Wild About Utah Archives - Page 95 of 221

December 31, 2018May 4, 2020

Winter Bird Feeding

Red-breasted Nuthatch mining out the nest site Photo courtesy of Utah Division of Wildlife Resources — Red-breasted Nuthatch mining out the nest site
Photo courtesy of Utah Division of Wildlife Resources

This time of year, we see a cast of characters flying among the trees and bushes as they search for food and a place to nestle to conserve warmth and energy.

Black-Capped Chickadee Copyright Stephen Peterson, Photographer — Black-Capped Chickadee
Copyright Stephen Peterson, Photographer

One of these characters is the Black-capped Chickadee a small bird with a black head, white cheeks and cream colored feathers under its grey wings. The Chickadees are found in all 29 Utah counties.

Dark-eyed 'Oregon' Junco Male, Junco hyemalis montanus, Courtesy and copyright 2008 Ryan P. O'Donnell, Phorographer — Dark-eyed ‘Oregon’ Junco Male, Junco hyemalis montanus, Courtesy and copyright 2008 Ryan P. O’Donnell, Phorographer

Another member of the cast is the Dark-eyed Junco, a medium-sized American sparrow with a neat-flashy look. It has solid slate-grey feathers over most of its body except for its pink sides and white underbody. The Junco is found throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The third cast member is the Red-breasted Nuthatch which has a pale red chest, grey wings and a black feathered head with stripes of white below and above the eyes. Its tail is short, its bill is long and it’s one of the few birds that climbs headfirst down trees.

Red Breasted Nuthatch Courtesy US FWS Dave Menke, Photographer — Red Breasted Nuthatch
Courtesy US FWS
Dave Menke, Photographer

All three birds find the majority of their winter nourishment from nuts and seeds, since most insects are hiding in dormancy or are dead.

When a harsh winter hits and heavy snow fall covers their natural food source, the birds can rely on bird feeders to find nourishment.

Although winter bird feeders are beneficial, some Utah residents may hesitate putting out nuts and seeds for the following reasons:

One, they worry the birds may become dependent on the feeders.

Clark Rushing, assistant professor in Department of Wildland Resources in the Quinney College of Natural Resources at USU explains, “In a typical winter these birds don’t need the extra food from a bird feeder to make it through the winter, but…when the snow covers up their [natural food source] they rely on the feeders which increase the birds’ survival rate over the winter. When [snow] conditions [return to normal]… they go right back to feeding on natural sources.”

Another concern some Utah residents have is if the feeders will impact the birds’ migratory behaviors. They worry species who normally migrate might stick around for the winter because they found food.

Rushing says, “This is not a huge concern because most of these bird species use photo period as a que to migrate, which means they start migrating in the Fall when the days start getting shorter and food is still relatively abundant – so food is not the que that these species use to migrate.”

When starting the hobby of winter bird feeding, there are a few good tips to remember.

First, is the importance of keeping your feeders clean. Some diseases can be spread by bird feeders, so keeping them clean is essential.

According to Rushing, “The recommendation is to take [a feeder] down every two weeks, empty it and give it a light cleaning. [Avoid using] harsh detergents. If you see evidence of mildew or mold then a diluted bleach mixture, which you then rinse off, can be really beneficial. Let the feeder completely dry before you put bird seed in it. When [the feeder is wet] is when you have the most problems, so keep it dry.”

Having a variety of feeders and foods is the best way to attract an assortment of birds to your yard during the winter months.

Rushing adds, “The great thing about bird feeding is it connects people to wildlife.”

It’s one of the few ways you can enjoy watching wildlife out your own dining room window throughout the cold winter months.

This is Shauna Leavitt and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Photos:
Red-Breasted Nuthatch, Courtesy Utah Division of Wildlife Resources
Red-Breasted Nuthatch, Courtesy US FWS, Dave Menke, Photographer
Black-Capped Chickadee, Courtesy and Copyright Stephen Peterson, Photographer
Junco, Courtesy and copyright 2008 Ryan P. O'Donnell, Photographer
Audio: Includes audio courtesy and copyright Kevin Colver
Text: Shauna Leavitt, Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University

Sources & Additional Reading

Dr Clark Rushing, Assistant Professor, Wildland Resources, USU S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources, https://qcnr.usu.edu/directory/rushing_clark

