November birds in San Juan county

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

I just returned from a few days in San Juan county. As expected, the
migration is mostly over and winter birds have begun to arrive. There
are American crows everywhere. I passed a murder of about 50 as I
entered Moab early this afternoon. I missed my two target birds. Highway
construction in Devil's Canyon made it nearly impossible to stop and
look for acorn woodpeckers, although I did see possible evidence of the
species in other areas in the county. Hopefully the construction, which
was going on during my visit in October, will be over by Thanksgiving.
Gunnison sage grouse were not anywhere to be seen, but then again, I
didn't really expect to see any, although I had hopes. I also did not
see a shore bird or a wader, not even a killdeer or a great blue heron,
anywhere in my fairly extensive explorations.

But the bird gods compensated me in other ways. Perhaps the highlight of
the trip was a journey along Forest Road 088, up and over the Bear's
Ears and past Kigalia station to Blanding. I started rather late in the
day and found myself rather rushed, given the extraordinary numbers of
montane birds in the area. The ponderosa pines are choked with cones.
Within the six miles between the Bears Ears and Kigalia station I saw
two groups of red crossbills, three groups of pygmy nuthatches (and
heard at least 6-7 more groups), two northern goshawks, a golden eagle,
two groups of blue grouse, and three flocks of wild turkeys, one with 18
birds. The rare bird of the trip was a white-sided junco, a variety of
dark-eyed junco only found occasionally west of the rocky mountains,
feeding with other dark-eyed juncoes and a low-level pygmy nuthatch.

Waterfowl numbers were down from last month, but there were still about
2-3000 birds on the Hickman Flats Road wetlands late Saturday afternoon,
along with a solitary Bonaparte's gull. The wetlands was deserted when I
drove up early this morning, but several hundred Canada geese were seen
leaving the area a few minutes before I arrived. Waterfowl highlights
include a female bufflehead in a pond near Monticello, a female common
goldeneye along with one of the common loons in Ken's Lake (thanks for
the report, Marcy!), and a male hooded merganser keeping company with
several hundred ring-necked ducks in the big pond at the Dugout Ranch.

Lu Giddings

Places birded (nearly all of these will show up in DeLorme's):
- Monticello, including Lloyd's Lake, Monticello municipal reservoirs,
Gordon reservoir, and the Hickman Flats Road wetlands
- Ucolo and vicinity
- Devil's Canyon and vicinity
- Recapture Reservoir
- Blanding, including the Blanding sewage lagoons
- west of Ismay, on the Utah side
- Manti-LaSal national forest, Forest Road 088
- the North Creek road through the LaSals and over to Newspaper Rock
- Indian Creek vicinity
- Ken's Lake


Species list:
Common Loon
Pied-billed Grebe
Eared Grebe
Western Grebe
Canada Goose
Gadwall
American Wigeon
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Redhead
Ring-necked Duck
Lesser Scaup
Bufflehead
Common Goldeneye
Common Merganser
Hooded Merganser
Ruddy Duck
Northern Harrier
Northern Goshawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Ferruginous Hawk
Golden Eagle
American Kestrel
Blue Grouse
Wild Turkey
American Coot
Sandhill Crane
Bonaparte's Gull
Rock Dove
Belted Kingfisher
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Loggerhead Shrike
Steller's Jay
Western Scrub-Jay
Black-billed Magpie
American Crow
Common Raven
Horned Lark
Mountain Chickadee
White-breasted Nuthatch
Pygmy Nuthatch
Marsh Wren
Western Bluebird
Mountain Bluebird
Townsend's Solitaire
American Robin
European Starling
Cedar Waxwing
Song Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Red-winged Blackbird
Western Meadowlark
Cassin's Finch
Red Crossbill
Pine Siskin
House Sparrow



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