ABA Convention 2008: The Heights

Intending to save the best for last, I decided to go to Bald Mountain and Mirror Lake on Saturday, the last day (for me) of the Utah convention. It was an early start, but well worth it as we stood in the morning light, scanning the snow cantilevered over our heads for movement.

Gray-headed (and a lovely Pink-sided intergrade) Juncos, American Robins, and singing White-crowned Sparrows and Townsend’s Solitaires provided the entertainment while we strained our eyes looking for a give-away flash of silvery underwing. And finally came the shout: Black Rosy-Finches! There were three or four of the beautiful little chocolate-and-cherry wonders, way up high on the inaccessible ridge above us, shuffling along in the snow, then suddenly, longspur-like, whirling up into the air to settle some distance away. I suspect that some in our group were less happy than I was with the views we had, but it really was the classic leucosticte experience, better in some (well, not many) ways than watching them, coffee in hand and hand in mitten, at a wintertime feeder.

The sky really was as blue as the photo suggests, and I came home from that day with a snowburn, which I’ve been casually describing as acquired “on the slopes at Snowbird.” As we were leaving, the dazzling skyline was broken by movement, and this time it wasn’t a shout but a squeal of surprise and delight: mountain goats.

As we watched, the four adults skidded and scrambled down the snow, pushing the reluctant kids ahead of them–a scene we would later see repeated step by step by a human father with his mischievous imp of a son.

Hard to leave this classic Rocky Mountain show behind, but Trial Lake called.

This site turned out to be a classic alpine pond, complete with Tree Swallows and an Osprey; only the lone California Gull seemed out of place so high up in the mountains. I was, as usual, easily distracted by flowers (an Erythronium, je crois)

and mammals (hurray for golden-mantled squirrels!)

but soon enough joined the vigil beneath the nest hole.

It took a while, but finally a male American Three-toed Woodpecker flew in to relieve his patient mate, who left the eggs to perch for a few seconds in a nearby tree before taking off for some time on her own. Still settling in to the tight cavity, the male poked his head out a couple of times, creating a strange pattern of black shadow and golden forelock that was at first unidentifiable as a bird at all.