Category: In the Field

I left the Salt Lake City metro for four days in Grand Teton National Park. It did not disappoint, as the cliché goes. I even spotted a few species of charismatic megafauna.

The first two days I spent in the vicinity of Jenny Lake. Tuesday I took two walks along the east and north sides: I had ambitions of walking the three-quarter loop around to the shuttle boat dock, but the elevation and my conditioning quashed that idea. Generally the trails were in good shape, but I encountered at least one choose-your-own-adventure opportunity.

Lots of new plants, many of them in flower: a native mahonia, Berberis repens. An orangetip butterfly, Julia Orangetip (Anthocharis julia). The first of several new ground squirrels for me, Yellow-pine Chipmunk (Neotamias amoenus): my guidebook says, “Steals campground food,” and I often found them around buildings and parking lots.

I gradually figured out that the unfamiliar warblers were Audubon’s, conspecifics of the Myrtle Warblers from back home. My notes say, “Yellow-rumped Warbler and Ruby-crowned Kinglet and Chipping Sparrow are all over—but can I get a good photo? No.”

I had acquired a bell and a canister of bear spray in preparation for this part of the trip, but I might have been able to rent my bear spray. Brown-headed Cowbirds were the mooch birds on the Jenny Lake campus. My trail tracker app reported that I hiked 4.5 miles.

The next day was devoted to as much vertical as I could handle. I rode the boat shuttle to the west side of Jenny Lake and started the climb toward Inspiration Point. The first stretches were fairly easy, and the junctions were more clearly marked. A tip was being passed along the trail that a cow Moose (Alces alces) was hanging out, so I took a little side trip.

As indicated by guidebooks, the trail was very popular, even on a Wednesday morning; I wouldn’t have needed the bear spray.

Another example of a wildflower genus that I know from the mid-Atlantic, but a different species, Lanceleaf Spring Beauty (Claytonia lanceolata). A second new ground squirrel, Common Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel (Callospermophilus lateralis)—it didn’t hang around very long. A shrub that I would find often, Mountain Lover, or Oregon Boxwood (Paxistima myrsinites).

Once you’re at the fork for Hidden Falls, the going gets steeper. The good thing about an out-and-back hike, I wrote in my field notes, is that you can decide when to stop. My trail tracker app reported that I had reached 7000 feet of elevation, and that was good enough for me. A net climb of 300 feet on a 1.7 mile walk.

I took the first of many looks for American Dipper in the fast-running mountain streams.

Every birding festival is different. The Great Salt Lake Bird Festival, based in Davis County, Utah, provided field trips to some interesting sites—and a keynote speaker with great photos who, alas, overstayed his welcome.

First up was a walk in Dimple Dell Regional Park, in the foothills of the Wasatch Front, led by Tori Sohn and Rachel Lake. A focus of this walk was the flora of the region, so I got first looks at several common plants that I would see throughout the trip, from Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) (no pic?!) to Gambel Oak (Quercus gambelii) to Lewis Flax (Linum lewisii). Also picked up my first lifer, a bird that I would see often in Utah, Lazuli Bunting (Passerina amoena) (LAZB).

Rachel lumped all the sagebrush into Big Wyoming Sage; she said that there is an entire manual just for Artemisia ID.

There were reaches of the creek running through the canyon that were wet, but most of it was dry, as in the photo.

In the evening, Adam and Marzena Blundell led a short walk through Mountain Wilderness Park, ending at their home, fitted with a multitude of bird feeders. More LAZB, including a good look at a female.

Next day was a drive-stop-bird-repeat trip up Diamond Fork Canyon with leader Keeli Marvel. The canyon is in Utah County, southeast of Springville. I quickly caught on that everyone had a a different pronunciation of lazuli (Z or ZH, for instance), but less quickly that I have been pronouncing this word wrong for decades. Lewis’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis), another western speciality; Canyon Wren (Catherpes mexicanus) at the top of the Red Ledges outcrop, with a voice that sounds like a ball bouncing downstairs; and a nifty butterfly, Sagebrush Checkerspot (Chlosyne acastus). It was nice to get some decent photos and audio of an east-west bird, Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens).

Stephanie Greenwood took us through Springhill Geologic Park in North Salt Lake. This is a lemons-to-lemonade recovering natural space. One of the dirty little secrets I learned from this trip to Salt Lake is that the foothills are mined for Lake Bonneville gravel, with houses perched on the ridgeline above. The residents of this patch were not so lucky; a slow-moving landslide in the 90s ultimately dispatched about a dozen homes.

Song Sparrows here demonstrated some of their regional dialects; Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus) like suburbs as much as their congener White-taileds do; we saw lots of Arrowleaf Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata), which I would continue to see farther north; I found several very sluggish Obscure Darkling Beetles (Eleodes obscura), some of them showing unusual behavior: one was flopped over on its back as if dead, another showed a head-down posture.

Sunday was my destination trip, a school bus ride (leaders: Max Malmquist and Jaimi Butler) (I sat in Scatlett’s seat) down the washboard road to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. The work is beached now, with the dusty pink water so special to Smithson a good half mile walk away. I packed for this trip prepared for bugs and sun, but on this day we got chilly wind and a bit of rain.

The area has been explored for petroleum, and there are scattered seeps of sticky tar that can catch wildlife unawares. Some opportunities for botanizing along the remains of the structures built to support the mineral exploration: a native wild rye, Squirreltail (Elymus elymoides).

We reached the water! Salt concentrations run very high here (as a taste test confirmed); winds whip up the salt into ephemeral whitecaps. Catch a bit in your hand and give your fellow birder a Salt Lake high five!

Oh yes, birds. We stopped at the Golden Spike National Historical Park, where a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) was tending near-fledglings—this is why you go with a guide. A fleeting look at Gray Partridge (Perdix perdix) from the vehicle—not many field marks visible in my grainy photos but what else could it be?

I got an even briefer look at another western specialty that I’m not going to count, and I missed MacGillivray’s Warbler (seen by others) on two trips.