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Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!! for all your great advice and
suggestions about the various hawks.
I received so much helpful and useful information. You all are great! Several people mentioned taking the frontage road to Mona, which a friend and I did Sunday afternoon, from about 3:00 p.m. until dusk So armed with binoculars and bird books ("Birds" by Ken Kaufman and the
Golden Field Guide to Western Birds) we headed out.
First stop was Camelot in Springville, where we watched a Spotted Towhee
scratching and scrabbling in the snow and dirt for food. His bright colors were
beautiful against the drab landscape. It was exciting to find and identify the
bird using the bird books!!! We watched it for nearly 10 minutes.
I noticed that there's a For Sale sign at Camelot and the information that
the family put up at the entrance gate is gone. The gate was open and it looked
like people have been inside. We didn't go in because we wanted to see the
Hawks!
We took the exit after the second Santaquin exit, just as you begin to head
downhill into the Mona/Nephi valley. This is about 10 miles north of Mona. (In
my excitement I did not take precise notes.) We saw LOTS of hawks.
Photographed a couple of them and will be better able to ID them when we get the
prints. The best thing would be to have a digital camera with a long lens to
photograph the birds and study them later. The photos and web-links you'all have
sent are great!
We saw one that we could positively ID as a RedTailed Hawk. I am amazed at
the variations that exist among a single species. We saw 13 hawks in trees near
the Young Living Farm and what looked like Rodeo Grounds about 3 miles N of
Mona. Lighting wasn't too good, it was hazy, so we could mostly see the
silhouettes of the birds and not their colors. We watched them sit and
occasionally one would fly off and then return to another branch. I had always
thought that hawks were more solitary birds, yet thirteen seemed like a "flock."
On the south end of the Young Living Farm we saw the forms of two more
hawks. Drove a little closer and we positively ID'd the farther away one as a
Bald Eagle! It was beautiful and a highlight of the day.
Well actually there was a second highlight. We watched what appeared to be
a falcon/accipiter (it was slenderer than the Buteo family and the wings were
slenderer) eat a gopher/ground squirrel (it was bigger than a mouse). The
bird flew out of some weeds, carrying something. It landed on the snow and
began to "skin" its catch. Bit by bit it tore off the fur and tossed it over its
shoulder. It spent about 3-4 minutes doing this. The pieces landed about 1-2
feet behind the bird. Then it began peeling off strips of flesh and swallowing
them. Some of the pieces were quite large, in comparison to the bird--2-3 times
the length of its beak. It spent another 2-3 minutes eating and then gracefully
lifted into the sky and soared away.
As the dusk deepened, the birds went to roost and we went home to our
children.
It was a wonderful day!
Linda
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