Wild About Utah Archives - Page 60 of 145

February 22, 2021March 12, 2022

Finding Remoteness

‘Remote’ is not a characteristic I would assign to the city center, a major metropolis like where I grew up. But I also remember summers spent high in the crown of our old magnolia tree, where my 8 year old self may have begged to differ. There, I found wildness—forgot about time and place and the civilization that occupied them. Finding Remoteness

What does ‘remote’ mean? Take a moment, if you will, and conjure a memory—to the most remote place you’ve ever been. Where are you? Why did that particular place come to mind? Was it the distance from cities and towns? Was it the absence of other people? Was it the darkness? The quiet? What makes a place “remote?”

This question has been tumbling around in my head for a while. So, naturally, I took to the internet for answers. A definition: ‘remote’—an adjective—“(of a place) situated far from the main centers of population; distant.” Seems straightforward at first, but the quality of remoteness is open for interpretation. I might argue, for instance, that Lhasa—the Tibetan capital of almost half a million people—is far more remote than the most isolated corner of Utah’s redrock labyrinth. Perhaps that’s an apples to oranges comparison, though.

Bear-shaped remote region in the Bear River Range Data and Photo Credit: Hunter Baldridge — Bear-shaped remote region
in the Bear River Range
Data and Photo Credit: Hunter Baldridge

The Means family from Florida is trying to quantify remoteness and document the most remote place in all 50 states. Project Remote, they call it, defines remoteness as “the point that is the farthest straight-line distance from a road or city [or] town.” According to the Means family, Utah’s most remote location is deep in the High Uintas Wilderness–9.5 miles from the nearest road; a two-day trek from the closest trailhead.

Project Remote inspired me. Their definition seemed reasonable enough, but I was curious about whittling down the parameters of ‘remoteness.’ I wanted to identify the most remote location in Cache County, where I live; so, I reached out to USU Geographic Information Systems instructor, Shannon Belmont, who has been working on this question with her students for several years. As it turns out, the general consensus from Belmont’s class projects produced a fittingly bear shaped swathe of canyons and peaks in the high country of the Bear River Range as the most remote region in the county. There were dozens of other definitions offered through Belmont’s project, of course.

‘Remote’ seems a relative term—relative to the perspective of a traveler and their perceived distance or isolation from the center of whatever world is familiar. When avalanche danger in my home range subsides, I’ll click boots into skis and plow my way to the heart of that bear-shaped expanse of peaks and canyons, trying to find what ‘remote’ means there. Then, perhaps I’ll redefine the word entirely— changing it by season, mode of transport, or state of mind. Until then, maybe I’ll find an old tree to get lost in.

I’m Josh Boling, and I’m Wild About Utah!Defining Remote

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright Josh Boling, Photographer
Uintas Graphic: Courtesy Josh Boling & Hunter Baldridge, Copyright © Hunter Baldridge
Sound: Courtesy & Copyright J Chase and K.W. Baldwin, Utah Public Radio
Text: Josh Boling, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University https://edithbowen.usu.edu/
Additional Reading Links: Josh Boling

Sources & Additional Reading

https://www.outsideonline.com/2314611/roads-around-nowhere

Project Remote, https://www.projectremote.com/

Utah’s Remote Spot in the High Unitas, Project Remote, October 3, 2019, https://www.projectremote.com/blog/utah-remote-spot/

Belmont, Shannon, Final Project – Identifying the most remote location in Cache County, GEOG/WILD1800, SJ & Jessie Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University, https://wildaboututah.org/wp-content/uploads/boling.josh_.GW1800_Final_Project_RemoteLocation.pdf

February 15, 2021July 18, 2022

Mirabilite Mounds and The Great Salt Lake

Mirabilite Mounds in the Great Salt Lake Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer — Mirabilite Mounds
in the Great Salt Lake
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer

Back in October 2019, the ranger at the Great Salt Lake State Park began to notice a white mound forming on the sand flats behind the visitor center. The white mounds turned out to be hydrated sodium sulfate – known as mirabilite- which was being carried to the surface by the upwelling of a fresh water spring. Since the 1940’s geologists have known that in this area, 30 inches below the surface, there was a 3 – 6 foot thick shelf of mirabilite. They knew about the fresh water springs What was new was cold air. Since this stretch of sand was no longer underwater, the mirabilite carried to the surface stayed there as crystals, piling up on each other, puddling and spreading out. One mound rose to the height of 3 feet.

