Salt Lake City to Twin Falls 7/23--Golden Eagle, Ferruginous Hawk, Burrowing Owl, Loggerhead Shrike, Black-billed Magpie, Sage Thrasher, CASSIA CROSSBILL

CASSIA CROSSBILL, Diamondfield Jack Campground

It is just under 300 miles between Salt Lake City and Twin Falls where we headed next. On the map it looks like you can take the interstates there all the way instead of getting off I-84 south of the Idaho border and taking state roads, but then we wouldn't have added 6 of our year birds to the list. 

Burrowing Owl

Happily, these roads are essential empty of traffic, because it seemed like every 10 or 15 miles, Scott would see a roadside bird and pull over. The first one was on UT-30 in Howell, where a Burrowing Owl was perched atop a fence post. 

After being welcomed to Idaho by a shot-gun riddled sign, we added more roadside birds. One stop yielded a Golden Eagle, a Swainson's Hawk (state bird!), and a Loggerhead Shrike. Down the road a piece we stopped again for a Ferruginous Hawk (I have seen two Ferruginous Hawks and both have been stop-the-car birds).

Continuing along we stopped again for a Sage Thrasher (surprisingly, the only one we had for the trip). All these Idaho birds were located in the town of Malta though there was nothing but fields all around us. When we finally entered Malta proper, we found a Black-billed Magpie, a bird that we somehow missed in Salt Lake City where they are almost as common as pigeons. 

After lunch in the Malta town park and a stop at a convenience store (where Shari's Brooklyn accent was a source of wonder to the woman behind the counter), we did our first real birding in Idaho, in the Thompson Flat Campground in the Sawtooth National Forest. We didn't add any year birds there (though there were trip birds) until we just about to get back into the vans and travel the rest of the way to Twin Falls. Scott heard birds overhead, quickly quieted the group (not an easy task) and then we heard the "chip chip" of crossbills and saw 5 fly over our heads. Very brief looks, very good hears. They made a return flight a few minutes later. And after some noodling around with crossbill calls on our phones, we were confident that we had just heard and seen CASSIA CROSSBILLS, a "new" species that has only recently been separated from the other crossbill subspecies to stand on it's own. 

We had hoped to see them the next day at the spot where they usually recorded but this was a good preview. The picture above is from the following day. The Red Crossbills are a confusing complex, with all the subspecies separated by voice. Fortunately, the Cassia Crossbill has a distinct vocalization. It is involved in an interesting evolutionary battle with the lodgepole pine, with its beak getting stronger as the pine cones get harder. It is also the beneficiary of the absence of Red Squirrels in the area which compete with crossbills for the pine cone seeds and usually win, which is why most crossbills travel great swaths looking for food, while the Cassia Crossbill is sedentary. 

Our little list for Thompson Flat Campground.

14 species

Northern Flicker  1

Violet-green Swallow  1

Mountain Chickadee  1

Red-breasted Nuthatch  1

House Wren  1

Ruby-crowned Kinglet  1

American Robin  2

Cassin's Finch  2

CASSIA CROSSBILL  5

Pine Siskin  1

Fox Sparrow (Slate-colored)  2

Dark-eyed Junco  1

White-crowned Sparrow  1    Heard 

Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon's)  3