Our 2 Bar-tailed Godwits are continuing on their amazing journeys. E5, who left Alaska on September 21, was approaching the Fiji Islands as of Thursday morning at 7:22 a.m (Alaska time). Total distance traveled to that point was approximately 8,500 km (5,300 mi), leaving some 3,000 km to go to reach New Zealand. Z0 left Alaska a couple of days later and as of September 28 was just north of the southern end of the Marshall Islands. This bird has covered some 7,000 km (4,350 mi) in 5 days and should make New Zealand sometime on or about October 2. The two transmitter equipped Bar-taileds that remain in Alaska (E8 and Z4) ought to be leaving soon, I would think.

And also a tip of the hat to John at A D.C. Birding Blog for locating another USGS website that is tracking the migration of Alaskan Black Oystercatchers. While their travels do not rival the epic journeys of the Bar-tailed Godwits or Bristle-thighed Curlews, knowledge of wintering locations will help in protecting this "species of conservation concern."

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our bird last week was an Inca Dove; for this week a bird from what may be one of the most difficult families of all (at least for me). Have fun, lots of luck, and good birding!

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today I met my goal of seeing 100 species within 6 months in the area around Bryce Canyon National Park after adding four to the list in the past few days. Number 98 came while roaming around the eastern edge of the park on Monday where I encountered a flock of about 20 Bushtits moving through the Gambel Oaks right at the park boundary. Today I was on the way back from the lake with a wet dog when I notice a lot of movement in the brush beside the road and decided to check things out. I didn't see anything new at first - juncos, Chipping Sparrows, and bluebirds - but then a behavior caught my eye that didn't seem to fit with the aforementioned species and when it popped out so I could get a better look at it I found an American Goldfinch. I eased on down the road to find another group of birds and the first was a sparrow that I recognized but couldn't quite place. Out came the field guide and what would turn out to be number 100 was a Song Sparrow. Not satisfied (I knew I was close but hadn't tallied the list for a few days) I kept looking and discovered several White-crowned Sparrows foraging in the same area. Try as I might, I was unsuccessful in adding a fourth species to the day's total when I just could not get good enough views of a greenish-yellow bird that was in that location, too. It was most likely a Common Yellowthroat, but I just can't be certain, so we stand at 101 species to date

Two species on my list are not on the official checklist for Bryce Canyon National Park so I still need one to make that list complete. They are Burrowing Owl (documented but not yet added) and Eurasian Collared-dove (not sure why they aren't on it because the development just outside the park is riddled with them). And I need 6 to have seen half of the total number of species on the checklist.

(Click to see full list.)

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Roxy and I took a little trip through time yesterday - geologic time that is. Leaving the 40-60 Mya (million years ago) Claron Formation limestones of Bryce Canyon, we bobbed and weaved our way back through about 120 million years of Earth history until we arrived at our first destination in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument: Devil's Garden. The formations here - "goblins", "stone babies", and arches - are sculpted from Entrada Sandstone. These rocks date back to the Middle Jurassic and are formed from sediments laid down on beaches, tidal flats, and dunes.

From there we continued east into the monument where we drove along a section of Utah Highway 12 known as "The Hogsback". The trip seemed a little more tame this time but back in April we were heading downhill (some areas with 14% grades and very sharp curves) with a 10,000 pound (4600 kg) trailer pushing us along. This photo is from one of several pullouts along the highway looking into Calf Creek Canyon. The most abundant rock formation visible here is Navajo Sandstone and dates to the Early Jurassic (or possibly late Triassic); these rocks were formed from vast sand dunes and are about 200 million years old.

We concluded our adventure with a ride down the Burr Trail Road, the only real paved road in the monument (a travesty we must place squarely on the shoulders of some greedy elected officials in this state - and, naturally, those who elected them; I'll limit my editorializing on the subject to that). As we started down the road from the town of Boulder we first passed some domes of Navajo Sandstone about 10 miles before entering an area known as "The Gulch". Here we were surrounded by towering walls of Wingate Sandstone several hundred feet high. The Wingate is slightly older than the Navajo ("slightly" when we are talking millions of years?); it was also formed from sand dunes and is generally red to orange in color.

