Is Spring Coming Already?

Yesterday Stephanie Cobbold and I birded around Cache Valley, mostly by car. We stopped by the Logan Landfill, Benson Marina, 20-20 Ponds, Logan River Golf Course, the Fish Hatchery, and several other areas between Logan and Wellsville. We saw a hundred or so gulls at the landfill that were about 95% Ring-billed Gulls and 5% California Gulls plus a couple that we couldn't confidently identify. (We later identified two additional species from photographs.) I also saw my first Mourning Dove of the year, in Nibley.

Today we took a walk around Logan. We started up the Canal Trail, continued up to First Dam, then up the hill to the golf course and back down to the start of the Canal Trail. Spring was in the air, with relatively warm temperatures (around 40 degrees F) and sunshine inducing "Fee-bee" songs from the Black-capped Chickadees along the canal and courtship displays by the Barrow's Goldeneyes at First Dam. There was one Yellow-rumped Warbler along the Canal Trail, which will be common in the summer but for now are pretty rare here. We watched an ambitous Sharp-shinned Hawk take a shot at a flock of American Robins, but it missed. On the hillside above First Dam, near the canal and the golf course, we saw a flock of about six Chukars, my only first of the year for today.

Day One - Audubon 200 Club Kickoff

Every year, the Bridgerland Audubon Society leads a field trip on January 1st so that people who are trying for the 200 Club can get a good start on the first day of the year. Today I joined that trip and we found some great birds!

I couldn't sleep at all last night so at about 5:30AM I finally gave up and decided to start my birding for the year. I tried broadcasting owl calls in Green Canyon and Logan Canyon, but I didn't get any responses. On my way back to meet for the field trip, I stopped by the Logan Cemetery, where I found several bird species including a Brown Creeper.

The highlights for the Audubon field trip fell into two categories: boreal migrants that only occur in the county during the winter and birds that are more or less common in other times of the year, but which do not usually occur here in the winter. The winter migrants we saw included Bohemian Waxwings, American Tree Sparrows, Merlins, and Barrow's Goldeneye. Most of the birds that usually don't overwinter here were first located on the Christmas Bird Count a couple weeks ago, and included a Great Egret and a Greater Yellowlegs.

Notable misses included a White-throated Sparrow that Craig Fosdick and I could not relocate and a Short-billed Dowitcher that was seen on the CBC and earlier this morning, but which I could not find in my two visits to the area. In total, I ended up with 60 species for my list, a great start at 30% of the goal in a single day! But of course, the more species I've seen, the more difficult it will be to add new ones to the list. . . .