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Welcome to Utah Birds!
Hotline
Sightings & Reports
(State and
Local hotlines, Hotline Reports,
Sightings by County, National Hotlines)
New to the Photo Gallery
State
Calendar of Activities
Group
Activities & Events
Hotline Highlights
2008 Christmas Bird Count Schedule
St. George Winter Bird Festival -
January 29 -
February 1, 2009
Feature Pages:
Jerry Liguori, an expert in identifying flying
raptors, has sent in an article with excellent photos about the difficult
task of "Ageing Golden
Eagles in Flight" This specifically covers 1 to 3 year-old Golden
Eagles with very similar plumages having white in the wings or tail.
Feature Pages:
The number of pictures of albino birds sent in to
the Utah Birds website calls for a special
Albino Page which has been added
to Feature Section. If you have
pictures of other albino birds or a link to a good article on the subject
please send them in.Records Committee:
In some cases "heard only" is just fine!
Three sight records for a
Whip-poor-will in Cache County were submitted to the records committee
with several audio recording of
the bird calling. Although there have been
other records for this
species, the good recordings of the call may be just the thing that the
committee needs to put this species on your official state checklist and
make this a new "Utah bird."
Hotline Photos:
Not since
28 May 1977 has a
Yellow-billed Loon in breeding plumage been documented in Utah...
there have been only nine documented sighting in
Utah...ever!...until now.
Marci Welch sent in some
excellent photos of a Yellow-billed Loon at Jordanelle Reservoir which
sent birders dashing to the remote east shore of the reservoir to try to
find the bird before it continued its flight to the northern coast of
North America. Many birders got to see this rarity and for almost
all, it was a lifer! (Here's
a map of the previous sightings in Utah).
Places to Bird:
Merrill Webb wrote a series of article for the
Utah County Birders newsletter
entitled "Top 20 places in Utah to go birding before I die."
These articles have been incorporated into the "Places
to Bird" pages of the website. Here's
Merrill's top 20 birding locations in
Utah.
Places to Bird:
Sanpete County has gained two more birding places
with photos for its county pages. Eric Huish has submitted a
write-up and photos for
Skyview Drive - North and
Skyview drive - South.
He also recently sent in information and pictures of
Burriston Ponds in Juab
County which has been a popular birding place for years, but has not had a
write-up until now.
Checklists:
A new
checklist for San Juan County (in PDF format) is now available on the
website. The new checklist was created using the information from an
article by Lu Giddings in the UOS journal
which came out last month.
San Juan
County rivals Washington County for the greatest number of species
documented within a county borders.
Photo Gallery:
This year the
Photo Gallery is receiving more
new pictures than ever before (over 800 of them so far) -- and they're
better than ever! Some very interesting and unusual pictures have
come in recently like a
Great Blue Heron eating a goldfish, and a
group of California
Condors at Lava Point sent in by Shelly Spencer; close ups of the
hard-to-get Winter Wren
[second page] and the
easier Rock Wren [second
page] plus a very cute
Northern Saw-whet
Owl at Garr Ranch by Paul Higgins; an elegant
female Brown-headed
Cowbird on a strand of barbed wire by Kendall Brown; a
rare Long-tailed
Jaeger at rest and
on the fly by Rick
Fridell and Tim Avery; and many more. A BIG THANKS to the
photographers who
are sharing their fascinating art with all of us!
Feature Pages:
From the internet:
How to tell...you're NOT Mom's
favorite.
From the Internet:
Pomera Fronce received an email from Steve Carr who
received the following little bird item from somewhere on the internet --
originally from Scotland. Introducing probably a new species
of gull -- Larus
cleptomanius -- the Pilferous Gull
Feature Pages:
Two new articles have been added to the
Feature Pages. A
very friendly grouse in Yellowstone
decides to take up birding and joined right in with a very accepting
birding group in a submission by Marlene Foard.. Very close-up
pictures of Black Terns
nesting in Rich County were taken by Paul Higgins.
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