Red-Breasted Nuthatch, Utah Birds, https://www.utahbirds.org/birdsofutah/ProfilesL-R/RedBreastedNuthatch.htm

Black-capped Chickadee, Utah Birds, https://www.utahbirds.org/birdsofutah/Profiles/BlackCapChickadee.htm

Dark-Eyed Junco, Utah Birds, https://www.utahbirds.org/birdsofutah/ProfilesD-K/DarkEyedJunco.htm

eBird, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, https://ebird.org/home

Project Feederwatch, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, https://feederwatch.org/

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/

Hellstern, Ron, Bird Feeding in Winter, Wild About Utah, Nov 26, 2018, https://wildaboututah.org/bird-feeding-in-winter/

Hellstern, Ron, Project Feederwatch, Wild About Utah, Feb 26, 2018, https://wildaboututah.org/project-feederwatch/

Hellstern, Ron, Winter Bird Feeding, Wild About Utah, Dec 4, 2017, https://wildaboututah.org/winter-bird-feeding/

Kervin, Linda, Bird Feeding, Wild About Utah, Nov 25, 2008, https://wildaboututah.org/bird-feeding/

December 24, 2018January 1, 2019

Ron Imagines a World Without Trees

Whether you live in a desert, a city, a suburb or a farm, your life would change if you lived in a world without trees. You may be a person who appreciates their ecological connections, or have complete disregard for them. As William Blake said, “The tree, which moves some to tears of joy, is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way.¹”

So, take a moment and consider the way the world would look, and function, without trees. Currently, forests cover about 30% of the Earth’s land surface. But that’s a loss of 1/3 of all trees just since the beginning of the industrial era. The top five largest forests are located in Russia, Brazil, Canada, the U.S., and China.
Whether you think climate change is natural or human-caused, it affects forests by altering the intensity of fires, creating windstorms, changing precipitation, and enabling introduced species to invade. And the World Resources Institute estimates that tens of thousands of forested acres are destroyed every day.

Sometimes even fragmenting forests can produce harmful results as die-backs occur along the edges, and certain wildlife species will not breed unless they live in large tracts of forested areas. It has been said that roads, which are a cause of fragmentation, are the pathways to forest destruction.

Most people know that trees take in Carbon Dioxide for growth, and release Oxygen via photosynthesis. But trees also remove many air pollutants, provide cooling shade and protection from wind and the sun’s harmful Utra-Violet rays. They can be used as privacy screens, they prevent soil erosion, and are the foundation of wildlife habitat on land. Some provide food, can provide serenity and solitude, and have been proven to reduce stress levels. Their fallen leaves decompose into valuable soil. They reduce the Heat-Island Effect in cities, and are more resistant to climate change impacts. Research has shown they improve retail shopping areas, and speed recovery time for those in health care centers.

For the budget-conscious folks, a mature tree can raise home-property values by as much as $5000. And think about those beautiful Autumn colors.

Ron Imagines a World Without Trees: View of Argyre Basin on Mars Courtesy NASA/JPL Caltech https://wildaboututah.org/wp-admin/upload.php?item=8521 — View of Argyre Basin on Mars
Courtesy NASA/JPL Caltech
Composed from images taken by the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Although there seems to be a number of humans who would volunteer to live on planet Mars, would we really want planet Earth to mirror that treeless image?

Perhaps a re-evaluation of trees is warranted. Ponder these imaginative thoughts penned by well-known writers:
Ralph Waldo Emerson: At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back.

William Henry Hudson: When one turned from the lawns and gardens into the wood it was like passing from the open sunlit air to the twilight and still atmosphere of a cathedral interior.

Stephanie June Sorrrell: Let me stand in the heart of a beech tree, with great boughs all sinewed and whorled about me. And, just for a moment, catch a glimpse of primeval time that breathes forgotten within this busy hurrying world.

One way for us to resolve tree issues, is to plant them. And the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. But the next best time to plant them is today.

