Ready for Grosbeaks

"Band of Gold: Evening Grosbeaks" by Julie Zickefoose

 I've heard their calls once or twice this season, flying overhead, unseen. I've also heard the voices of bird watchers, breathless with excitement, after capturing a glimpse of these dynamic birds with the massive bills and mustard-colored plumage. Evening grosbeaks!

Yes it seems that this is an invasion year for grosbeaks and other members of the finch family, too, including pine siskins (currently EVERYwhere), purple finches, a few redpolls, and both flavors of crossbill (we still have just two crossbill species in North America as I write this, though the "splitters" are hard at work).

It's been years since we had a serious influx of evening grosbeaks here in southeastern Ohio. I remember a couple of visits to our bird feeders in the early 1990s, but that's about it. Of course many local birders—in fact many bird watchers in the Midwest recall the huge northern finch incursions during the late 1970s. The winters of 1977-78 and 1978-79 were among the coldest and snowiest in modern times. And we had colorful, feisty flocks of finches covering our feeders. I remember filling the feeders almost daily and watching hundreds of evening grosbeaks and common redpolls descending to gorge themselves. We'd started Bird Watcher's Digest in the fall of 1978 in our house, and all the bird watchers' chatter and newspaper articles about the winter finch invasion gave us great encouragement to keep the magazine going.

The male evening grosbeak from Willard Bay State Park in Utah.

The last evening grosbeak I set eyes on was a male lagging behind a small flock of his species in a riverside forest just north of Salt Lake City, Utah. I was birding there with two friends on a morning off during the Great Salt Lake Birding Festival. Seeing a gorgeous male grosbeak, singing and foraging, in green leaves was a bit of a context shift for me. You can read the full story of that birding adventure in this earlier post from this very blog.

Julie's quick snapshot of one of this year's grosbeaks in our gray birch tree.

Julie called me last Tuesday with the happy news that a small flock of grosbeaks dropped into our yard, foraged below the hopper feeder, then vanished. Even my mom reported a flyover evening grosbeak back in October. Now that people all over the region have seen evening grosbeaks, I am getting fully prepared. I know that evening grosbeaks prefer sunflower seed offered on a platform, so I built what may be the world's largest platform feeder by placing an old, weathered piece of siding across the corner of our deck railing. Crafty of me, huh? I poured a large bucket of black-oil sunflower seed onto it and stepped back. Ten seconds later a tufted titmouse dropped in for a seed.

Here's my gargantuan feeder, with my hat and a tiny tufted titmouse for size perspective. Now how could any passing evening grosbeak not notice this? I'm thinking about making some grosbeak decoys (out of French's mustard bottles) and using my iPod to play grosbeak flock calls out the window. But I'm NOT desperate. Not at all.

Trip from Bountiful

While speaking and guiding at The Great Salt Lake Bird Festival in May, the kind folks at the festival put me up in Bountiful, Utah. The hotel was lovely, but being between two busy highways it was not so birdy.

When I found myself with a free morning, I was determined to find some birds to enjoy and to photograph, so I enlisted my new friend Valerie a festival volunteer and local Utah birder, to help me find a good, birdy spot. Also joining us was a longtime friend, birder, and Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival raconteur Marci Fuller. Marci was seeking a Virginia's warbler. I was seeking some bird photo opps. Valerie was kind enough to take us to a real gem of a spot called Willard Bay State Park, north of Salt Lake City and Bountiful. It turned out to be a bountiful trip!

As soon as we got out of the car our ears were assaulted by bird song. Yellow warblers were singing from every direction. Lazuli buntings and black-headed grosbeaks vocalized from the cottonwoods, and a host of other noisemakers chimed in. And then I heard one of those calls that you KNOW you know, but you can't quite place it. Know what I mean? This happens to me every spring.

Cavorting along the branches of a tree with lots of apparently tasty buds was the calling bird and, when I saw what it was, I jumped up and down, squealing, like a six-year old girl who's just been given a pony!

"Hey! EVENING GROSBEAK! Yes! Holy #@$%&*#$%! I KNEW I knew that call! How OSSUM is THAT BIRD!"

Then (I hope not because of my antics) the flock flew far away and I had to wait for a couple of hours before we relocated a photograph-able bird (below). I love evening grosbeaks, in case you were wondering. The first year of publishing Bird Watcher's Digest in our home in Marietta, Ohio, we had a huge finch invasion with loads of evening grosbeaks at the feeders, so they've always occupied a special place in my heart.

Male evening grosbeak.

Valerie lead us along the park's paths, many of which were flooded, necessitating some detours. We picked carefully through flocks of still-migrating warblers hoping to find a Virginia's, but we dipped out. Lots of orange-crowneds and clouds of yellow warblers, though.

