Box Elder & Cache County birds

[Mark Stackhouse <westwings at sisna dot com>]

Note: David Wheeler asked me to forward this note to birdnet:

Hello one & all!

On Saturday, September 6th, I birded in Box Elder  and  Cache Counties
and stumbled across some interesting birds.  Here are the highlights (I
am sorry I haven't been able to post these sightings sooner):

Blackpoll warbler:  Box Elder Campground, next to Mantua.  It was an
mmature individual working the tall willows near the creek toward the
lower part of the lower loop.  It seemed less frenetic than some of the
other birds nearby and stayed low in the trees, thus allowing extended
views over many minutes.  I've never seen so much activity in this place

as that morning, with warbling vireos, various warblers, many Downy
woodpeckers and an immature sapsucker (is it late enough in the year to
assume it to be Yellow-bellied? --must check the literature), various
flycatchers, waxwings, and robins, all swarming around the place as if
it were a tropical mixed-species flock.  Very exciting.

Black & white warbler:  Mantua Reservoir, near where the creek enters at

the eastern (?) corner just befor the perimeter road is gated off when
one heads counter-clockwise around the reservoir.  This was a
female/immature male.

White-winged crossbill:  Tony Grove Lake in Logan Canyon.  A small flock

(about 10) of males & females, with clear white & black wing bars flew
through the area, pausing here and there on top of tall firs/spruces.

Other birds of interest included Baird's sandpipers, along with many
other shorebirds, at the water treatment ponds on the north-south road
leading to Cutler Reservoir (Cache Valley) and the sheer numbers of
Swainson's hawks in Cache Valley (kettling up for their trip down south,

to merge into that avian wonder, the "River of Raptors" that flows past
Veracruz City on tropical thermals rising off of sugar cane and coffee
fincas (sigh, it it obvious I need my fix of Mexico right about now?).

Anyway, it's a good time of year to be birding, whether local migrant
traps or places where parakeets vie with Chestnut-colored woodpeckers
and chlorophonias for one's attention.  I hope you all get a chance to
enjoy the season.

--David