Utah’s state bird is, rather peculiarly, the California Gull. These gulls are literally legendary, credited with saving the crops of settlers from the East (in what is now the Salt Lake City area) back in the 1840s. I’ve seen a few California Gulls in town, but during my hikes with the captain, I see a lot more of the state bird of Maine, the place I left to move to SLC—where I arrived exactly a year ago today.
Black-caps have a subtly different accent out here, especially in their “gargling” call (far more declarative and far-carrying out here), but their behavior is just the same. Problem is, I don’t have chickadees flitting around tall trees of the sort dog and I hiked through in Maine; rather, this part of the high desert has wide, open spaces populated by low-slung scrub oak and occasional junipers.
But in the cool shade of Coyote Canyon, lined by bigtooth maples, I can occasionally grab a decent photo of a bird that doesn’t seem as skittish as most (in either state).
Grandeur Peak Area List Beginning at 8 a.m., I hiked a few hundred feet up a mountain.
I see more doves and pigeons here than I ever did in Maine. For one thing, there’s an extra species (Eurasian Collared Dove); for another, the pigeons here come in flocks of a hundred or more—at this time of year, at least, when they swoop and veer in huge numbers up and around the foothill canyons.
Alhough I rarely get an up-close look at them, today dog and I encountered a solitary bird perched on a rocky overlook. We stopped. It stayed, I approached nearer. It stayed. I got near enough for close-up photos, and the pigeon didn’t move. Then I noticed the blue band around it’s leg.
Not the first banded pigeon I’ve seen here, turns out. I got nothing against pigeons, though. In fact, I rather like ’em.
Grandeur Peak Area List Beginning at 8 a.m., I hiked a few hundred feet up a mountain.
I’ll admit it: I’m a patch birder. For about a decade or so I’ve regularly birded one patch or other (with a rare—and delightful—excursion to Monhegan Island, one of my favorite places on the planet). Sure, patch birders might miss out on variety, rare vagrants, long life lists. But if you really want to get to know a place, it helps to get to know individual birds when they return to their particular trees each spring.
Broad-tailed Hummingbird (male).
I’m also an ear birder—that is, my very first true birding experiences involved chasing down songs until I found the birds that made ’em. (Fortunately, my ears remain more sensitive than my eyes even.)
In this new (well, almost year-old) Utah patch, I’ve gotten to know a bunch of new species, individual members of those species, their voices, their habits, their subtler sounds. Take, for instance, the Black-throated Green Warbler. Just today I confirmed that I can ID that species by its chip note. Tell you the truth, it feels kind of like a superpower.
Also today, I heard a chip note I had not yet learned. It sounded to me like a warbler’s, but it wasn’t a dry note (like the black-throated gray’s)—it had a touch of music to it. A tiny sweet tone. And then I spied the bird.
My next challenge is to be able to ID a Virginia’s Warbler by its chip. We shall see.
Grandeur Peak Area List Beginning at 8 a.m., I hiked a few hundred feet up a mountain.
1. Rock Pigeon* 2. Lazuli Bunting 3. Mourning Dove 4. House Finch* 5. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 6. Brewer’s Sparrow 7. Spotted Towhee 8. American Robin** 9. Black-capped Chickadee (v) 10. Black-chinned Hummingbird 11. Broad-tailed Hummingbird 12. Cooper’s Hawk 13. Virginia’s Warbler 14. Woodhouse’s Scrub-jay (v) 15. Black-throated Gray Warbler 16. Pine Siskin (v) 17. Barn Swallow
Elsewhere
18. Black-billed Magpie (v)
(v) Voice only *Also elsewhere **Voice only elsewhere
