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My wife Judy and I spotted a male Summer Tanager
and male Blue Grosbeak at Tonaquint Park in St. George on Saturday around noon.
I even got photographs of them, though not very good - just enough to ID the
birds. A Black Phoebe was also present on the pond at Tonaquint.
We also thought we saw a Cassin's Kingbird near the
pond at the south end of Washington Fields, but didn't get a good enough look to
count.
One of our favorite birding spots, the Arboretum at
Santa Clara, apparently had a recent fire. Very sad. This used to be a great
spot to see Crissal Thrashers. The Bewick's Wrens are still around.
For fun, we stopped at the Newcastle Reservoir to
look for the Brown Pelican. No luck, just boaters and fishermen. Also, the
Band-tailed Pigeons are present at their usual haunt, the IFA in Cedar
City.
We were surprised by the paucity of buteos and
eagles on this particular trip. Admittedly, we haven't been birding seriously
for a number of years until just recently, but trips along the back roads near
Milford and Delta in past years used to turn up a dozen or more of these
birds perched on the power poles. We only saw 1 Swainson's and 1 Red-tailed - no
eagles of any kind.
Jim Bailey
2032 Ribbon Lane Salt Lake City, UT (801) 274-8034 A hobby must be in a large degree useless,
inefficient, laborious or
irrelevant -Aldo Leopold |