Another song caught my ear—familiar, but not as familiar as the grosbeak's. It was a dark-plumaged fox sparrow singing a slightly weird song. We listened to his amazing melodic phrases. Fox sparrows pass through my home turf in spring and fall, only occasionally stopping long enough to be heard singing. In my opinion they are an underrated singer.

Fox sparrow.

Valerie and Marci scanning the woodland edge.

Farther along the path, winding in and out of the campground, we came to the edge of the lake and scooped up a nice variety of species new for the day's list. A male California quail and his covey of purty ladies skedaddled along the shoreline and into deep cover—though not before I got a few photos.

California quail.

Several American white pelicans were soaking up the warm morning sunshine in a small embayment. They hardly paid any attention to us.

American white pelican.

Out on the lake a Clark's grebe drifted in toward shore and I digiscoped it. This species seemed to be present here in Utah in equal numbers to its near-lookalike, the western grebe. Little did I know then, but I'd be straining my eyes to find a Clark's on a Big Day adventure in North Dakota just three weeks later. In ND, it seems to be 50 westerns for every single Clark's grebe. [Yes, we finally got a Clark's in ND!].

Clark's grebe.

A very cooperative male black-headed grosbeak sang for us in the sun. Seeing this stunning bird so well through my scope reminded me that we can get blasé about our familiar local birds. I recall wondering about a European friend's overwhelming joy at seeing a northern cardinal on my farm in Ohio. There are no all-red birds in Europe, so seeing one for the first time made his eyes pop out. I felt that way about this black-headed grosbeak—so handsome, especially to my eastern eyes.

Male black-headed grosbeak.

It's funny how easily we may overlook common birds. A pair of American robins was building a nest in the interpretive signage near our parking lot. They seemed wary, as if not wanting to tip us off to the nest's location. Since I began dabbling in various forms of bird photography, I think I've paid a bit more attention to common birds, especially if they are being cooperative enough to photograph.

American robin, adult male.

Valerie (left) and Marci laughing at my evening grosbeak happy dance.

It was a fine morning of birding at Willard Bay State Park, thanks to Valerie. Too bad we missed the Virginia's warbler. That one'll have to wait until next time!

For my readers who are interested in experiencing some excellent birding in the western United States, I highly recommend the Great Salt Lake Bird Festival as a fantastic starting point. The festival organizers really go all out to make everyone feel welcome, the birds are great, the birding hotspots convenient, and there's a lot offered for young birders, too. Check it out!

Stilted Haiku

Pied marshland dainty
Lady in a tuxedo
striding on pink stilts

Birding the Inland Sea

There's something sort of magical about getting in an airplane in the flatlands and flying to a place where the mountains are capped with snow. This (above) was the view out my airplane window as we circled in for a landing at the Salt Lake City, Utah airport. I was way out west for the Great Salt Lake Bird Festival.


The kind folks at the GSLBF knew that I was interested in doing some photography/digiscoping/videography and so they made arrangements, on the day before the fest started, for me to have a guided birding tour of a place called The Inland Sea Shorebird Reserve (ISSR). The ISSR is a mitigation project of The Kennecott Utah Copper company, a copper-mining operation nearby. To mitigate the habitat damage being caused by the copper mining, Kennecott funded the creation, enhancement, and maintenance of the Inland Sea site. You can read more about this mitigation site here.


Turning overgrazed range land into shorebird-friendly habitat seems to have worked and it has been a boon to the shorebirds. During our first few minutes inside the gates we saw black-necked stilts, American avocets, teeming herds of killdeer, and lots of semipalmated plovers. More special for this site were the snowy plovers and black-bellied plovers we found, thanks to the scouting skills of my guides, Valerie and Haylie, both of whom work at the ISSR as field research interns.

Haylie and Valerie scoping the Inland Sea

Many of the shorebirds at the ISSR were already getting "nesty." Several males called loudly and flew circles around our truck.

Black-necked stilt and barbed wire (isn't that a Lucinda Williams song?)

Pronghorn antelope.

As the afternoon wore on and we'd covered most of the good birding spots, I started to get some of the more interesting insider info from my guides. For example, they knew where several of the male pronghorn antelope hung out, and the gals had given each male a name: Michaelangelo, Donatelo—actually I 'm not remembering the names correctly, but I do recall suggesting that one be named Fabio. It seemed fitting at the time.

Like often happens when I take someone birding in my local patch, a set of truly objective eyes will find something out of the ordinary. The same was true on this afternoon of birding. We found two notable species for the ISSR: a male lark bunting and a male red-breasted merganser.

Red-breasted merganser was a noteworthy species at the ISSR.

All too soon it was time to split. Their work day was over and I (still being on Eastern Time) was so hungry I was tempted to chase down a pronghorn on foot. As if to show us one more eyeful of wonderment, a golden eagle took off from his hunting perch and flew past the distant mountains. Majestic overload!

