Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Utah Trip (5)

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Dee and I decided to spend part of our final afternoon in Utah at the Red Butte Botanical Gardens. We visited the gardens last year and were impressed by both the botanical displays and the birds that we saw there.

On this visit, the gardens were as beautiful as before.


The birding started out well, too, when we almost literally stumbled over a family of California Quail.

The mother quickly sheph
erded the chicks to safety ...


while the father stood guard.


After that, we saw plenty of bugs but very few birds, except occasional glimpses of American Robins and Warbling Vireos among the trees.


I stopped beside a small fountain and was soon rewarded by the arrival of a Black-capped Chickadee that was in need of a drink and a bath.


My final sighting was a female Western Tanager that came in to the same fountain. Surprisingly, this was the only Tanager that we saw on our whole trip to Utah.


Utah Skies

One of the delights of being in Salt Lake City is watching the play of sun and clouds on the Wasatch Mountains. This is how the sky over the mountains looked on Sunday evening.













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