Wild About Utah

June 11, 2009May 11, 2026

The Lizard and His Tail

Hi, I’m Holly Strand of Stokes Nature Center in beautiful Logan Canyon.

One of the most beautiful lizards I’ve ever seen lives right here in Utah. The collared lizard has a gold head, a green body and 2 black collar stripes. I stumbled upon one last week during a hike in Professor Valley north of Moab. It was just shy of a foot long from tip to tail, with most of that length in the tail. It bravely stood its ground as I crept closer to admire it. Instinctively, I wanted to reach down and catch it!

The urge to catch lizards seems to be innate. Maybe our ancient ancestors used to eat them and the desire to catch them is a relict evolutionary trait.

When you catch a lizard, you might just cause him to drop his tail. Tail dropping is a defense mechanism. In many species of lizard the tail has weak fracture planes between the vertebra, allowing the tail to detach easily. After breaking off, the thrashing tail attracts the would-be predator, enabling the lizard to escape. Some lizard tails are brightly colored, which enhances the decoy effect.

Unfortunately, there are serious consequences to losing one’s tail. A long tail acts as a counterbalance, enabling a lizard to lift its forelegs when running. This is important because a lizard can move more quickly on two legs than on four. A large lizard running on two legs can sprint up to 12 miles an hour!

Male lizards need their long tails for social status. Low status males have much more difficulty mating. Tail loss also might mean that a juvenile will have trouble acquiring a home range due to low social standing.
Finally, fat stored in a tail provides a food source during periods of starvation and reproduction.
With this in mind, I hope you can join me in my effort not to catch lizards. Let’s admire these wonderful creatures from a distance.

For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center I’m Holly Strand

This Wild About Utah topic was adapted from A Naturalist’s Guide to Canyon Country by David B. Williams, courtesy of the Canyonlands Natural History Association.

Thanks to the Sorrel River Ranch Resort and Spa for supporting the development of this Wild About Utah topic. The Ranch offers deluxe lodging and services on a scenic bend of the Colorado River, 20 minutes from Moab in the spectacular Professor Valley.

Credits:

Text: Stokes Nature Center: Holly Strand

Sources & Additional Reading

Williams, David B. 2000. A Naturalist’s Guide to Canyon Country., Published jointly by the Globe Pequot Press and the Canyonlands Natural History Association.

Canyonlands Natural History Association https://www.cnha.org/

June 5, 2009March 4, 2026

Short-tailed Bird of Perdition-Starlings

European Starling Dr. Thomas G. Barnes, US Fish & Wildlife Service — European Starling
Courtesy US FWS, Dr. Thomas G. Barnes, Photographer

I’ll bet you’ve always wanted to know about starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), whose Latin name speaks volumes. They’re noisy, gregarious, messy and are blamed for forcing many hole-nesting birds, bluebirds and flickers, even an occasional kestrel, out of their nests for fun and profit. For this the starlings plead “no contest.” They spread across the United States and Canada like the plague after their introduction into New York City’s Central Park in the late 1800’s, just so we unwashed Americans could have the joy of being able to associate, up close and personal, with all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare. I think Pay Back by the Brits sums it up nicely, kind of like the Russians and cheat grass, halogeton, tamarisk and Russian thistle (tumbleweed).

So what can be said that could possibly redeem this rapid breeding invader whose short intestinal tract means they have to consume beaucoup amounts of food to survive? This is great during the summer when insects and creepy-crawlies are their favorite cuisine; it’s during the winter when man-produced food pellets meant for our livestock are like Quaker’s puffed rice or wheat, the digesta are “shot from guns”, another not so an endearing image of the starling. They cost feedlot owners and berry farmers hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Imagine 100,000 and up to two million starlings descending on your holly orchard or your feedlot. Imagine them staying around for the winter. It’s not hard to imagine spreading Starlicide-treated pellets around your livestock.

Not to defend this image, especially after working with the little rounders for 14 years (six years with the Feds, eight years as a graduate research topic), but they showed me that I was working with quite an intelligent species. Observing these birds in the field, in large pens in Green Canyon and in Skinner boxes in the Experimental Psychology laboratory on USU’s campus, these birds made reasoned judgments concerning the food they ate, spatially and temporally learning to avoid poisoned food, teaching another the avoidance pattern they had learned, making decisions just like we do, thinking, learning from mistakes. We tried to eliminate them without success. We could try convincing them that eating at feedlots or orchards is a dangerous game and repel the little rounders. Whatever the case they are here to stay, but it would be nice if there weren’t quite so many.