Though I knew the eagle would be just a speck in the frame, I simply couldn't resist taking this shot.

Great birding on the Inland Sea! Thanks to Valerie and Haylie for guiding me. What a fine way thing, to get right off the plane and be birding in a spot like this only minutes later.

The Big Question about the Chukar

How many cars could a chukar chuck if a chukar could chuck cars?

Swarms of Phalaropes

Half of our ABA group on the causeway leading to Antelope Island State Park, Utah.

Back in late June, during the American Birding Association annual convention in Utah, I was assigned to help lead a field trip to Antelope Island State Park. Antelope Island is located on the southeastern edge of the Great Salt Lake, north of Salt Lake City.

We left the Snowbird Lodge high in the Wasatch Mountains before dawn, dropping down to the desert along this large briny inland sea. Our trip consisted of two huge touring coaches, each one loaded with excited bird-heads.

Our first stop was along the causeway leading to the park entrance. So this is the Great Salt Lake. The smell of fermenting brine shrimp came onto the coach to meet us. Rugged plum-colored mountains surrounded the lake at a distance. Shallow brackish water bracketed the road. The water was so shallow that huge areas of salty sandflats appeared here and there, and the movement of birds and insects was obvious everywhere we looked. Stepping off of the bus I noticed several flocks of swift shorebirds flying overhead. They were buoyant fliers, snipelike in shape, but stiltlike in their gracefulness.

I was momentarily puzzled.

Then it hit me—just as someone else shouted "Wilson's phalaropes going overhead!"

Of course!

Wilson's phalaropes overhead, flying to join the huge feeding flocks on the Great Salt Lake.

Flock after flock, each one with between 12 and 30 birds, flew overhead, all headed in the same direction.

"Look at ALL those phalaropes!" I heard myself exclaim. I'd never seen so many at once.

"If you think that's a lot. Look out there, over the water!" said a birder next to me.

There, swirling over the water about 300 yards out were CLOUDS of phalaropes. They looked more like swarms of insects than flocks of birds. And they were reportedly ALL Wilson's phalaropes, staging, molting, and gorging before heading south for the winter.
Every June, as soon as they have finished nesting up north, the phalaropes begin gathering at the Great Salt Lake. As many as half a million may use the lake as a resting and feeding stop on their southward migration.

These birds, in a few weeks, would make a non-stop flight to northern South America. There they'll spend the winter on inland lakes high in the Argentinian Andes—a journey of more than 5,000 miles.

Red-necked phalaropes also pass through the Great Salt Lake, but not in such staggering numbers.

The appearance of these post-breeding phalaropes coincides with the large hatches of brine flies, small harmless insects that form their own dark clouds. The phalaropes and other birds gorge on the abundant brine flies, as well as the equally abundant brine shrimp, putting on body fat that will fuel their long migration.

Here it was, just the last week of June and already fall migration was on for these phalaropes.

I'll share a few images of the distant clouds of Wilson's phalaropes from our morning at Antelope Island State Park.

Like a wave above the water's surface, thousands of phalaropes shifted to new feeding spots.

The flocks were constantly ebbing and flowing.

This was just one small portion of the flock. It extended twice this far to each side of my camera's frame.

This must have been what flocks of passenger pigeons looked like 200 years ago.

Signs of Life

It's been a while since we've had a good sign posting here on BOTB. I ran across this one in front of a waterfowl hunting club near Bear River NWR in Utah. Somehow I knew instantly that this was not a birding club.

Down from Hidden Peak

The start of the hike down from Hidden Peak.

On the final day of The American Birding Association convention at the Snowbird Resort in Utah, Julie and I joined a trip going up on the tram to Hidden Peak. What I did not tell her was that there was a plan to hike the mountains from 11,000 feet back to the resort at 8,000 feet. Only some of the field trip participants were interested in doing this. I jumped at the chance for such an adventure, especially because it was being led by consummate birder/naturalist/photographer Bill Schmoker of Boulder, Colorado.

Bill Schmoker hugging a snow monster.

Bill is just enough of a mountain man to enjoy a rugged hike such as this one, but he's also incredibly knowledgeable and one heckuva nice bloke. Joining us for the hike were a temporarily reluctant Zick, Barbara from Borderland Tours, convention attendees Michael and Darlene, and Callan Cohen of South Africa with whom I had birded in The Karoo area of the African cape in 2002.

Julie Z at the edge of the snow field.

Our kids were worn out from the week of early risings, so they stayed at the resort in our room just chillin' out. Before you call Children's Services on us you should know that we were in constant phone contact with them, and we had friends checking on their well-being.

Before the start of the hike we relieved ourselves of all excess gear. Tami Bulow of the ABA kindly agreed to take it back down on the tram for us. This was key because little did we know but we'd be hiking (or resting) for the next five hours.

