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For those of you who are doing
the National Parks contest and haven't done Bryce Canyon yet, I thought maybe I
could give you the lowdown on where we found our birds. We birded the Park
on Thursday afternoon and got 42 species. It is entirely possible to get
the species within the park boundaries, however, for those who do not hike, you
may want to include the Ruby's Inn area. The park includes it and S63 to
Highway 12 on their checklist of Bryce Canyon birds, and Robin says he would
allow those parameters.
There is water in four places in
the park, however the Riggs Spring Loop Trail has a road you can sometimes lose,
and the Under the Rim Trail looks long. We chose to go down the
Swamp Canyon, Sheep Creek Connecting Trail, but not much
further than where the water, a mere trickle, first disappeared. Here we
saw Turkey Vultures, a Red-naped Sapsucker, Flicker, Plumbeous Vireo, Steller's
Jay, Raven, Mountain Chickadee, both Nuthatches, Western Bluebird, Townsend's
Solitaire, Robin, 3 or 4 Warblers (We couldn't remember if we saw Grace's there
are not as they seemed to be everywhere we stopped) Western Tanager, Green
Tailed Towhee and Junco's.
The Mossy Cave Trail
is a full stream of water and includes a waterfall and weeping
cave. Many of the birds we had already seen, but it did include, a Golden
Eagle, Steller's Jays, Ravens, Swallows, Mountain Chickadee, Western Bluebirds,
Townsend's Solitaire, Robin, Western Tanager, Junco, Bullock's Oriole, Brewer's
Blackbirds, Warbling Vireo, Plumbeous Vireo, and a Cordilleran
Flycatcher.
There are Pooh Ponds
behind the visitor's center that you might check out. They are
accessed by taking the first right after entering the Residential area just
south of the Visitor's Center.
The road to Paria View
was good and at the view point the Swifts zip right over your
head, of course those 90 percent mouths with wings are there also just
waiting to make you itch.
You might try for the
operating Osprey nest on the west side of the road just before reaching
Farview Point, and Peregrines at Fairyland
Point.
Other than those areas, we just
stopped at the Lodge and other public areas and picked up a few birds
each place.
One of the best sightings of the
trip occurred along S20, the connecting road between I15 and Highway 89
south of Beaver. Between 8:30 - 9:00 P.M. for a couple of blocks the
sky was literally filled with Common Night Hawks. Hundreds. We had to
stop and enjoy. A perfect ending to a fun, fun day.
Carol Nelson
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