UCB Trip to Antelope Island

Led by our fearless leader, Reed Stone, five Utah County Birders set out early Saturday morning for Antelope Island. We had three target birds on our list: the Lapland Longspur, Long-tailed Duck, and Snow Bunting. In Lehi we ran into some rather heavy fog which occasionally lifted enough to encourage us on to Syracuse and Antelope Island.

The town of Syracuse was like a winter wonderland with trees gracefully laced with frost. The Causeway look bleak and totally socked in with fog when we arrived at 9:30 a.m. With less than a quarter-mile visibility it was good we were looking for the Longspurs which we expected to find somewhere along the sides of the causeway. We were positive that at least one Longspur was well disguised among the skittish groups of Horned Larks that were popping up all over the place. Some larks we observed were "snow-shoeing" awkwardly across the deep snow, others were digging furiously in exposed ribbons of sand, still others kept popping up out of snowladen brush and stalks of grass along the ice- and snow-covered beaches. We ran into several other parties who had the same report - the only birds out in the fog that morning seemed to be Horned Larks. It started to look pretty discouraging! No matter how we tried to turn a Horned Lark into a Longspur, they just would not cooperate. After nearly an hour of slowly serpentining along the causeway we still only had one bird on our list - the Horned Lark.

But then our luck began to change and a dismal, unpleasantly cold and foggy morning turned into a terrific day of birding. The sun came out and one by one the birds started to appear. Our list began to grow. We visited the Bountiful Landfill and Kaysville Ponds on the way back and by the time we started for home we had 38 birds for the day. - - -Unbelievable!