Ski runs halfway down.

The top of Hidden Peak was free of snow due to the effects of snow and wind. A few steps over the edge and we were in snow so deep it was still skiable. On went the sunscreen and sunglasses. According to The Schmokster the reflecting power of the snow gives you 85% of the UV rays that straight-on sun does. It was like being in a giant white tanning booth.

SnowCats had prepared the trail for us. I was looking for Scatman Crothers from The Shining.

As we started down the recently snow-catted trail, I made a short video asking all in our party for their parting wishes and statements, in case, like The Donner Party, we got lost in the snow.

A quarter-mile or down the switchback trail, El Schmokatollah, dropped onto his behind and butt-surfed downhill to the trail below. This, he revealed to us, was called glissading. We all did it. I had to put the legs back on my pants first. Out party reconvened at the bottom of the hill, frosty buns burning only slightly form the cold. I have to say this was mighty fun.


The rest of the hike was a naturalist's treat: wildflowers, butterflies, geology, and spectacular scenery. We found items dropped by skiers, including three skis and two ski poles. The birds were good, too. We had close looks at lazuli bunting, white-crowned sparrow, Clark's nutcracker, gray-headed (dark-eyed) junco, and others. The nutcrackers we saw and heard really got Callan going—it had been his most-wanted bird for this trip.

Mountain bluebird male.

In the heard-only category went the black rosy-finches. Try as we might we could not set eyes on them.

Sun-cloud-sky.

While Darlene and Barbara pressed on down the trial ahead of us, Julie and Callan dawdled behind looking at butterflies and trying to take photos of them. Everything at this altitude comes out in early June and goes crazy trying to grow/reproduce/spread during the few weeks of warm weather. Wildflowers come up flower first, leaves later. Birds come up high to breed as soon as the insects come out.

Below the snow.

We all fell down at least once. I drew blood on my left elbow when I slipped on loose rocks when we were nearly all the way down. My instinct was to roll sideways to save my camera from hitting first. It worked, though the elbow is still sore.

Dead spruce on Hidden Peak.

By mid afternoon the buildings of Snowbird were in sight. It was a tthis time thnat Phoebe called to say she could see us up on the mountain path. "You look like ants, Daddy. But I could tell you from the way you walk." Smart girl, already knows her old man's field marks.

Snowbird, viewed from above.

Tired and a little footsore we strode creakily into the parking lot. Congrats and hugs all 'round. Half an hour alter we were toasting with pale ales in the hot tub by the outdoor pool.

The Splashy Dance: Courting Grebes

Even more exciting than seeing so many Clark's grebes in one place was getting to se a pair of western grebes doing the Splashy Dance. This is the courtship dance these large grebes perform in the spring and early summer. After a bit of synchronized head bobbing and bill dipping and mock preening, a male and female will lift their bodies off the water and scamper across the surface, beating their wings just enough to propel them forward.








This incredible display only lasts a few seconds, but the pair may repeat it several times in a hour. We saw it happen three different times with this one pair of western grebes. This was a life-behavior for me and something I'd always wanted to observe. I only wish I'd had my video camera handy.

Clark's versus Western Grebe

The road through the Bear River NWR.

On our daylong field trip to Bear River NWR in Utah, during the recent American Birding Association convention, we got to see large numbers of both western and Clark's grebes. This was a real treat for me. I'd seen lakefuls of western grebes before (in North Dakota) but picking out the very few Clark's grebes in those instances was always like a game of Where's Waldo. Here at Bear River it was more evenly blended between the two species.

Big western-type grebes look black above white below from a distance.

Just like house finch versus purple finch or sharpie versus Cooper's hawk, telling these two very similar grebes apart seems quite tough at first. But given a chance like we had to study the birds well under perfect viewing conditions, the differences between the two grebes become more obvious.

Western grebes.

Both are large, long-necked birds that appear all-dark above and bright white below. The key field marks to look for are all on the head. Start with the face and look at the area surrounding the birds' bright red eyes. See how the western grebes look darker headed with the dark "cap" actually encircling the eyes?

Now look at the Clark's grebes. Notice how white-faced they look? And the white (not black) encircles the eyes.

Clark's grebes.

Another good head-based field mark is the difference in the bills of the two species. Westerns have a yellow-green bill that looks fairly stout and substantial. By comparison the Clark's bill is bright candy-corn yellow and much thinner.

Looking at my two images of these mated pairs of grebes the Clark's grebes look daintier to me: Their eyes even look smaller. The western grebes on the other hand look chunky and dark-headed, and big-eyed.

While we were watching these grebes feed and squabble and court in the ponds at Antelope Island, I noticed that at a great distance I could make fairly accurate guesses about which species I was seeing. If the birds looked more white than dark they were usually Clark's. If they looked more dark than light, they were westerns.

Next post: Doing the Splashy Dance