These types of rock are scattered all around the region and can be found in many of the parks and monuments (state and federal) of Utah. For example, many of the arches at Arches National Park are Entrada Sandstone and some of the other formations are from Wingate Sandstone; Navajo Sandstone is prominent in Zion National Park.

And here's a pic of the old rockhound herself, panting away while sitting on some 150 million year old sandstone at Devil's Garden and, possibly, wondering where all the T-Rex's are hiding (though moments later I did flush a jackrabbit that I swear was nearly as big as Roxy).

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two more Bar-tailed Godwits have left Alaska and are on their way to joining E7 in New Zealand. The godwits are known by their leg tags and E5 (pink track) departed on September 20 (Alaska time) and Z0 (ta track) took to the skies shortly after midnight on the 23rd. This leaves two more transmitter equipped Bar-taileds in Alaska while E7 has gone "off the air as expected" due to the power supply ("battery") failing in her transmitter.

Be sure to check back for updates over the next few days - or follow along yourself at the Pacific Shorebird Migration Project website.

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week's mystery bird was a non-breeding Eared Grebe (maybe 1st fall?) photographed last year at Great Salt Lake. For this week we have another bird of the southwest and, I think, the first from this family we've quizzed. Have fun and good luck!

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My goal of ticking off 100 species on the Bryce Canyon checklist within 6 months has come two steps closer. Yesterday on the way to the big city for some shopping I saw a flock of about 15 American Avocets flying around a pond just outside the park - number 93. Then today while taking Rox over to the lake for a swim I spotted a Prairie Falcon just outside the forest boundary. Ironically, we had a guest speaker for last night's evening program here at the park who is a wildlife rehabilitator as well as a falconer and one of the birds he brought to the program was a Prairie Falcon.

(Was just thinking that if I get 11 10 more I'll actually tick off 1/2 of the species on the entire list . . . maybe I should shoot for that instead.)

Update: Went down south in the park this afternoon for some more scenic images and heard an unfamiliar song. I thought it might be a wren so I went back to my truck, grabbed the binos and checked the field guide (the song I heard matched the description) and set about looking for what I thought it might be. Sure enough, number 95 was a Canyon Wren at the Natural Bridge overlook.

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our bird last week was a godwit but not the flavor that I had been writing about- it was a Marbled Godwit. This time around we'll have a go at a species that is probably on the move south right now. Best of luck!

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It had been a while since I'd shot any Utah Prairie Dogs so I stopped by one of the towns this morning just for fun. Though I see them frequently I just hadn't made the time to stop by and make some images. Their habits have changed a bit with the cooler mornings and they usually aren't out and about until mid morning. With fall upon us I do see that they are putting on some weight for the long winter ahead; soon sightings will become very rare until next spring.

In Bar-tailed Godwit news, the 4 birds with transmitters are still in Alaska as of yesterday and E7 is in an area she spent time in last March. In Bar-tailed Godwits on the Move John at A DC Birding Blog has links to a news article about her journey (ignored, apparently, by the U.S. media so far even though the project is based in Alaska - though kudos are in order to the researchers involved from New Zealand).

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I haven't been down to the southern end of Bryce Canyon as much as I should - but one thing that can be counted upon are the Ravens of Ponderosa Point. There were 3 hanging around when I was in the area this afternoon, begging - as usual - and also posing for pics. Being off - but the ever dutiful park ranger - I was in my "street clothes" but did leer then shook my head at one visitor who had a handful of peanuts he was tossing to them. About the only way you could stop it though would be to have a ranger there all the time. The ravens also walk up to the front bumpers of cars and peck away at the dead insects stuck to them. Funny to watch, really. But several hundred cars a day plus whatever percentage of visitors feed them keeps them fat and happy.

