Back to Birding

It seems like I dropped off the face of the birding planet in February... I haven't posted here in months, and didn't go birding in March til the 30th... Then it hit, like wildfire! Spring birding at my front door, well almost. I managed to get out to some Salt Lake County locales at the end of March and got my fair share of spring migrants. The first Snowy Egret of the year, my first non-wintering shorebirds. Savannah Sparrows, Bonaparte's Gulls, and tons of waterfowl. Then I headed to St. George and the Washington County area with Colby Neuman, Jeff Bilsky and Carl Ingwell and jsut like that the fire is lit and I am once again back into it.

It's hard to believe the year is a 1/4 of the way over already. It seems like just yesterday I was finishing up my big year, and now here I am flying through 2008. An interesting comparison. On April 7, 2007 I had tallied 190 species of bird in Utah for the year. However, in 2008 I have seen 194 species thus far... WTF? How did that happen? I haven't been chasing, I haven't gone on any specialty trips for rare local birds... Its truly odd!

In any event this past weekends trip to the "dirty south" was a productive one at that. I added Band-tailed Pigeon to my Lyte Ranch List, and got some great photos. We had several very early returning migrants, or at least seemingly early, and definitely the first reports of the year. Scott's Oriole seemed to be the stunner for me, almost a month earlier than I would expect them. We had poorwill, black-hawk, Ash-throated Flycatcher, as well 5 species of warbler, including this beautiful male Painted Redstart form Zion Canyon...

Painted Redstart, Zion National Park, Utah. April 6, 2008

We ended up tallying around 125 species for the weekend, including 95 on Saturday, not a bad day seeing as we just pitter pattered around most of the day.

In any event, now I'm back in Salt Lake and looking forward to doing some shorebirding this weekend and seeing what I might be able to turn up! Bring it on full throttle!