Week 13 – Red-tailed Hawk

This past weekend I found myself camping in the City of Rocks National Reserve in southern Idaho. This is a very popular area for rock climbers, and while I managed to get in a little bit of climbing, I was even more excited to be back in the Pinyon-Juniper country of the Great Basin. This ecosystem of the intermountain west holds a special place for me as I spent the better part of two years working along the southern edge of the Great Basin in northern Arizona, and also spent the 2011 summer working in the heart of Nevada conducting songbird surveys. While the diversity of birds in the Great Basin is nothing spectacular (compared to say, a tropical rainforest!), the species that inhabit this ecosystem are quite unique, and some are not found anywhere else in North America. While it was still quite a bit early to see many of the breeding songbird species that winter further south, I did manage to see Spotted Towhees, Western Scrub Jays, Turkey Vultures, Mountain Bluebirds, Clark’s Nutcrackers, and one Sage Thrasher (although I only heard it singing). I also spotted a beautiful dark western Red-tailed Hawk on the drive in as it flew away from a roadside perch. I’m looking forward to getting out to the Great Basin again later this spring and summer to see specialists such as the Brewer’s and Sage Sparrow, and Greater Sage Grouse, among many other uniquely adapted birds.

Dark Western Red-tailed Hawk. Photograph by Neil Paprocki.

 

All of the previous 52-week blog posts can be found at the Wild Lens blog or on Flickr.