17 February 2025

Utah Junipers

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2020
Scrub-jay in a juniper, East Millcreek, Salt Lake City, Utah, 02 June 2020.
Scrub-jay in a juniper.

There’s a high slope with a southern exposure along the trail I hike with Jack each day, a slope that’s dotted with Utah Juniper trees. Besides the junipers, it’s mostly a sagebrush barren—with a few scrub-oaks sprinkled here and there. But I’ve come to know the little junipers as good places to look for birds.

For one thing, there’re the little blue berries—hundreds, thousands of them. Certainly they attract thrushes (solitaires, robins), corvids (magpies, scrub-jays), finches, and a bunch of other birds. Their branches are perches for singers like Chipping Sparrows and Spotted Towhees and Lazuli Buntings. Nearly every time I’ve seen a Black-throated Gray Warbler, it’s at least stopped off briefly in a juniper’s thick, safe interior.

For another thing, they offer shade—and a barrier to hide behind while sneaking up on, say, a singing Warbling Vireo. Also they make for a nice green-dotted high-desert landscape.

As we used to do in Texas, some locals here call them “cedars.” But they’re junipers to me.

Grandeur Peak Area List
Beginning at 7:45 a.m., I hiked several hundred feet up a mountain.

1. California Quail*
2. Black-headed Grosbeak
3. Black-chinned Hummingbird
4. American Robin* (v)
5. Lazuli Bunting
6. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
7. Woodhouse’s Scrub-jay
8. Golden Eagle
9. Spotted Towhee
10. House Finch*
11. Black-billed Magpie* (v)
12. Song Sparrow** (v)
13. Pine Siskin (v)
14. Black-capped Chickadee (v)
15. Warbling Vireo (v)
16. MacGillivray’s Warbler
17. Chipping Sparrow (v)
18. Cooper’s Hawk
19. Northern Flicker

Elsewhere

20. House Sparrow
21. European Starling (v)
22. Eurasian Collared Dove (v)

Mammals

None

(v) Voice only
*Also elsewhere
**Voice only elsewhere

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Bird Report is a (sometimes intermittent) record of the birds I encounter while hiking, see while driving, or spy outside my window. —Brian Willson



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