23 Dec 2007
Dinosaur Nation Monument
Uintah County, Utah
E-mail from Clay Johnson (24 Dec 2007):
Hi All,
Things are slow out here…we got a bunch of snow, and temperatures have
been dropping to around zero every night, rising to nearly 20 during the
days, and not a lot of sunshine.
My son and I went over to Ouray Saturday…we saw lots of porcupines, a
scrub jay, a bald eagle, red tailed hawks, 7 robins, white-crowned
sparrows, a spotted towhee, red winged blackbirds, northern flickers,
pheasants, antelope, a frustratingly brief glimpse of some relatively
light colored big owl…and two nearly stuck Toyotas, one of which was our
own. If you go to Ouray, don’t assume that the plowed, flat, road-like
expanse is congruent with the underlying road; it isn’t.
This morning I ran over to the Dinosaur National Monument Quarry and Split
Mountain for a few minutes, seeing only red tailed hawks and Canada geese
along the river. I took one long-range photo of “goose-ends”…three geese
in a row. In the photo, you can see that the center goose (which
appears slightly larger than the other two) has a white forehead and more
extensive white on the cheeks/head than is typical. I assume this is
just a Canada variant, rather than a hybrid. I sent a pic to Milt.
Happy Holidays!
Clay
Photo by Clay Johnson
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