East Canyon Pygmy

["Jim Bailey" <jim at bailey dot aros dot net>]

Hi,

Terry Sadler and I ventured up East Canyon this morning to try and 
locate the Northern Pygmy-Owl and, hopefully, get some pictures. This is 
my 4th time this year looking for this species - once up City Creek, 
once at Mountain Dell, and twice up East Canyon. In this case, the 4th 
time is the charm :-)

Terry spotted it on our way down from the dam around 10 this morning. 
There's a caution sign as you go up the canyon a short distance before 
the dam that warns of dangerous curves for the next 3 miles or so. The 
bird was seen a hundred yards or so before the sign on the west 
(downslope) side of the road. The hillside is pretty steep here with a 
big flat open field down below. The bird was maybe 60 feet down the hill 
at about eye level, studiously looking for lunch.

Not wanting to scare the owl off, we first tried a few shots from the 
car. Quality was poor, so we got out the tripods and set up on the 
shoulder. These shots were better, but still not great because of the 
bright snowy background and distance from the bird. Terry, being a bit 
of a sport, decided to try and get closer, making his way down the steep 
snowy muddy rocky slope to a position where the bird had a nice blue sky 
backdrop. 

We couldn't believe that the bird was still there after all this action 
on Terry's part. I, being more sensible than Terry, initially didn't 
want to risk life, limb, etc. to get a picture. Eventually, however, 
pride got the best of me (can't stand to let Terry get better pictures 
than me), so I slid on down and joined him. We could hardly believe that 
the bird still didn't fly off! I would say we were no more than 30 feet 
from the bird. He let us photograph him for another 5 minutes before 
flying off to another perch. The new perch was much more secluded, so 
our picture taking session had to end.

Compared with Paul Higgins' excellent "action" shots of this Pygmy-Owl 
consuming a mouse and spitting up pellets, our shots were pretty 
mundane. 

We also saw 15-20 Wild Turkeys crossing the road on the way up the 
canyon and 15+ Bald Eagles in the canyon. It was a gorgeous morning. 

Look for Terry's owl shots on the Utah Birds website in the near future. 
I know he got some great ones. I hope to have a couple shots up on my 
site in the next few days as well.

Jim Bailey
2032 Ribbon Lane
Holladay, UT 84117
(801) 274-8034

A  hobby must be in a large degree useless, inefficient, laborious or
irrelevant -Aldo Leopold

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