[Date Prev][Date Next][Date Index]

Brine Flies and Those Who Love Them



Most shorebirds are finding places to rest and dine other than Antelope Island Causeway, but I still saw some interesting things on the causeway and on the island this morning between 6:30 and 11:00.  I watched shorebirds and gulls along the way and their various techniques of catching brine flies.  The gulls are the funniest.  The Franklin's stood facing the same direction in long irregular lines on the shore like waves of flotsam and snapped at individual flies.  They snapped to a quick-time military cadence--Your left, your right, your left-right!  The bigger California Gulls dispensed with the finesse entirely.  The Californias found a dense mini-pestilence of the flies and plowed through like a freight train; head lowered, snapping all the way, and kicking up a bow wave of the flies with their yellow feet as they plowed along.  Both the Wilson's and Red-necked Phalaropes whirlygigged as one might expect, but I also saw one Wilson's standing on shore employing the Franklin's left-right snapping technique and others plowing through rings of fly-flotsam in the water, heads lowered and picking flies from the surface. 
 
This is a good time to study the differences between the phalaropes.  Here's my version:  You might be a Red-necked if...you have a black, droopy-eyed appearance.  You might be a Red-necked if...you have a shorter, more blunt bill than the Wilson's.  You might be a Red-necked if...your back is a variegated pale gray, dark gray, and white.  You might be a Red-necked if...you only eat by plucking bits off the surface of the water.  I did my best to turn any Red-necked Phalarope into a Red Phalarope, but I failed utterly, fully, entirely, totally, and completely. 
 
I saw an albino grebe on the north side of the causeway between mile marker 1 and the next bridge on the way west.  Probability says it was an Eared Grebe, but it was difficult to pick out those field marks that would ID the bird with certainty.  I couldn't see the shape of the bill very well on this little white bird against the shiny surface of the water.  I thought the peak of the head appeared to be at the back as opposed to over the eye where an Eared's peak would be, but my gut still tells me this grebe was an Eared and not a Horned.  I also couldn't discern a size difference between the grebe and the Eared Grebes around it.  I watched the bird for about a half hour as it gradually moved from about 200 feet out to perhaps double that distance.  Now, permit me a bit of fawning.  This little bird was a keeeeutie-pie!  When it preened and really fluffed up its already fluffy undertail coverts, it looked like a Tundra Swan in miniature...except for that red eye. 
 
I saw a few other shorebirds--all big waders--American Avocets, Black-necked Stilts, and Willets.  I didn't see one peep in the 7 miles and I looked hard for them.  I was surprised to see five Long-billed Curlews standing on the road across from the marina.  They flushed when I came too close and I was treated to peeks at their cinnamon underwings. They landed in the curve of the shore and one landed in the water up to its belly.  I recall that someone else recently posted a sighting of a curlew up to its belly in water, and I agree with Someone Else--it looked funny.  Seems like this bird belongs upland. 
   
Back on terra firma I saw a Gray Flycatcher actively foraging and regularly teed up on sage brush around the Visitor's Center.  This flycatcher's habit of letting its tail droop amused me.  It was as if the bird really needed to maintain the tail cocked higher for balance, then it forgot, allowed its tail to droop, and just caught it in time before losing its balance.  The droop-catch-droop-catch isn't quite like a phoebe's deliberate tail pumping--the Gray Flycatcher's tail motion is more absent-minded. 
 
The Rock Wrens were very active.  I saw three or four perched on rocks, on outbuildings, and flying alongside my truck.  I saw a female Bullock's Oriole exploring sage brush and plucking seeds from a sunflower head...odd place for this bird; migration must be on. Sage Thrashers wearing their pinstriped suits and buffeted by an increasing wind veered off the road as I passed by.  And finally, I saw TEN Burrowing Owls; Holy Cow!  That qualifies as a flock, doesn't it?  I was flabbergasted.  Another observation is that we humans may think of this diminutive owl as cute, but that thought doesn't prevail in the bird world.  Every time one of the owls launched for a short flight to another rock, swallows swooping over the field dive-bombed the owl until it found its chosen perch.  I think the owl's predator status is secure among avians.
 
If you decide to bird the causeway, bring your gas mask.  The lake perfume is quite strong all the way out.  Maybe some entrepreneur could figure out a way to bottle that air and replace smelling salt bottles in first aid kits with this unique Utah whiff.  And finally, let this posting serve to assuage Jack Binch's concerns that the birds up in this neck of the woods couldn't inspire me to more than one paragraph :^}.   
 
Kris