The small amphitheaters at the south end are quite beautiful, I think, just not as vast as Bryce Amphitheater. This hoodoo is called The Hunter and is located at Aqua Canyon about 12 miles down the park road. The small trees growing on top were most likely planted by Clark's Nutcrackers - they have a habit of caching seeds in interesting places. It is said that they store away about twice as many as they need for a winter and, sometimes, the seeds germinate and pines are found in places that the cones/seeds couldn't get to without outside assistance.

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In just under 5 months I've notched 90 species of birds here at Bryce Canyon - and I thought I had done it today when I heard a familiar chatter that I knew without looking belonged to a Belted Kingfisher. I was pretty excited knowing I had but 10 to go to hit the 100 mark (after totaling up the list a few days ago and thinking I was at 89). But just discovered that I am actually at 92 - I noticed when adding the kingfisher that I'd forgotten to add Great Blue Heron and Rufous Hummingbird to the list. So just that quickly I have only 8 to go to hit the century mark and I would think that some southbound migrants ought to be showing up soon.

An update was posted today at the Pacific Shorebird Migration Project and Bar-tailed Godwit "E7" has settled in on New Zealand's North Island after her incredible flight across the Pacific:

Update of Bar-tailed Godwit movements: 10 September 2007

* One godwit (E7) departed from Alaska on her southbound migration on 30 August and 8 days later had successfully reached her southern home in the Firth of Thames on the North Island of New Zealand.
* E7 flew over 11,500 km (about 7,000 miles) in a single flight! That is quite a feat for any bird.
* E7 is currently near the mouth of the Piako River near a roost site that she frequented last March. Observers from the Miranda Shorebird Centre and University of Massey are on the outlook for her and they hope to get close enough to obtain a visual observation of her leg flag and a photograph.

I created an animation in for my Wings on the Wind talk using the data from her flight and "wowed" the audience last night with it. You can download and view an excerpt (460k, click here) that is just under 2 minutes long. The file is in "PowerPoint show" format and advances slides automatically once you start it. (If you do not have Microsoft PowerPoint installed on your computer (Windows only), you can download the PowerPoint Viewer free from Microsoft here.)

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week's bird was from Arizona: Bridled Titmouse. For this time I just had to choose a shorebird since that is what I have been chatting about all week. This bird is not one of those that all the fuss is about, just a relative. Good luck!

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bar-tailed Godwit E7 left Alaska back on August 30 and has since traveled over 10,500k (6,524 mi) and was approaching the North Island of New Zealand per the latest update from the Pacific Shorebird Migration Project website. The downloadable GoogleEarth maps are only updated as far as her nearing the Fiji Islands roughly 5 days into her amazing journey but you can see where she was yesterday on this map (it also shows the track when E7 left NZ last Spring - look for the text that says "09 06" in white adjacent to the #1 in a red circle). The other Bar-taileds are still hanging in Alaska but should be moving soon!

To put it simply, this project ROCKS!

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I and the Bird is the carnival for bloggers who love birds and is being hosted this time by John at A DC Birding Blog. As usual there are lots of great submissions so set aside a block of time for some great reading . . .

I know he's been busy putting this edition together but John's blog is a regular stop of mine - I always look forward to Friday's and his weekly post titled "Loose Feathers" - check it out for his always interesting bird news!

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

About 10 days ago I wrote about the Alaska Shorebird Migration project and the satellite tracking being done on 3 species (I was in error because it is actually the Pacific Shorebird Migration Project - the Long-billed Curlews being tracked breed in Nevada and Oregon). Anyway, I have been keeping tabs on things since my original entry. The Bar-tailed Godwits are still in Alaska (as of August 28) while the Bristle-thighed Curlews and Long-billed Curlews have gone south. In the notes on Bristle-thighed Curlews they mention one of them died while still in Alaska - they know this because the satellite transmitter also sends internal temperature readings in addition to the location information! They plan to try and find the bird in order to a.) retrieve the transmitter and, b.) try to determine what happened to the bird (illness or predator).

