Carl Ingwell and I decided to get out of Salt Lake and head to warmer weather down in Southern Utah last weekend (2/5-2/6). We have a great camping site on the Beaver Dam Slope that we visit from time to time.

The first night, we were greeted by a vocal Great Horned Owl and howling coyotes. A fire, some whiskey, the stars and the sounds of the night; there's a magic to being out there.

The birding was relatively slow throughout the weekend in terms of what is possible in such a unique habitat, but we still picked up some the area specialities. Saturday morning the Cactus Wrens were quite noisy on the slope. A drive to Lytle Ranch and we picked up Verdin, Western Bluebirds, and Ladder-backed Woodpecker. The ranch was closed so we were only able to briefly bird from the main road. Due to recent flood damage it is not looking likely to be open to the public again any time soon.

We visited a lot of the St. George area hot spots. Other highlights included a flock of geese at the SR-9 Sewage Ponds that included 3 Ross's and 6 Snow Geese. Quail Creek Reservoir had a Common Loon and the Red Cliff's Campground had a presumed female Anna's Hummingbird. Any inquiries about any of these sightings or a complete list, let me know and I'd be happy to share.

This winter has been dismal at the bird. It's already mid February and I am without a Rosy-Finch for the year. Typically Alta and Snowbird produce decent numbers of easy to view Black and Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches, but this winter it seems to be pretty miss and miss. I am not sure of others luck but each trip I have made up the canyon has been to see empty feeders. Well today I decided I wasn't going to drive up to an empty group of random feeders again this winter--I was going to make my own luck.

I picked up two cheap feeders from Home Depot, grabbed a couple pounds of mixed see from my garage, and Sam and I headed up Little Cottonwood Canyon to scout a few locations. After driving around a bit I decided on a tree right off the main road with an area that has enough room to safely pull off and out of traffics way, and hung the two feeders at eye-level:


Ah, two feeders, filled to the brim with seed and easy to find. So here is what I am asking. If you go up to view the feeders please bring a little bit of food with you to help keep the feeders full. As long as they are still there, birds will come in and be easy to view. You can walk right up to the feeders and twist the tops off to fill in a minute or two as they are only about 25 feet from the road.

As for the where, they are exactly 6.15 miles up the canyon from the park and ride right at the mouth. Once you have gone just about 6 miles you will pass the 1st entrance to Snowbird, and from there it's .2 miles to the feeders on the right (south) side of the road just before the 2nd entrance to the Bird.

Please let us know what you are seeing if you go up there, hopefully these will stay up for a while. I am also working on getting a couple more up at another location and will post more about that if it happens.

Following in the wake of Mr. Ingwell's post on favorite birds, I thought it would be fun to talk about some of our favorite places to bird in the state of Utah. As with birds, it's tough to pick one favorite. So what defines a favorite place? Good birds? Good habitat? While I love looking at birds (and other wildlife), I actually loved hiking first. So for me, I love spots that are out of the way and up in the mountains. The Lamb's Canyon Trail off of I-80 is great for that. Also Willow Lake in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Anywhere that has singing Hermit Thrushes is usually pretty solid for me. I really like the Conifer/Aspen mix. If I shift to thinking about just pure birding for the goal of seeing the most variety of species, I'd obviously say Lytle Ranch in Southern Utah and Deseret Ranch in Northern Utah. Picking Deseret is sort of cheating since it is so large and has such a variety of habitats. But there's no rules to favorites other than for this post I'm saying Utah only! We can do a follow up post of "My Favorite Places! (World)" next. So anyway, let's hear where others like to explore...

People always ask me what my favorite bird is, and I’ve never really known what to say. Today, I actually thought about the answer to that question. I couldn’t name 1 particular favorite. I broke my answer up into two different categories: Non-Utah Birds & Utah Birds. Here’s the list.

Utah Birds- Ferruginous Hawk (probably the closest you can get to #1), Sandhill Crane, Northern Saw-whet Owl, Common Poorwill, Stellar’s Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, White-breasted Nuthatch, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Cedar Waxwing, Green-tailed Towhee, Spotted Towhee, Brewer’s Sparrow, and Lark Sparrow.

Non-Utah Birds- Brahminy Kite, Wedge-tailed Eagle, White-bellied Sea-Eagle, Pied Imperial-Pigeon, Blue-winged Kookaburra, Superb Fairy-wren, and Red-headed Honeyeater.

Okay, so I only put on species that I’ve seen. If I were to add a few that I haven’t seen, I’d have to put on Harris’s Hawk and Great Gray Owl. That was fun. What are everyone else's favorites?

Carl

I have to take back my cantankerous post from earlier. For those of you that didn't see it, too bad, it's deleted forever :).

The point I was trying to drive at was this: As birders, and as humans who care about the plantet, we sometimes act in direct opposition to our superficial claims. I see it all too often in myself and others. Every day, I try and improve my relations with the Earth, celebrate biodiversity, and support conservation. I hold birders to a high standard, and hope they do those same things too, so it disappoints me when I see that they're not.

There is an interesting question that comes from all of this. How much conservation should we support? Do our interests outweigh the interests of capitalism, recreation, etc.? In my own opinion, they do. Conservation biology and the environmental movement can't be squashed by big business, overpopulation, or anything else if we are to survive as a species on this planet. I don't think any God, or new technology, will save us from the destruction we inflict upon ourselves, so why wait?

Where do we draw the line? Should we remove all Tamarisk from the Colorado River at the expense of nesting Willow Flycatchers? Do we shut down all natural gas wells because they are negatively affecting Greater Sage Grouse and our water quality? Should we all trade in our SUVs for bikes? I know the choices that the birds would like us to make, but what choices will we make?

I wish you all good luck in your quest to become better stewards of the Earth. Let me know if you'd like to join forces.

Carl