“Silence alone is worthy to be heard.” – Henry David Thoreau

This is Ron Hellstern, and I am Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Images: CourtesyCourtesy NASA/JPL Caltech
Audio: Contains audio courtesy and copyright Friend Feller, Utah Public Radio, UPR.org
Text: Ron Hellstern, Cache Valley Wildlife Association

Additional Reading

Upton, John, Could Common Earthly Organisms Thrive on Mars?, Pacific Standard, May 21, 2014, https://psmag.com/environment/mars-81952

Voak, Hannah, A World Without Trees, Science in School, https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Marriage_of_Heaven_and_Hell.html?id=YUa8AQAAQBAJ

Hudson, William Henry, The Book of a Naturalist, p4, https://books.google.com/books?id=NA4KAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA4&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://forestry.usu.edu/

December 17, 2018December 27, 2018

Dinosaur National Monument

My last WAU described the glories of the Colorado Plateau, to which I must return. The very northern reach of the plateau intersects the mighty Uintah Mountains and the Uintah Basin. This magnificent landscape also intersects with a complexity of cultures including Utah Natives, Utah State University, hard core birders, naturalists, paleontologists, mineral extraction, outlaws, and prospectors. This very “out of the way” part of the plateau (meaning well away from an interstate highway and large urban areas) offers scenery and rugged wildlands equal to Southern Utah with far lower numbers of tourists.

click to zoom - Douglass Quarry Dinosaur National Monument, Courtesy National Parks Service — Douglass Quarry
Dinosaur National Monument
Courtesy National Parks Service

When my USU students and I first met the enclosed cliff covered with an array of dinosaur debris, our senses were overwhelmed with what stood before us. This incredible display has caught on internationally. Everything remains imbedded in the rock where these giant beasts drew their final breath. Parts of eleven different species are scattered about as you gaze upon this marvel.

A eye popping drive to the Echo Park overlook, view 300 square miles of sublime deeply cut canyons by the Green and Yampa rivers rivaling the grandeur of Canyonlands National Park. Gaze down on the confluence of the Green and Yampa rivers, and far above the Gates of Lodore where Powell’s “Voyage of Discovery” met their first gnarly rapids that laid waste to boats and supplies.

“Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing, Recoiling, turmoiling, and toiling, and boiling” quoted by a crew member from a poem by Robert Southy.

The Green River enters Dinosaur at the monument’s northern boundary and flows out of the monument 58.5 miles later, just south of Split Mountain. 47 miles upstream from Dinosaur’s boundary, Flaming Gorge Dam has regulated the Green since November 1962. The impoundment has severely altered the river’s natural regime below the dam. Before Flaming Gorge Dam, the Green River was often clouded by dirt, silt, and other sediments; was subject to high spring flows fed by snow melt; and the water temperature could range from near freezing in winter to almost 70°F in summer.
With the opening of the dam, these conditions largely disappeared. Spring flows, temperature fluctuation, and turbidity (the cloudiness of the water) were all reduced. The Green River downstream from the dam became a much clearer, cooler, and calmer river which added four species of fish to the endangered species list.

The Yampa is the only remaining free-flowing tributary in the Colorado River system. It harbors outstanding examples of remnant native cottonwood willow and box elder riparian communities, and it provides critical habitat for these endangered fish.

Prior to November 1962, the Yampa and Green rivers were very similar in their discharge, water chemistry, sediment load, and fish communities. Pre-dam similarity between the Yampa and the upper Green creates offer an unparalleled opportunity for comparison studies that help guide restoration efforts in riparian systems far beyond the monument’s boundaries.

Include Josie Basset Morris’s historic cabin in your itinerary. Josie was a female maverick who set up shop in the eastern Utah wilds. Josie brewed illegal chokecherry wine during the 1920’s and 30s prohibition era. Excellent birding exists in the large cottonwood trees surrounding the cabin and Cub Creek riparian area. From The Hog Canyon trail begins here which leads to a box canyon for more of nature’s delights.

Jack Greene- I’m totally Wild About Utah

Credits:

Pictures: Courtesy US National Park Service, Dinosaur National Monument
Audio:
Text: Jack Greene, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading:

Strand, Holly, Earl Douglass and Dinosaur National Monument, Wild About Utah, Oct 2, 2009, https://wildaboututah.org/earl-douglass-and-dinosaur-national-monument/

Strand, Holly, Paleontological Paradise, Wild About Utah, Sep 23, 2008, https://wildaboututah.org/paleontological-paradise/

December 10, 2018December 16, 2018

Wild Cats

Bobcat in plants Courtesy US FWS Steve Hillebrand, Photographer — Bobcat in plants
Courtesy US FWS
Steve Hillebrand, Photographer

I remember well my first encounter with a wild cat. I was sitting in a deer stand beneath a cross-country powerline, at the edge of a meadowed thoroughfare the whitetails frequented. Dusk was settling in—nearly time to go—as the trees opposite me began to rustle. With a few minutes of legal light left, I readied my trigger finger; but instead of a deer, a bobcat exited the woods. I was shocked. This—I had not expected. I watched as the cat looked left, then right, then straight at me, making eye contact. There was no reason I should have been noticed. I hadn’t made a sound, hadn’t moved in nearly three hours save the scanning of my eyes and the slight rise and fall of my chest with every breath.