Mirabilite Springs in the shadow of the Kennecott Smelter stack Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Phorographer — Mirabilite Springs in the shadow of the Kennecott Smelter stack
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Phorographer

When the mounds started to form again this winter, I jumped at the chance to to go and take a look. I must admit at first I was a little underwhelmed at the size, perhaps because the Kennecott Smelter Stack nearby dominates the view, rising to 1,215 feet – roughly the same height as the Empire State Building. But the park ranger got my attention when she told us that mirabilite mounds have only been seen in four places in the entire world – the Canadian Arctic, Antarctica, Central Spain, – and Utah. Just seeing them turns out to be a rare winter treat. When the air warms to 50 degrees, the mirabilite will crumble into a fine white powder and disappear.

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970) Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer — Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970)
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer

My mind flashed back to a trip I’d made to the other end of the lake ten years ago. I’d just graduated from the docent training class at the Utah Museum of Fine Art, and a friend and I wanted to celebrate by having High Tea at the center of the Spiral Jetty, a 1,500 foot, long, 15 foot wide coil of black basalt rock – a stunning example of land art jutting out from the northern shore. We’d been warned that it might be underwater, but when we arrived we were delighted to find we could easily walk to the very center of the spiral as the lake water gently lapped at the edges of our shoes. We clinked our tea cups, and toasted the greatness of the lake.

Suddenly I wanted to see the jetty again, so I hopped in my car and drove to the remote site. I saw the Spiral Jetty was now high and dry. Drifting sand had already started to bury parts of it. The water’s edge was now over 300 yards away. I thought of the millions of migratory birds that would be arriving in the spring to rest and feast on the tiny treasures of the lake, the brine shrimp. I hoped a smaller lake would still be enough for all of them.

The recent words of the director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake, Lynn de Freitas, rang in my head: “The Great Salt Lake is a gift that keeps on giving. Just add water.”

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy and Copyright Kevin Colver https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections/kevin-colver
Text & Voice: Mary Heers, Generous Contributor, Utah Public Radio
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, Webmaster Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading

Mirabilite Spring Mounds Near Great Salt Lake Marina, Utah Geological Survey (UGS), Utah Department of Natural Resources, https://geology.utah.gov/popular/general-geology/great-salt-lake/mirabilite-spring-mounds/

Mirabilite, Mindat.org, Hudson Institute of Mineralogy, https://www.mindat.org/min-2725.html

Tabin, Sara, Rare salt formations return to Great Salt Lake’s shores; take a tour while they last, The Salt Lake Tribune, Jan. 13, 2021, https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/01/14/rare-salt-formations/

USGS 412613112400801 The Great Salt Lake at Spiral Jetty, Site Map for the Nation, U.S. Geological Survey(USGS), U.S. Department of the Interior, https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/nwismap/?site_no=412613112400801&agency_cd=USGS

Case, William, GEOSIGHTS: PINK WATER, WHITE SALT CRYSTALS, BLACK BOULDERS, AND THE RETURN OF SPIRAL JETTY!, Survey Notes, v. 35 no. 1, Utah Geological Survey (UGS), Utah Department of Natural Resources, January 2003, https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/geosights/spiral-jetty/

Board & Staff, Friends of the Great Salt Lake, https://www.fogsl.org/about/board-staff

Salt Lake Brine Shrimp, https://saltlakebrineshrimp.com/harvest/

February 8, 2021March 12, 2022

Native Plants for Birds

When we are hungry, we head for the kitchen. When birds are hungry they head for plants. Native plants, in particular provide important sources of food for birds and other wildlife.

Native plants play an important role in an ecosystem, providing the best habitat for wildlife. They are species of plants that have grown naturally in an area and thrive in an environment that matches the soils, moisture, and weather of a particular locality.

Arrowleaf Balsamroot Hyde Park, UT Courtesy & Copyright Linda L'Ai — Arrowleaf Balsamroot
Hyde Park, UT
Courtesy & Copyright Linda L’Ai

There are mutually beneficial connections for plants and birds that have evolved together. Native plants are a veritable market place for birds offering them nuts, seeds, fruits, nectar, and tasty bugs. They have an important influence on a bird’s diet, feeding habits, and even migration patterns. And as birds feed on the local fare they spread pollen and seeds.

