bald Eagles circling way up in the sky and then had a 
 > Prairie Falcon fly past us.
 >
 > Along the South leg of the Dike we didn't see anything but a few 
 > Northern Harriers out on the Airport. At the Southwest corner the 
 > storm hit. It was windy with a heavy downpour of 'bouncy snow'. 
 > Here we saw a few sparrows at least one of which was acting 
 > suspiciously like a Sage Sparrow. After several minutes of trying 
 > to get a good look the storm finally let up a little and we got a 
 > good look at a Sage Sparrow feeding on the side of the road with a 
 > White-crowned Sparrow. I looked up arrivals for Utah County in eBird 
 > and the earliest date for Sage Sparrow was a bird I saw on the Provo 
 > Airport Dike March 12, 1997.
 >
 > Here is a list of the Birds we saw. Matt also got a look at some 
 > Cinnamon Teal that I never got a very good look at in the flocks of 
 > waterfowl.
 >
 > Location: Provo Airport Dike - Utah Co. UT
 > Observation date: 2/17/09
 > Notes: Windy. Heavy snow storm for 20 min.
 > Number of species: 18
 >
 > Canada Goose 325
 > American Wigeon 50
 > Mallard 100
 > Northern Pintail 75
 > Green-winged Teal 20
 > Redhead 3
 > Common Goldeneye 2
 > Great Blue Heron 2
 > Northern Harrier 4
 > Red-tailed Hawk 3
 > Bald Eagle 2
 > Prairie Falcon 1
 > Rock Pigeon 20
 > Northern Flicker 1
 > American Robin 1
 > Sage Sparrow 1
 > Song Sparrow 2
 > White-crowned Sparrow 4
 >
 > This report was generated automatically by eBird
 > -------------
 >
 > 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://secureserver.securesites.net/pipermail/birdtalk/attachments/20090217/98ac6e9b/attachment.htm