Winter Wrens, Lark Buntings

[Mark Stackhouse <westwings at sisna dot com>]

There are actually confirmed breeding records of Winter Wren in Utah 
from recent years, and a few, not necessarily confirmed, earlier 
records of presumed breeding. I don't remember the exact dates or 
details, but there were presumed breeding records from, I believe, 
Bell's Canyon in Salt Lake County from about 20 or so years ago. More 
recently, at least two nests were found a couple of years ago in High 
Creek Canyon in Cache County. Presumably, they continue to nest there, 
but I haven't heard any definite reports. So the idea of summer, or 
even nesting, Winter Wrens in Utah isn't that far-fetched. I suspect 
that it's another case of a previously overlooked occurrence which 
we're noticing more and more because there are more of us looking.

As far as Lark Buntings are concerned, I have to agree with Bob Bond 
that this appears to be an exceptional year for them in Utah. I think 
that Deseret Ranch is the most regular location in Utah for Lark 
Buntings, and the numbers vary greatly from year to year. Usually there 
are at least a few, rarely there are none seen in a year, and sometimes 
they're surprisingly abundant. In the ten years that I've been 
surveying the birds on the ranch there have been a couple of years with 
really remarkable numbers of buntings, including one year where they 
were one of the most abundant birds on one of my Breeding Bird Surveys 
(BBS) on the ranch. This year, however, may top that year. I just did a 
BBS yesterday, and I'm sure that I counted over 50 Lark Buntings, and 
the survey I did isn't the one which usually has the most buntings. I 
won't do that survey until Friday. It'll be interesting to see how many 
we get on that survey.

On last Saturday's day trip to the ranch, one of the trip highlights 
(aside from the mama bear and her cub that we watched foraging in the 
aspens) was the large number of Lark Buntings. We probably saw over 100 
all through the eastern part of the ranch. Overall, we saw 126 species 
of birds. In addition to all the usual suspects, we saw a late Marbled 
Godwit , a Horned Grebe in breeding plumage, and a Greater Scaup.

Good birding!

Mark Stackhouse
Westwings, Inc.
westwings@sisna.com
801-487-9453

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