One of the things you can do from each species "Update" page is download the data to GoogleEarth and view it on an interactive map. There is a silhouette icon near the bottom of the page for this and, of course, you will need to have GoogleEarth installed on your computer. I was playing around with it a little tonight for a diversion and, although my numbers are just estimates, I came up with some interesting info on a couple of Bristle-thighed Curlews regarding their amazing journeys from Alaska to the Marshall Islands(!):

I looked first at a female known as "C7" (in addition to the transmitter the birds are all banded and flagged - each individual is identified on the website by the number on their flag). If I am interpreting the data correctly she left Alaska on August 15 and arrived in the Marshalls on August 19 following a journey of 7,351 kilometers (4,570 miles).106 hours passed from her last reported location in Alaska to the first reported location in the Marshalls. That works out to an average speed of just over 69 km/h (43 mph) for the trip. What would be interesting to know is why her speed fell off dramatically in the middle portion of the journey - was it weather or a brief stopover in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands? (click on the thumbnail to view C7's journey - map courtesy USGS-Pacific Shorebird Migration Project/GoogleEarth).

I then took a look at a male identified as "H8". He also departed Alaska on August 15 but had started out a little farther to the north and arrived in the Marshalls on August 20. The total distance for his flight was 7,543 km (4,687 mi.) with a duration of about 135 hours. His speed for the final leg* really fell off - down to 31.5 km/h - and his average speed for the flight was only 55 km/h. In his case I am left wondering if he was running out of fat/energy reserves and barely completed the trip (for comparison, C7's speed for the first leg was 78 km/h , fell to 58 on the second, then picked back up to 72 for the final portion; H8's four legs averaged 77, 51, 61, and 31.5 km/h respectively).

The Bar-tailed Godwits could leave Alaska any day now so it will be fun to watch things develop with them. It is a long, long way from the Yukon Delta to New Zealand!

*(The data available with Google Earth includes date/time at the transmitted locations, distance from the last location, rate (speed) from the last location, hours and days from the last location, plus a little more stuff.)

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I wouldn't have thought that my life as an "interpreter" would change so much from being a volunteer to being a paid employee but it sure seems like I have been busy lately. Part of it was my offering to add the evening program about the Moon because I ended up devoting a lot of time to putting it together - but it was worth it in the end. The talk - which I named "Luna-cy; Myths, Legends, and Reality" - was very well received and will now become part of the regular schedule of evening programs (at least for as long as I am here at Bryce). The night it debuted was the same day as last week's total lunar eclipse and, even with the talk looming that night, I got up at 3:30 in the morning to photograph the second half of the event. The center photo in this composite is from the mid totality phase while the other 4 are as the Moon was coming out of the Earth's shadow. And, yes, I used it in the program.

Thor's Hammer is famous among the named hoodoos here at Bryce Canyon and last time I was down on the Navajo Trail it had begun to rain just as I arrived at that point along the way and didn't get much in the way of photos. I joke in my geology talk that one day, when the softer rock just below the end of the hammer finally erodes enough that the end falls, there won't be any more lighting or thunder. I hiked that trail on one of my days off last week and this is one of the images from that trek. More than anything I wanted to hike through the leg of that trail known as Wall Street. It had been closed since May of 2006 because of a rockfall and only reopened a couple of weeks ago (the fact it was closed left many visitors disappointed as it had quite a reputation and many guidebooks highly recommend the hike).

With some of the staff away this week I am not leading any bird walks but last week the species count popped back up on both walks I led following a couple of weeks when the numbers had really dropped off. The big highlights were seeing 2 different Empidonax flycatchers - Hammond's and Gray - along with a first-for-the-park House Wren. These 3 bring my species count up to 89 since arriving in April. Though I have yet to be fortunate enough to see them, a week ago there were 3 very credible reports of California Condors seen hanging out with the Turkey Vultures between Bryce and Inspiration Points (when they mention the wing tags and white leading edges of the under side of the wing I tend to believe them).

Posted by Kevin, F.C.D. at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)