Bobcat Public Domain image courtesy US FWS National Conservation Training Center — Bobcat
Public Domain image courtesy US FWS
National Conservation Training Center

Still, I had been found. The cat ambled slowly but with purpose toward the ladder that connected my seat to the ground, stopping a few meters away. He or she never broke eye contact. Neither did I. I’m not sure why. Instinct, perhaps. I would learn many years later from a man who had stared down a mountain lion from a meter away that you never break eye contact with a big cat in the wild. Never. I have no idea how long we sat there together. Minutes? Seconds? Hours? It was fully dark when the animal turned to leave—so dark I had lost the pattern of its coat in the shadows. I never saw where it went; but I’ve been enamored with wild cats ever since.

Bobcat Courtesy US FWS Gary Kramer, Photographer — Bobcat
Courtesy US FWS
Gary Kramer, Photographer

The landscapes that have shifted and morphed and been politically bordered into what is now the state of Utah has been populated by wild cats since at least 40,000 years ago. During the Pleistocene Epoch’s last ice age, the infamous saber-toothed cat roamed Utah’s glacier-clogged crags. Bones of the saber-toothed species known as Smilodon have been unearthed in Utah, most notably from the Silver Creek site near present-day Park City. Smilodon, with its legendary curved, saber-like canine teeth, was a fearsome hunter of ancient Utah’s mega fauna like the mastodon and wooly mammoth; but when the glaciers receded and the Earth began to melt, the mega fauna couldn’t adapt, so Smilodon had nothing to hunt.

Smilodon gave way through the millennia to the smaller but no less impressive cats that occupy Utah’s crags and hills today—the bobcat, the Canada Lynx, and, of course, the famous mountain lion.

Big cat footprint Courtesy & Copyright Josh Boling, Photographer

It hasn’t been too long since that spring evening in the canyons of southern Utah. We had just rappelled into a small grotto where, at the bottom, there was an ephemeral pool. The sand was already wet with little droplets along the edge, a footprint here and there leading away—the way we would take—down the only path toward home. We chattered more loudly, making ourselves known, as we proceeded. Then we’d grow quiet again, eyes sweeping here and there, secretly hoping we would get a peak of the lion as it sauntered away from us. We never did, but it was there.

I’m Josh Boling, and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:

Photos: Courtesy US FWS
Big cat track photo courtesy and copyright Josh Boling
Audio: Includes audio from North Sounds, Inc.
Text: Josh Boling, 2018

Sources & Additional Reading

Golla, Julie M., “Urban Bobcat (Lynx rufus) Ecology in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas Metroplex” (2017). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 6857.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/6857

Bauman, Joe, Ice Age in Utah, Deseret News, Dec 3, 1997, https://www.deseretnews.com/article/598582/Ice-age-in-Utah.html

Larese-Casanova, Mark, Mountain Wildlife Field Book, Utah Master Naturalists, https://extension.usu.edu/utahmasternaturalist/files/UMNP_Mountains_Wildlife_Book_booklet.pdf

Fossils on Reclamation Lands Provide a Glimpse Into the Past, https://www.usbr.gov/newsroom/stories/detail.cfm?RecordID=57996

Ice Age Animals of Utah, Utah Geological Services, A division of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, https://geology.utah.gov/popular/general-geology/ice-age/ice-age-animals-of-utah/

Strand, Holly, Mountain Lion, Wild About Utah, Mar 4, 2010https://wildaboututah.org/mountain-lion/

Greene, Jack, My Cougar Encounter, Wild About Utah, Jan 16, 2017, https://wildaboututah.org/my-cougar-encounter/

Murie, O. J. (1982). Animal Tracks. Peterson Field Guides. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. https://www.amazon.com/Peterson-Field-Guide-Animal-Tracks/dp/061851743X