This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.

Credits:

Photo: Courtesy US FWS, Dr. Thomas G. Barnes, Photographer
Theme music: Trout and Berry Days, by Don Anderson and performed by Leaping Lulu
Text: C. Val Grant, Bridgerland Audubon Society
Voice Talent: Linda Kervin, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Listen for this Bird:

European Starling 1, European Starling 2, and European Starling 3, as recorded by Kevin Colver of https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections and found on the Western Soundscape Archive at the University of Utah. (Opens in a separate window.)

Additional Reading:

European Starling Identification, All About Birds, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University,
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/European_Starling/id

Mayntz, Melissa, European Starling Identification, The Spruce, September 17, 2020, https://www.thespruce.com/european-starling-identification-385980

European Starling, Sturnus vulgaris, National Invasive Species Information Center, US Department of Agriculture (USDA), https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/animals/eurostarling.shtml

European Starling, Sturnus vulgaris, Seattle Audubon Society, https://www.birdweb.org/birdweb/bird_details.aspx?id=360

European Starling – Sturnus vulgaris, Utah Species, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Department of Natural Resources, State of Utah, https://fieldguide.wildlife.utah.gov/?species=sturnus%20vulgaris

EPA R.E.D Facts–Starlicide(3-chloro-p-toluidine hydrochloride), US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/reregistration/fs_PC-009901_1-Sep-95.pdf

May 26, 2009May 22, 2016

Buttes & Mesas

Audio: mp3 Listen to WildAboutUtah

Book Cliffs Courtesy: Bureau of Land Management US Dept. of the Interior — Book Cliffs
Courtesy: Bureau of Land Management
US Dept. of the Interior

Hi, I’m Holly Strand of Stokes Nature Center in beautiful Logan Canyon.

Not long ago , driving from Logan to Moab, I was admiring the dramatic and austere landscape features from the highway. To the north were the vertical escarpments of the Book Cliffs—gray slopes and cliffs that extend all the way from Price, Utah, to Grand Junction, Colorado. Gazing at them from the highway, I wondered : Are they plateaus? mesas? buttes? Any self-respecting Utahn should know the difference between these terms. But even with a master’s degree in geography, the concepts had become fuzzy in my mind with the passage of time.

When I got back home, I turned to Home Ground, a collection of American landscape definitions edited by Barry Lopez. Here you’ll read that a plateau is an extensive area of nearly level land that rises abruptly above a surrounding landscape on at least one side. In this sense, the Tavaputs is a classic Utah plateau and the Book Cliffs form its south-facing escarpment. The Wasatch Plateau –home of the headwaters of the San Rafael and Fremont Rivers –is another classic plateau.

Professor Valley:
Dome Plateau is really a mesa
from Sorrel River Ranch
Courtesy Matt Ceniceros

Plateaus are sometimes called tablelands. This can be confusing, because plateaus aren’t necessarily elevated on all four sides and they are too big to look like tables. But mesas do look like tables and the word mesa means “table” in Spanish. A mesa is a flat-topped mountain or rock mass, usually capped with a layer of weather-resistant rock. In general, a mesa is smaller than a plateau, but the size difference between them is not defined in any absolute terms.

At least everyone seems to agree that a mesa is always wider than it is tall. A butte, on the other hand, is always taller than it is wide. At one point in its development, the butte was probably part of a mesa. Then, over time, the connecting rock eroded away. I’ve often heard buttes referred to as a mesa’s child, or orphan. As a child, the butte’s parent mesa still exists nearby ; erosion has removed an expanse of rock leaving two structures instead of one. When the butte is an orphan, the surrounding rock has been completely removed, leaving a solitary outpost of resistant geologic history.

Eventually, even with a resistant cap, a butte will be weathered down to a landform that is narrower than it is tall. Then it becomes a spire. Synonyms for a spire include tower, monolith or monument.

Close-up of Fisher Towers in Professor Valley Courtesy Utah Geological Survey — Close-up of Fisher Towers
in Professor Valley
Courtesy Utah Geological Survey

You’ll often find that a particular butte is called Such and Such Mesa, and a mesa may be called Such and Such Butte or Plateau. This is because local names given by early explorers and settlers stuck whether or not they were consistent with any accepted definition. Thus, in the cliff-rimmed Professor Valley northwest of Moab, Dome Plateau is really a mesa and Convent Mesa is really a butte. And Grand Mesa, to the east of Grand Junction, is a whole lot larger than Beckwith Plateau near Green River, UT.