This data gathered by Audubon’s Plants for Birds Program supports the planting of native species whenever possible.

96% of land birds feed insects to their chicks.
Native oak trees host over 530 species of caterpillars while non-native ginkgo trees host just 4.
To raise one nest of chickadee babies, parents must gather between 6,000 and 9,000 caterpillars.
Suburban yards planted with native species host 8 times more native birds.

Birds shape their migration patterns around native plants. Plants that produce fleshy fruit duirng the late summer and fall provide birds with the energy needed for long migrations.

Urbanization has resulted in a threat to native plants. According to Audubon, the continental United States has lost over 150 million acres of native habitat due to urban sprawl. Fragmentation of native plant habitat is believed to be due to the construction of cities, roads and river flow reservoirs. All of these, combined with a changing climate’s impact on timing of insect hatching and flowers opening, present many challenges to our birds.

Northern Flicker Courtesy & Copyright Linda L'Ai — Northern Flicker
Courtesy & Copyright Linda L’Ai

You can help improve the connection between native plants and birds by adding native plants to your landscape. The native plants database developed by Audubon provides users with customized lists of native plants specific to your area, as well as the steps needed to evaluate which plants will find success in your soil. You can find the website at Audubon.org/plantsforbirds. It’s as easy as putting in the area code, then clicking search. There are over 40 native plants listed for the Cache Valley area.

Dark-eyed Junco Courtesy & Copyright Linda L'Ai — Dark-eyed Junco
Courtesy & Copyright Linda L’Ai

Finches, sparrows, and chickadees are common birds to our area and are attracted to the seeds of the common sunflower.

The Wild plum, provides fleshy fruit for sparrows and chickadees and insects for woodpeckers.

Milkweeds attract hummingbirds and insect pollinators and serve as larval hosts for Monarch Butterflies.

Growing native plants is something we all can do in our yards or in the community to help bird populations increase now and in the future. Consider this: native plants that are adapted to the local region require less water, fertilizers and no pesticides.

Check out Audubon.org/plantsforbirds to find out more.
If you really dig birds, try digging native plants into your garden!

I’m Linda L’Ai with the Bridgerland Audubon Society, and I’m Wild About Utah!

Credits:

Photos: Courtesy US FWS, Peter Pearsall, Photographer, https://images.fws.gov/
Audio: Courtesy and Copyright Kevin Colver https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections/kevin-colver
Text: Linda L’Ai, Bridgerland Audubon Society
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham & Hilary Shughart, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading

Grow Native For Birds, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/our-projects/grow-native-for-birds/

Plants For Birds, The Coleman and Susan Burke Center for Native Plants, National Audubon Society, https://www.audubon.org/plantsforbirds
“Plants for Birds,” National Audubon, https://vimeo.com/163864388

Native Plants for the Utah Landscape, Center for Water-Efficient Landscaping, Utah State University Extension, https://cwel.usu.edu/native-other

Native Plants, The Coleman and Susan Burke Center for Native Plants, National Audubon Society, https://www.audubon.org/native-plants/

Native Plant List-Utah and Western Colorado, PlantNative, Portland, OR, https://www.plantnative.org/rpl-ut.htm?fbclid=IwAR1nnlQUQ680x_SpwrKH_Fvtt2J2mtF7cqwZeUW8XAzzvlObs4K-kMPMIg0

Utah Native Plant Society, https://www.unps.org/

Tallamy, Doug, Sustainable Landscaping, Research, University of Delaware, May 2, 2013, 2.26 min, https://youtu.be/NTbPNwNIoLs

Tallamy, Doug, Eierman, Kim, EcoBeneficial Interview: Dr. Doug Tallamy In His Garden on the Importance of Native Plants, EcoBeneficial!, Nov 22, 2013, 29:30 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w39g_f7BMUk

February 4, 2021March 12, 2022

Duck Tornados

Duck Tornado: Male Mallard, Wings Set Courtesy Pixabay, Ilona Ilyés(ilyessuti), Photographer — Male Mallard, Wings Set
Courtesy Pixabay, Ilona Ilyés(ilyessuti), Photographer

If it flies like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, but there’s hundreds in a maelstrom whirlpool whose torrent of wingbeats make your ears mute and skull hum, it must be a Great Salt Lake tornado a la duck.

