Heber and Strawberry Valleys

[cldavis at xmission dot com]

On the way to Heber Valley on Tuesday, Nicky and I drove up the road to
Sundance and stopped at Aspen Grove to taunt the owls, to no avail.  Up
that canyon we did see a Townsend's Solitaire, MacGillivray's Warblers, and
heard many Hermit Thrush.

The famous Heber Valley fields were teeming with bobolinks, savannah
sparrows, and Wilson's snipe.  We also saw a couple of sandhill cranes.  

In Strawberry Valley, amidst the rain, we saw mountain bluebirds, turkey
vultures, vesper sparrows, a golden eagle, house wrens, Brewer's sparrows,
green-tailed towhees, flycatchers, and red-tails riding the thermals with
swallows.   We also saw a raven that had trouble flying because it had so
many spaces in between its wing feathers from small birds jabbing at it.

On the way back down towards Heber, about halfway down the canyon, we pulled
into a little hideaway next to a small stream.  Our plan was to try a few
owl calls, but plans change.  We saw more birds in an approximate 20ft by
20ft area than any place we've ever been.  First there was a dipper with a
toupee, which turned out to be a catbird who acted like a dipper so we
decided to start a new species called the "catdip".  It flew up and down
the stream with regularity, stopping on all the rocks, searching for bugs,
and hauling them back down the stream to the nest.  Then we had western
tanagers and fledges foraging right next to the car?too close for photos. 
We also saw black-headed grosbeaks, a white-crowned sparrow and baby,
yellow warblers and babies, two different kinds of flycatchers and a pewee,
chickadees, a ruby-crowned kinglet, green-tailed towhees, song sparrows,
robins, and a goldfinch.  We were only there about half an hour. Great
place!  Sixty species total for the soggy day.

Carol

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