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President's Message - Oct 2022

          by Machelle Johnson

September didn't disappoint! It was a beautiful month, maybe a little too warm, but the colors! Blue, blue sky, green and purple mountains, leaves turning red, orange, and yellow, every morning it looked more beautiful! Warm days, cool nights, I just love it!

I didn't see any of the reported rarities but I did get one more county checked off, so I'm up to 20 now. Thanks again to Suzi and the field trips she's planned and led.

October is the time when we start thinking about the new year. We won't do a challenge next year, so if you have any field trip requests, or meeting topics you are interested in bring them up at our October meeting. We would love your input and to have lots of participation.

              Thanks,
             Machelle
                    ,__,   
                   (0,0)    
                    /)_)   

 
 
The 2022 Birding Challenge

Prinout with the details
(PDF file)

BIRD OF THE MONTH:
    

A close relative of the scrub jay, the Pinyon Jay is both a highly visible but equally elusive member of the corvid family. When you get lucky enough to spot them, they are unmistakable and are usually found in large noisy family flocks in pinyon pine and juniper woodlands across the central and southwestern U.S.. The scientific name of pinyon jays, Gymnorhinus cyanocephalis, directly translates to “bare or naked nose, blue head”, and is a direct reference to the fact that pinyon jays’ bills are featherless at their base. This unique adaptation prevents them from getting all sticky when they are digging out pine nuts from sappy pinyon pinecones. Their main food source is the Pinyon Pine (Pinus edulis) nut, and because of the variability and seasonality of pinyon nut production, pinyon jays can have large and wide-ranging foraging and home ranges. When a nut source is located, a large family flock can cache millions of pine nuts, and are, together with scrub jays, the main means by which pinyon pine trees disperse their seeds to grow new trees.

Pinyon Jays are distinguished from similar corvid species such as scrub jays and Steller’s jays by being a fairly uniform dusty blue across their entire head and body, like a much larger and longer-billed version of a Mountain Bluebird. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to see them, you know their call is distinctive and sounds kind of like a nasal laugh. I spend a lot of time commuting through their preferred habitat out in the West Desert, and I always feel lucky when I see them sporadically moving in large flocks across the landscape.

Pinyon Jays as a species have recently become a topic of increased concern and management within the wildlife conservation and management community as their populations have been estimated to have declined by about 85% over the last 50 years. Historically, large areas of pinyon-juniper forest were converted to grazing lands. Fire suppression, wildfires, and continued grazing pressures have also reduced the amount of available habitat. Greater sage-grouse management efforts by federal and state agencies in the last few decades have also focused on removal of juniper in certain areas to improve sagebrush habitat for sage-grouse and other species. Because of their population declines, pinyon jays were recently petitioned for listing on the Endangered Species list and are currently a focal species and species of conservation concern for state and federal wildlife management efforts.

For birders hoping to catch a glimpse of this species, my best advice is to spend extensive time in their preferred habitat. Their nomadic nature makes it hard to pinpoint a given location they might be found in, but the more time you spend in pinyon pine and juniper forests, the better your chances are of seeing them. I’ve seen them fairly consistently moving across the 5 Mile Recreation Area west of Fairfield, in the foothills near Ophir, and also down south while camping in Kodachrome Basin State Park.

Happy Birding!

     
  
       [See past Bird of the Month articles] 
  

Down the road just outside of Circleville on 89 you enter Garfield County. We stopped at Butch Cassidy's boyhood home and it was quite a productive stop. We had a Eurasian Collared Dove welcome us, a flock of happy Lesser Goldfinch on the trees surrounding the cabin and in the field to the East we had Western Bluebirds, White-crowned and Brewer's Sparrow, Western Meadowlark, Brewer's Blackbird, Chukars and Black-billed Magpie. We saw a few raptors, Golden Eagle, Sharp-shinned Hawk and a American Kestrel and had a Western Wood Pewee fly catching. A little farther down 89 we saw more Pinyon Jays and another American Kestrel. At the ponds before Panguich we had a Great Egret, Sandhill Cranes, Northern Shoveler, Cinnamon Teal and American Coots. We also had a few Barn Swallows flyover and a pair of Golden Eagles in the big trees. At the Bear Valley gas station we decided to eat lunch and they had a Hummingbird feeder. There were 3 Black-chinned hummers fighting over a spot at the feeder and one nice Rufous hanging out on the pine tree keeping watch over his lavender patch. We also saw 2 straggling Sage Thrashers, a Mourning Dove and a Swainson's Hawk. Check Garfield County off the list!

We headed straight down 89 to Kane County. First stop Alton reservoirs. Sadly, all but one are dried up. The best birding was at the middle one where it was completely dried up. We had lots of Western Bluebirds, Turkey Vultures, Pine Siskin, White-throated Swift, Violet-green Swallows, Stellar's Jay, Chipping Sparrow, Mountain Chickadee, Western Tanager, a surprise Nashville Warbler and Peregrine Falcon. Up the road the next reservoir was mostly dry but a few mud puddles where a couple Bank and Violet-green Swallows and Mountain Bluebirds were bug catching. We also had multiple Woodhouse's Scrub Jays and a couple American Robins, a first for the day!

  
Williamson's Sapsucker
Duck Creek Village
     

 
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