More Mountains

Today Craig Faulhaber (above) and I hiked from Tony Grove to White Pine Lake. Again, I was in search of some of the many high-mountain birds I am still missing. I was able to pick up one of those, with my first Steller's Jays of the year. This is probably the most common species I had yet to find. We also saw several mountain specialties I had already seen, like Red Crossbills, Olive-sided Flycatchers, Williamson's Sapsuckers, and Clark's Nutcrackers. But the highlight was a single Band-tailed Pigeon (photo below). This species is common further south in Utah but has only been seen in Cache County a few times.

Inching Closer to 200

Yesterday Sarah Mohlman and I did a volunteer point count for the Little Bear Conservation Alliance. The LBCA is a group of landowners in the south end of Cache County who want to manage their lands to help wildlife. These landowners need to know which species are using their lands in order to protect those species, so Bryan Dixon has organized a group of volunteers, including myself, to conduct standardized surveys for birds on their lands.

Sarah and I found a total of 43 species on our 4.75 mile transect southwest of Avon, including five new species for the year for me. The highlight was a single adult male Lark Bunting, a very rare species in the valley. We also saw at least five different Yellow-breasted Chats. One Ruffed Grouse was heard drumming. Additional firsts of the year for me included Lark Sparrow (number 197) and Olive-sided Flycatcher (198). I'll be doing this transect twice more before the end of June, so hopefully we'll be able to turn up some more rarities there. Just two more species to 200!