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I birded Antelope Island Causeway today hoping that
the cold front had dropped a final bonanza of shorebirds on the mudflats.
My anticipation was for naught. The causeway was great if you like gulls
and that pungent cologne, L'eau d'Antelope. However, I sort of hate to
report this, but I saw five BLACK-BELLIED PLOVERS that looked extraordinarily
plain in full winter plumage. One of the plovers still had ONE black
feather along a flank and that was all. A couple of them appeared to
be juveniles with extensive fine spotting on their backs and on folded
wings. The young ones also showed a faint washed-out buffy cast to
their finely streaked breasts. Other than those features they were very,
very plain. The group was feeding on the north side of the causeway just
west of the bend between mm 4 and 3. They were just 50 feet or so
off the muddy strip at the base of the rocks that form the causeway--pretty
close, really.
The plovers didn't stay
for long. They flew east and I saw flashes of their black
armpits. The white stripe through the flight feathers was apparent on the
two plovers I was able to watch. I tried to relocate with them. The
plovers landed so far out that I might not have been able to ID them
as BBs in winter plumage had I not already known their identity. I pulled
over again at approximately mile 3.5 where there's a very long, dead tree laying
just off the road in the rocks. Presently, they flew again and I
lost track of them.
In addition to the birds I mentioned above, I also
saw a grand total of THREE Western Sandpipers, ONE Least Sandpiper, ONE
dowitcher sp. sewing-machine foraging until two people walked to the shore and
flushed it (Grrrr), ONE Snowy Plover, and six Long-billed Curlews.
A very dark Peregrine Falcon was hanging out on flats on the north side of
the causeway around mm 5. Like the plovers, the Peregrine was
flighty. It flew and landed three times as I crept west and I grew tired
of the chase when it landed behind me. Before I left I noticed that the
falcon had cleared the flats of birds for a quarter of a mile in each
direction. Must have been its deodorant. So except for the plovers, the causeway stunk both
literally and figuratively. OK, maybe the Peregrine didn't stink.
I can't help but end on a silly note. The
Black-bellied Plover's taxonomic name is Pluvialis Squatarola.
Squatarola?!?!? Surely, someone is toying with us.
Kris
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