This past waterfowl season, I saw them out in some of the flats not yet trammeled by cover brush in the wetlands which drain the Bear River to the Great Salt Lake. The experience was possible because my friend, a well-seasoned duck hunter, had “a spot” he wanted to check out. We headed out at 4:30 in the morning from town, drove to the icy ramp, and put in his boat. We navigated the winding canals lined with irreconcilable phragmites in the black until we reached an end. When he cut the engine, nothing but the sound of water trickling from unnamed subfoliage passageways could be heard. We unloaded our equipment, moored the vessel, and took off on foot for “the spot”.

We hauled floating coffins with our gear: decoys, grass blankets, some food, and our hunting tools. The air was cold, but hauling sleds through muck and knee deep water is warm work. We could see the delicate prints of yesterday’s game puttering in the mud, foraging for fuel. Our heavy feet cratered their Pollack art, mud streaking behind and steam rising as we trudged on.

When we found the spot to set up near a small patch of open water just deep enough, we set out the decoys, took our positions, hid, and waited until the clock struck the shooting hour. With the sun yawning from behind the morning’s dense clouds, the tornados began.

They started to the west on a rest pond and slowly rose about a half mile out, an acrid steam swirling along magnetic edges of lazy morning thermals. Slowly, the steam became more dense, a heavier molecularity, and yet somehow like the paint stretching off a worn artist’s haggard brush, harnessed a fluid winged chaos into streaks of prehistoric migratory cosmos.

Once a feathered mass rises and begins its molasses churn about its night’s pond, it is as if an intuition shoots through the birds, and they become an it, and suddenly strike off unified in a particular direction on the morning flight. One such wave comes our way.

You don’t hear the mass at first, but when you do it begins with quacks. Their distant airy rasps build as they approach and eye our decoys and open water. It gains slowly, like Holst’s Mars, or Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, a romantic era symphony of avian legions unified by the course of cacophonous time. It’s epic and deeply beautiful.

Soon, they decide to give our hole a scout and the whirlwind aims itself at us. The squadrons of drakes and hens give passing dives. This is where the real magic lies; nothing makes your hair stand on end like the sound of cupped duck wings catching air, braking in the atmosphere with such force, and then throwing on the afterburners to pull back up towards their comrades. It makes F-35s look like the Wright brothers’ Kitty Hawk flier. That howl as air is held compressed beneath stressed wings comes in from all angles. We are transfixed within the eye.

Northern Shovelers Flying Courtesy US FWS, Steve Hillebrand, Photographer — Northern Shovelers Flying
Courtesy US FWS, Steve Hillebrand, Photographer

And as quickly as the tornado cometh, it also flyeth away. The music dissipates as the breath of ancient gods gains altitude, eyes another pond, and moves on from us. The duck tornado roars on.

So even if you’re not a hunter, or even that keen on ducks, there is nothing quite like a duck tornado; a force in this world which once was commonplace with the other primal elements of nature, but now only rarely seen in those last lightly touched places. Know that they’re out there, and if you can, one day go looking for them. Gaze at the power, the glory, and the mystery of the Great Salt Lake wetland duck tornados. You’ll never forget it.

I’m Patrick Kelly, and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:

Images: Image Courtesy Pixabay, Ilona Ilyés(ilyessuti), Photographer, https://pixabay.com/photos/duck-bird-waterfowl-lake-wild-5838408/
Images: Image Courtesy USFWS, Steve Hillebrand, Photographer https://digitalmedia.fws.gov/digital/collection/natdiglib/id/9588/
Audio: Contains audio Courtesy & Copyright Kevin Colver https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections
Text: Patrick Kelly, Director of Education, Stokes Nature Center, https://logannature.org/
Included Links: Lyle Bingham, Webmaster, WildAboutUtah.org

Additional Reading

Duck Tornado, Idaho Fish & Game, Feb 20, 2015, https://youtu.be/HmK9ArTgU0A

Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, US Fish & Wildlife Service, US Department of the Interior, https://www.fws.gov/refuge/bear_river_migratory_bird_refuge/

Waterfowl Guidebook, Utah Division of Wildlife, Utah Department of Natural Resources, https://wildlife.utah.gov/guidebooks/2020-21_waterfowl.pdf

Hellstern, Ron, Autumn Migrations, Wild About Utah, October 15, 2017, https://wildaboututah.org/autumn-migrations/