Birding

Tundra Swans are moving through Great Salt Lake's ecosystem by the tens of...

I was walking my daughter's dog near sunset one afternoon a couple Sundays ago when the distant cries of fans at a ball game wafted to me: "Who-whoo! Oo-ooo! Who!" This was an excited group, cheering constantly, their cries overlapping.

Wait a minute. A ball game ... on Sunday ... in Utah? Not likely. Then, a thought struck: Look up.

A 'V' of tundra swans was winging so high overhead I could barely discern their long necks against the steely sky, but their distinctive voices gave them away. The sound carries for miles and it's the reason the species used to be called the whistling swan. It sounds like the bird is forcing a high-pitched keening through its nose.

SOMEWHERE OVER NORTH DAKOTA -- The Cessna 206 banked toward the rising sun last week, revealing beneath one wing a rich, broad countryside as green as it was watery. This was North Dakota in August 2011, one of the wettest years on record, in which basins large and small that have pockmarked the landscape for 10,000 years are water-filled.

And in many cases, duck-filled.

"I've been out here 30 years and I've never seen a spring and summer like this," said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Lloyd Jones, a Wisconsin native and manager of Audubon National Wildlife Refuge in west-central North Dakota. "Water is everywhere."

A black-necked stilt nests in flooded grasslands along the county road that...

Flooding along the county road leading to Bear River Refuge has been a curse and a blessing this year. Sometimes the deluge has closed the road. But when the road is open, birding is the finest I've seen with the extra perks of new pavement, many pull-offs and several parking areas adjacent to prime marsh habitats.

The fun begins just west of the interstate before even passing the visitor's center. White-faced ibis, marsh opportunists, graze in flooded areas that have been dry for the last few years. Cliff and barn swallows course low over the saturated marsh grasses while gathering insects. A mallard pair, alert, stretches their necks and heads like periscopes above the grass. Common ravens survey the scene and croak from power pole perches where their unkempt stick nests punctuate the crossbars.

BRIGHAM CITY — The auto tour route at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge has been temporarily closed to all visitors because heavy precipitation has created dangerous road conditions.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Don McKenzie is leading a rescue mission.

The creature he and others are trying to save? The bobwhite quail.

That's no small task.

The brown and white gamebird once was common in this part of the country, the object of hunting lore. Many hunters remember the days when bird dogs would regularly freeze on point in brushy fields, coveys of quail would rise in explosive flight and shots would ring out. But that's mostly history.

FARMINGTON -- Utah bird watchers will likely be close to their computers and telephones March 1.

That is when, starting at 9 a.m., they can register for the 13th annual Great Salt Lake Bird Festival.