For pictures of Utah plateaus, buttes and mesas, check out our web page: www.wildaboututah.org.
Thanks to the Sorrel River Ranch Resort and Spa for supporting the development of this Wild About Utah topic. The Ranch offers deluxe lodging and services on a scenic bend of the Colorado River, 20 minutes from Moab in the spectacular Professor Valley.

And to Dr. Jack Schmidt in the Watershed Sciences Dept. at Utah State University.

For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center I’m Holly Strand

Credits:

Images:

“Book Cliffs” Source: BLM
“Professor Valley: Dome Plateau is really a mesa” Source: Sorrel River Ranch (Matt Ceniceros)
“Professor Valley: Convent Mesa is really a butte” Source: Sorrel River Ranch (Matt Ceniceros)
“Close-up of Fisher Towers in Professor Valley” Source: Utah Geological Survey

Text: Stokes Nature Center: Holly Strand

Sources & Additional Reading

Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, Barry Lopez, Debra Gwartney, 2006, Trinity University Press, San Antonio, TX
https://www.amazon.com/Home-Ground-Language-American-Landscape/dp/1595340246

May 19, 2009March 21, 2022

Discerning the Glorious Songs of our Thrushes

Hermit Thrush Catharus guttatus Courtesy US FWS Dave Menke, Photographer — Hermit Thrush
*Catharus guttatus*
Courtesy US FWS
Lee Karney, Photographer

Hermit Thrush
*Catharus guttatus*
Courtesy US FWS
Dave Menke, Photographer

Swainson’s Thrush
*Catharus ustulatus*
Courtesy US FWS
Peter Pearsall, Photographer

Utah is blessed with many melodious songbirds, but which one sings most beautifully of all? I vote for the haunting, achingly beautiful melodies of our two common thrushes, Swainson’s Thrush and Hermit Thrush. These birds have been leisurely migrating northward from the tropics since early spring. By June, males are singing on their forested territories.

Thrushes are a bit secretive, but if you re lucky, you’ll see a bird a tad smaller than a robin clothed in rich brown back feathers that contrast with a pale breast sporting descending lines of fat brown spots the size of raindrops. Both thrush species look much the same, however. To distinguish them, you need to listen. Their haunting melodies arise deep in their chests, in the syrinx. Their syrinx works something like our larynx, using vibrating membranes that can be stretched taut or relaxed to produce different notes. Unlike our larynx, the bird’s syrinx sits where it’s two tracheae meet the windpipe. The most skilled songsters, like these thrushes, can work the two sides of their syrinx independently to produce two simultaneous notes.

The song of the Swainson’s Thrush always ends in a spiral of ascending notes.

[Audio: Swainson’s Thrush #61 Songbirds of Yellowstone and the High Rockies]

Now listen to the song of the Hermit Thrush. It ends with a warbling flourish that alternately rises or falls in pitch.

[Audio: Hermit Thrush #27 Songbirds of the Rocky Mountains]

It helps me to remember the song of the Hermit Thrush as being a lonely hermit talking to himself in two different voices, one ending high, the other low.

The glorious songs of thrushes grace our woodlands all through the weeks of early summer. So listen carefully and see if you too can now distinguish the song of Swainson’s Thrush from that of the Hermit.

This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.

Credits:

Photos: Courtesy Fish and Wildlife Service Online Digital Media Library, https://www.fws.gov/digitalmedia/
Hermit Thrush: Lee Karney, Photographer
Hermit Thrush: Dave Menke, Photographer
Swainson’s Thrush: Peter Pearsall, Photographer
Audio: Dr. Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections
Voice: Linda Kervin, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Text: Jim Cane & Jason Pietrzak, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Additional Reading:

Hermit Thrush
Fieldguide, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Utah Department of Natural Resources, State of Utah, https://fieldguide.wildlife.utah.gov/?species=catharus%20guttatus

All About Birds, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Hermit_Thrush/

Swainson’s Thrush
Fieldguide, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Utah Department of Natural Resources, State of Utah, https://fieldguide.wildlife.utah.gov/?species=catharus%20ustulatus

All About Birds, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Swainsons_Thrush/