.
After three days in Salt Lake City, we headed down to spend four days at our relatives' house outside City City. The house is located at 7500 feet and so has a great view over the city.
The deck is a good place for watching sunsets ...
... and Black-chinned Hummingbirds.
I managed to see quite a few other birds from the deck, including: American Robins (below), Lazuli Buntings, Common Ravens, Western Tanagers and Black-headed Grosbeak (below).
It was here, too, that I saw the first Western Scrub-Jays of the trip.
I started most days with a dawn drive to an overlook higher up in the hills behind the house.
There I would be treated to a long morning serenade by a Green-tailed Towhee.
After watching the sun rise and listening to the Towhee, I would drive higher into the mountains and search the aspen groves for birds.
A Northern Flicker looked beautiful in the morning light.
A Mountain Bluebird looked, well, cold in the morning light.
Violet-green Swallows were circling overhead and sometimes perching on utility lines.
I missed getting photos of Cassin's Finches and Western Tanagers but got one of a Dark-eyed Junco.
One morning I went in search of the bird that was producing a terrible racket. It turned out to be a Clark's Nutcracker, a bird I'd seen only once before, 15 years earlier at Lake Tahoe.
One of the great things about our relatives' house is that it's just about an hour's drive from both Zion National Park and the southern Utah city of St. George. On this trip we thought we'd give Zion a miss because it had been so crowded with people on our visit two years ago. However, there were a couple of other nearby sites that I hoped to check out. I'll report on these soon.
.
.
Most of our time in Utah was spent in our relatives' house, perched at 7,500 feet and overlooking Cedar City.
A single hummingbird feeder on the deck attracted a succession of Black-chinned, Broad-tailed and Rufous Hummingbirds.
Other birds were scarce around the house, although I saw fly-throughs by Lesser Goldfinch, Western Scrub Jays and Northern Flickers. Every morning a bird would sing (cheep, cheep and then a descending trill) from somewhere nearby but I could never locate it. On our final day I managed to see that it was a Spotted Towhee.
Several hundred feet above the house there is a small lake that had American Coots, Mallards and a Sora. Even higher than that there is a lookout area which I always enjoy visiting. Western Scrub Jays were surveying their territory from the tops of bushes there.
Black-capped Chickadees foraged in other bushes, while Green-tailed Towhees explored the ground.
Further up the mountainside I stopped to look for woodpeckers. After an hour I had seen Green-tailed Towhees, a Mountain Bluebird and a pair of House Wrens (below) but no woodpeckers.
Then my luck changed. A pair of Northern Flickers called and bowed to each other in a mating display on a distant tree-top. Then, a little nearer, there was a familiar drumming sound. It took a while but I finally located the source: a Hairy Woodpecker.
Another morning I drove the few miles to Kolob Canyon, part of Zion National Park. The canyon is lined with spectacular cliffs.
The ridge walk at the top looks over towards the main section of Zion NP.
I was hoping to see California Condors and perhaps some large raptors from the ridge. Instead I saw only Western Scrub Jays, Common Ravens and White-throated Swifts.
On yet another morning we all traveled to Cedar Breaks National Monument. But I'll report on that in my next blog.
.
.For the rest of our vacation we stayed in a cabin belonging to family members. The cabin sits at 7500 feet on a mountainside overlooking Cedar City.
The deck looked out over the city and west to mountain ranges in Nevada.
Broad-tailed Hummingbirds regularly visited a feeder on the deck.
The yard always had numerous Western Scrub-Jays.
Black-headed Grosbeaks visited from time to time.
Other birds visited, too, including Mountain Chickadees, a Cordilleran Flycatcher and this Warbling Vireo.
The deck was also a great place for watching sunsets!
.
