Provo airport dike

["L. D. Giddings" <seldom74 at xmission dot com>]

Drove the Provo airport dike early this afternoon. It was pretty dead,
although between planes and helicopters zooming all over the place, cars
racing up and down the dike, and several different groups engaged in
clay pigeon hunting, it wasn't a surprise. There were three sage
sparrows mixed with a group of white-crowned sparrows south of the new
control tower, and I heard a pair of sandhill cranes calling near the
southwest corner of the dike. The first double-crested cormorant of the
year flew by, out over the lake. The water level is slowly climbing back
up. The moat was as full as I can remember it in several years. The lake
is still very low, compared to its non-drought levels, but it seems to
be slowly but surely coming back. Hopefully by the time the run-off has
hit the lake, the developed fields surrounding the dike will be under
several feet of water and the Provo Bay development will be a dead issue
until the next major drought.

One sad note: the Osprey platform near the Provo airport road is
completely surrounded by a new development. There are not yet any
houses, but from the look of things they will be built in the
not-too-distant future. It would seem that 2004 will be the last time we
see Ospreys using it, unless they are far more tolerant of human
encroachment that I'm guessing they are.

Lu Giddings


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